Myrtle Beach SC

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We enjoyed our 6 nights in Wilmington but we have a reservation at Myrtle Beach State Park for a week so we head south along the coast. It is only a 90 mile drive so we stick around at the Elks Lodge in the morning to avoid getting in to the campground before check in time. This is our first time visiting Myrtle Beach and we were astonished by the number of campgrounds and RV sales/service facilities there were as we headed to the state park. Turns out this is definitely a popular RVing destination. The campground in the state park is a pretty large one with nearly 300 campsites, but some of the private resorts just down the road from us have between 1500 to 3400 sites! If you don’t mind being crammed in like sardines, I guess these resorts could work out but we will opt for a state park when given the option. Myrtle Beach State Park is heavily wooded and the drive into the campground made me watching carefully overhead for low hanging branches. We had scoped out the campground using Google street view to pick a spot large enough for our rig. Our site should work out well with one exception, we were right underneath a hickory tree and being fall, the nuts were dropping. 

The next day, we head out for a bike ride. The Waccamaw Neck Bikeway starts in Murrells Inlet and heads south to Pawleys Island covering nearly 12 miles. The trail is mainly a dedicated bike path but it is almost always next to roads. So from a safety standpoint, you are away from traffic but it isn’t a particularly quiet bike ride since we are always within 100 feet of a road. We start our ride at Morse Park Landing. There is a pretty view of the inlet while we get ready for the ride. Part of the ride starts out in a wooded area near a minor road and is rather nice.

Overlooking Murrells Inlet

Wooded Section of Waccamaw Neck Bikeway

When the trail gets over to US 17, we are definitely along a very busy road and are grateful to have a dedicated bike path on the east side. We pass the entrance to Huntington State Park as well as Brookgreen Gardens. We will visit both of these places in depth during our stay in the area. There are a fair number of geocaches along the ride. We decided to only look for a few of them otherwise we will not get in a very good bike ride.

Sculpture at Entrance to Brookgreen Gardens

At the 5 mile mark, the trail crosses the main road and heads west along Willbrook Blvd for another mile or so before hanging a left on Kings River Road. It is clear the other popular activity in Myrtle Beach is golfing. We bike past lots of golf courses along our ride. We were letting our bodies decide how far we would ride before we turned around. We saw there was a rather interesting looking virtual geocache in a cemetery just before the 9 mile mark. We decide that we will use this as our goal before heading back. 

Pond Along Kings River Road

We arrive at All Saints Cemetery to look for “Alice’s Grave”. According to the geocache description, Alice Flagg, who died in 1849 at the age of 15, haunts this cemetery. Legend says that if you walk backwards around her grave 13 times, you will feel her tug on your ring. At the entrance gate to the cemetery is a sign the church has put up to dissuade visitors from conjuring up Alice - “The Holy Ghost is the only ghost we welcome here.” We eventually spot the correct gravesite and see there is a well worn path surrounding the large, flat grave marker. It is clear that quite a large number of people come to pay their respects to Alice. Chris does her backwards walk around the gravestone but opts to only do a few trips to avoid any scary encounters. The ride back is simply a backtrack of our ride with the exception of a short detour for another geocache near another golf course. In all, we got in just over 18 miles and really enjoyed the area.

No Ghosts Here!

Chris Circles Alice's Grave

On the way back to camp, we drove right past Huntington Beach State Park. We knew our camping pass would allow us free admission to this state park as well, so we stopped to check it out. We had a couple things working against us - we were tired from our bike ride and it was late in the afternoon but we found an ice cream shop in the park, got a cone and walked around. For mid November, it was a rather nice day but not an especially good beach day. A few people were out but the park wasn’t crowded at all.

View from Ice Cream Shop

Sandy Beach

Waves Coming In

We head over to Atalaya Castle only to discover it was just about to close for the day. It looks like a really neat place to check out and since it is so close, we decide to simply add a return trip to this place for a future day. On the walk back to the car, we found some nicely painted Adirondack chairs. In the picture, they may look to be normal chairs until you notice that Chris is sitting in one of them and is dwarfed by its size.

Living Tunnel

Shrunken Chris or Big Chair?

Myrtle Beach State Park is about 300 acres with just over a mile of oceanfront beach. There are a few miles of hiking trails and a boardwalk/pier along with a dozen or so geocaches. We figure we should really take the time to explore this gem since it is all accessible from our campsite. The beach is only a quarter mile from our site so we head there first and walk along the boardwalk. There are some very colorful wildflowers growing along the dunes. The Indian Blanket were rather vibrant but they did appear to have two different looking flowers on the same plants.

Beach Along State Park in Myrtle Beach

Indian Blanket Flower

A Different Style of Same Flower

We head down to the pier which is accessed through the visitor center and gift shop. They do charge a fee, if you are there to go fishing, but if you’re just out for a stroll, it is part of your park admission fee. There were quite a large number of people out fishing but we only saw one small fish being hauled in while we were there. We do get decent views of downtown Myrtle Beach to the north and the beaches to the south from this vantage point.

Pier at State Park

Heading Out the Pier

View of Myrtle Beach

Next we tackle a couple miles of the various trail within the interior of the park. The Yaupon Nature Trail was a nice peaceful walk with lots of interpretive signs to tell us about the area, plants and animals. After find a few more geocaches along the trails, we head back to the rig for lunch after a pleasant walk in the park.

