Northbound — natural coastal progression from Georgia’s historic port city up to the Grand Strand at Myrtle Beach
Up the King's Highway
Two of the South's great port cities, a string of salt marsh and Spanish moss between them, and the best of the Lowcountry on a plate at every stop.
This is the Lowcountry coastal run — US-17 up the old King's Highway from Savannah through Charleston to the Grand Strand, two hundred miles of salt marsh, live oaks hung with Spanish moss, sea-island light, and the deep Gullah Geechee culture of the Carolina coast. It bookends two of the most beautiful historic cities in America with a quiet drive through tidewater country. Come in spring or fall, when the heat and the crowds both ease off (and keep half an eye on the tropics from June to November); summer is hot, humid, and packed on the beach end.
Start with brunch in Savannah at The Collins Quarter, an Australian-style café with the best coffee in town — the bananas-foster French toast and a flat white. Then drive out to Bonaventure Cemetery, a hundred and sixty acres of moss-draped live oaks on a bluff over the river, hauntingly beautiful, made famous by Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.
Up US-17 to Charleston for lunch at Poogan's Porch, a Lowcountry institution in an 1891 house since 1976 — order the she-crab soup and the buttermilk fried chicken — then walk a few blocks to Rainbow Row, the line of thirteen pastel Georgian houses from the 1740s that's the most-photographed block in the city.
Fuel up and run the coast north to Huntington Beach State Park, where the Spanish-Moorish Atalaya Castle sits behind the dunes and three hundred species of birds work the marsh (the great Brookgreen Gardens sculpture garden is right across the highway if you've got the afternoon).
Dinner on the Murrells Inlet MarshWalk at Drunken Jack's, a seafood landmark since 1979 named for a marooned pirate — fresh local catch, sweet hushpuppies, and the sun going down over the inlet — and a night up the strand at Marriott's OceanWatch, beachfront villas to cap the run.
And hold the plan loosely — the Lowcountry is made for dawdling. The plan's a backbone, not a cage: the oyster shack down a marsh road, the sweetgrass-basket stand on the shoulder, the boardwalk over the spartina at high tide, the Charleston side street where the gardens spill over the walls. This is a coast that rewards a slow afternoon and an open evening. Just watch the tides and the summer storms, and let a good porch and a cold drink rearrange your schedule. The best stop is the one that wasn't on the list. Go find it.
