Peckish Travels

Bob and I drove 18 miles this morning to the Horry County Museum in Conway, South Carolina. Conway is the county seat of Horry County and home to Coastal Carolina University, which won the national championship in baseball in 2016.

As with most history museums, the building started out serving another purpose. In this case, the museum is in what used to be the Burroughs School.

The museum was laid out well, attractive, with motion sensors so that lights came on only when needed. The guide at the front considered himself a bit of a comedian, as he said that we could take photos of anything in the museum except the fish as they were in the wetness protection program.

Horry County encompasses over 1,200 square miles of land, making it the largest county in South Carolina and one of the largest counties east of the Mississippi River. Many of the first colonists to settle the county came from Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.

The county is named after Revolutionary War General Peter Horry.

Prior to the British settlers, the area was home to the Waccamaw Indians, who are a recognized tribe by the state of South Carolina but not by the federal government, which means they are unable to enter into agreements with the federal government regarding self-government, religion, health care and gaming, among other things.

Although rice, cotton, and indigo were grown in the area, early important industries for Horry County were timber and turpentine.

Of course, every place has been involved in various wars over the years, so there were a number of exhibits related to that.

The stain glass panels in the case were taken from the Myrtle Beach Air Force Base, which closed in 1993.

The Myrtle Beach Prisoner of War camp opened in 1944 and housed around 600 German POWs. There were 28 POW camps in South Carolina, and the POWs were used to fill gaps in industries, like timber or tobacco, from the US men at war.

Another highlight of the museum was the role of water in the area — both in terms of driving industry options but also fueling the tourism industry.

It was an impressive museum, very well presented, especially compared to many other history museums that we’ve visited. We also were intrigued with downtown Conway and will likely go back to explore that area as well as their Riverwalk.

Almost forgot— next to the museum was their library which was quite busy.

Just as a quick note before I get into our recent activities and inactivities, Bob saw a shirt in a local store that was selling Murrells Inlet merchandise. The shirt had MISC in big letters for Murrells Inlet, South Carolina but also looking like the abbreviation misc for miscellaneous.

We’ve been having a relatively quiet past few days with some short outings as well as some planned and unplanned house duties with a lot of sports watching thrown in. On Friday, we drove to the new Market Common development. It’s very close to the Myrtle Beach Airport and has mixed retail and residential development as well as a nearby park with a lake and walking/exercise trail.

Also on Friday we did our first run to the county garbage and recycling center, as the homeowners forgo curbside service. The facility is only a few miles from the house, and it accepts everything from garbage to batteries to cardboard to mixed recycling (paper, plastic, aluminum, and glass) to yard trimmings.

Saturday, Bob mowed the lawn, and I helped with getting the clippings in the bags to take to the garbage and recycling center. Unfortunately, while mowing he noticed that a portion of the front yard on one side by the back gate was very wet and there was some standing water under the gate.

He checked both the neighbor’s spigot and our spigot which are in that area. The neighbor’s spigot was off, but ours had been on, although it didn’t appear to be leaking water. We texted the homeowners and when they replied we talked by phone. They called their water utility who sent someone right out to check. Long story short, the utility guy thinks it was due to the spigot being on. I’m glad we didn’t wait longer to mow, as we are never on that side of the house. As of today (Monday), the standing water is gone but the ground is still squishy.

Otherwise, we spent most of the weekend watching various sports teams for college and professional American football and college volleyball. There were some good games, some of which went our way and some of which did not. Sunday it stormed here, so it felt like we had a good excuse to be inside. We also had Squeegee to entertain us. He’s not terribly active but very sweet, and he curls up in the cutest and/or funniest poses.

Today we drove over to Garden City, which was the area with all the big houses that we saw on our boat tour on Thursday. It is a community that basically runs along an isthmus that faces Murrells Inlet and the Atlantic. I took some photos of some of the houses on our drive.

Bob and I set sail this morning with Express Watersports and about 12 other people on a 1.5 hour Dolphin Watch cruise from the Murrells Inlet Harbor. It was a beautiful day for a cruise, and we saw lots of dolphins (although successfully photographing them is a whole other matter).

We did get lots of good pics of Murrells Inlet (the actual inlet not the town) as we sailed through that into the Atlantic Ocean. We also got a good view of much of the Grand Strand of beaches and the many large, lovely beach homes built along the coast. All of these multi-million dollar homes are required to have hurricane insurance, and that insurance does not cover anything on the ground level. You’ll see that most of the houses are built on stilts, but that still leaves the garage and its contents uncovered.

Once we got into the Atlantic across from some of the oceanside beach communities between Garden City and Myrtle Beach, we were able to catch glimpses of a number of dolphin in various pods around our boat. Unfortunately, for these slow-fingered photographers, they don’t pause their swimming to pose. The following shots are the best we could do, but they were fun to watch.

Myrtle Beach is a resort city in the center of a continuous 60-mile stretch of beaches known as the Grand Strand. While its year-round population is only about 35,000 (metro area is about400,000), it attracts over 20 million visitors every year. It was named after the local Wax Myrtle shrubs.

Bob and I have been avoiding going into Myrtle Beach proper until after Labor Day on the advice of our homeowners. We drove about 10 miles today to the beachfront to walk the 1.3 mile boardwalk, look at the beach, and check out stores along Ocean Boulevard, the main road that parallels the shore.

Another beautiful day for a walkabout. The photos below capture what we saw. The boardwalk is wide and paved in some areas, wide and wooden near the SkyWheel, and then narrow and wooden at one end. While not pictured, there are shows that you can go to, 18 real golf courses, and quite a few miniature golf courses as well.

Bob and I had stopped at a Visitors Center on our way to our housesit and picked up some information on the area. Some of this included local events like farmers markets, art shows, etc. Today, we drove 6 miles to the community of Surfside Beach for their weekly Farmers Market.