Lichen

Giant Leaf-Footed Bug

We had noticed there were 3 Adventure Labs not too far out of the state park and while we could have simply driven over to them, we saw there were bike trails that looked like we could take and get in some more exercise in the process. We had no problems coming up with bike paths or lightly traveled surface streets to get over to the area surrounding Valor Memorial Gardens where our Lab caches would tour us around. It was an interesting area with a mixture of open spaces, residential and small retail shops and restaurants. 

Pond Near Valor Memorial Gardens

Colorful Houses

Just down the road from there is Warbird Park and another Adventure Lab. They have several military aircraft on display with lots of various war memorials. It was definitely a nice place to visit and so close to the campground. We ended up with just under a 9 mile leisurely bike ride and some great sightseeing. 

Warbird Park

LTV A7 Corsair II

A10 Thunderbolt II

WWII Memorial

The following day would take us to Brookgreen Gardens. This turned out to be a much more special place than we were expecting, so it will get its own blog post to cover what was two full days of exploring this wonderful spot in Myrtle Beach. We did make it back over to Huntington Beach SP well before Atalaya Castle tours closed for the day. The was the winter home of Archer Huntington and his wife. Built in the early 1930’s, this Spanish Mediterranean Coast inspired home is very different than we are used to seeing. 

Atalaya Castle

A Closer View

The outer walls of the estate form a square with its 30 rooms occupying the perimeter of three sides of the building with two large central courtyards. Most of the rooms are unfurnished so it is difficult to get a good sense for what it might have looked like when people actually lived here. Many of the exterior windows are not completely weathertight so I can imagine the interior can get rather wet during the rainy seasons. Today, the trees to the east of the castle prevent a view of the ocean although we can hear the waves crashing on the beach.

Inside the Studio

The self guided tour does a good job of describing how each of the rooms was used. The center courtyards are quite nice with large palm trees lining the walkways. Along the center is a long covered walkway includes a 40 foot tall tower in the center of the building.

Looking Down Covered Walkway

Inside Courtyard

Tower

At the western end of the castle are some of the utilitarian rooms like a woodshed, garage and horse stables. One unusual addition was the bear pen! In all, this is an interesting place, too bad it doesn’t have furnishings to help make it seem more like a home instead of cold masonry building. There was work occurring in some of the rooms to repair the windows but it looks like it will take a great deal of time and money to ever get this place into a watertight home.

Bear Pens

After the tour, we went over to the walkway that is on either side of the main park entrance. There is a small pond on one side of the road and a marsh area on the other side. A short pier juts into Mullet Pond and gives a nice view. 

Pier at Mullet Pond

Pier View

There were lots of waterfowl out. The tide must have been pretty low because the water on the marsh side had receded quite a bit. We stood and watched one particular great blue heron that was at an outlet from the pond. This guy was a very patient hunter. It stood there and waited for just the right moment to strike. I managed to get a picture of one of his catches prior to it being swallowed. It looks like it was a small crustacean.

Great Blue Heron

Low Tide in the Marsh

Hunting

Caught Something

The next day we headed about 15 miles northwest of camp to the town of Conway. We had an Adventure Lab to complete as well as an interesting sounding place called the L. W. Paul Living History Farm. We are suckers for this old time sort of place so we head there first just north of Conway. The 17 acre farm is free to the public and has about 10 buildings and displays on the grounds depicting what farm life was like in this part of South Carolina in the early to mid 1900’s. There is one large building that serves as the visitor center, museum and gift shop. This place isn’t just a display of farm equipment and interpretive signs but is an actual working farm. There are several volunteers wandering the grounds actually working in the gardens and tending the various animals like chickens, pig, cows and horses.

We stop at each of the out buildings and learn about various aspects of farm life. There was a large pile of sugar cane stalks next to the contraption used to extract the juice from the stalks. We talk with one of the guys and he informs us that this coming weekend was a big event at the farm. They were going to be demonstrating the process for grinding the stalks and boiling the syrup into a usable form. We were real tempted to come back in a couple days but it sounded like it was going to be full of school children and might not be as peaceful as it was today.

Sugar Cane Smusher

Large Syrup Kettle

There is a small mill, a blacksmith shop and sawmill display to check out as we wander the grounds.

Mill

Farmall "A"

Blacksmith Shop

Sawmill

There was still a plot of sugar cane standing that would be harvested as part of the upcoming demonstration. 

Sugar Cane Ready for Harvest

We worked our way over to the smokehouse and barn. The chickens were the most visible farm animals. The cows and horses were way out in the field and didn’t really care that we were visiting. The old cabin was staffed by a woman in the full period clothing. She was able to answer all sorts of questions about farm life and how the family would have spent their days working the land.

Smokehouse

Chickens

Farm House

Inside Kitchen

The church building looked like a rather recent addition to the grounds but did have bench seating and a lectern for the pastor to preach from. The museum had lots of other displays and various items for sale that were produced on the farm. This was definitely a nice stop and we learned a thing or two in the process.

Church

Wooden Boat

After lunch we headed into Conway proper to complete the various stages of the Adventure Lab. The downtown area is a quaint little place but for some reason the traffic was horrendous. I’m not sure if there was something going on or is is always this bad in the middle of the week.

Conway City Hall

Train Mural

Old Church

On the south side of town is Riverfront Park on the banks of the Waccamaw River. There is a small marina and walking paths. There was a city crew out putting up the Christmas lights and displays in the park.

Marina Slips at Riverfront Park

Waccamaw River

Flowers to Ripe Berries

So far we are really enjoying the Myrtle Beach area. Next post will get into the visit to Brookgreen Gardens with its odd combination of sculptures and zoo.