The Farmers Market was relatively small, maybe about 20 booths, but it offered a range of items from produce to baked goods, prepared food and coffee, as well as crafted decor and jewelry.

Surfside Beach is a town of about 4,000 northeast of Murrells Inlet. It is part of the Grand Strand, which is an arc of beach land on the Atlantic Ocean in South Carolina which extends for more than 60 miles. After we had looked around the market, we walked a few blocks to the beach. The houses (on stilts) were cute, it had a small restaurant area, and the beach was gorgeous. Lovely, high 70 degree F, low humidity day to be outside.

If you are somewhere where Labor Day is celebrated, happy Labor Day! It’s an early one this year, and already the beginning of another month.

When Bob and I were meeting our homeowners, they mentioned that they acted and stage managed at a theater in the nearby city of Georgetown, South Carolina. We looked up Georgetown and decided that perusing their Historic District and Harborwalk might be a good plan for today when the masses might be enjoying Labor Day at one of the beaches.

The city of Georgetown (population of about 9,000) is about 30 miles from the house.

During our walk we learned that Georgetown was formally founded in 1729, making it South Carolina’s 3rd oldest city after Charleston and Beaufort. Its economy was at one time heavily based on the labor intensive crop of rice, and the slave population was about 85% of the total population during the 1800s. The Civil War and social/political changes as well as a few hurricanes put an end to rice as a major agricultural product.

One of the first structures we saw was a clock tower. It is located atop a Greek Revival market and town hall built in 1842 after a fire destroyed most of the buildings on Front Street. An open air market was on the 1st floor and the town hall was on the 2nd. The clock tower and belfry were added in 1845.

A park connecting Front Street to one end of the Harborwalk displayed a few items of local and national history.

We walked a little bit into a local neighborhood, which unsurprisingly, was very Carolina-esque — lots of big homes with porches. We also loved the big trees that provided a nice amount of shade.

As we are at the start of the very busy Labor Day Weekend, Bob and I chose a local park to explore today that we didn’t think would be a hotspot for weekend tourists. We drove about 39 miles northeast of Murrells Inlet to the community of Little River, South Carolina, to explore the Vereen Memorial Historical Gardens.

They did not disappoint, although they are not a flower-based garden. Instead, this pretty 115 acre park has trails through forests and over salt marshes and also overlooks the Intracoastal Waterway. It is free to the public and close to neighborhoods. We saw a number of other walkers while we were there.

The boardwalks go over salt marshes, and an information sign noted that salt marshes are the most productive natural habitats on earth. They provide areas for animals and other organisms to feed and breed and also offer protection against predators. This one is also quite visually attractive.

The park is located on land that was once part of Big Landing Plantation, which was acquired by Jeremiah Vereen, Jr. in 1797. The Vereen family played a significant role in the area’s history, and a descendant of the Vereen family donated this land to the county Historical Preservation Commission in 1971 to create the park.

Tomorrow we will likely spend much of the day watching two college (American) football games, as the 2025 season is kicking off.

What do you get when you cross a natural wetlands, a bit of forest, paved and unpaved trails, an old Moorish estate, and access to a beautiful white sand beach on the Atlantic Ocean? Huntington Beach State Park, a 2500 acre state park located in Murrells Inlet about a 25 minute drive from the house.

It was an active day at the park at not quite the start of the Labor Day Weekend, and the first thing we saw on the way to the Visitors Center to pick up a map of the park was a tour group on Segway scooters.

A few pics from the overlook.

From the Kerrigan Trail, we walked the paved Atalaya Trail between Mullet Pond and Mallard Pond. There were a number of safety signs about what to do if you see an alligator, but sadly (sort of), we didn’t see any.

The following pics are of the much larger and greener Mallard Pond.

Heading all the way back on the trail, we came to the entrance to Atalaya Castle, the winter home of Archer Milton Huntington and his wife, Anna Hyatt Huntington. There are no longer any furnishings in the house, and it has not been completely maintained, but you still get a sense the the Moorish style home.

The outer walls form a square, with the east side facing the ocean. Within the walled structure, there are two grassy inner courtyards with a covered walkway and tower in the center. The one-story living quarters consist of 30 rooms around 3 sides of the perimeter.

Finally, we walked the short path from Atalaya to the beach. There were a number of people out enjoying being near the ocean.

Last Saturday, Bob and I left Needham, Massachusetts, to start our journey to Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, for our next housesit. We didn’t need to meet up with our new homeowners until Monday afternoon, so we spent a couple of nights on the road and even stopped in Alexandria, Virginia, on Sunday to have a quick breakfast with Bob’s brother and girlfriend.

Both days were a little over 6 hours of often stressful East Coast driving. There were a lot of people in lots of cars traveling during the end of summer/back to school weekend. Saturday’s trek took us through parts of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Delaware, New York, and New Jersey before we landed at a Marriott brand hotel near the Philadelphia airport. Google Maps gave us wrong directions in New York City, so we spent more time there than we would have liked but otherwise no other real issues on the drives.

We spent Sunday night in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, before driving about 3.5 hours into Murrells Inlet for our transition with the new homeowners. We had a great meet up with the homeowners Monday late afternoon, and they fixed us dinner.

They are both native New Yorkers, who moved permanently to South Carolina about 5 years ago. They are both active in a local community theater (He acts, and she stage manages). They are off on a cross country trip to see family in New York and then drive west to explore more of Utah and Nevada. They live in a lovely, quiet neighborhood in Murrells Inlet, which is just south of Myrtle Beach, with Squeegee, their 9 year old male rescue cat.

Squeegee likes to keep an eye on what’s going on in the ‘hood from the front door or the window in the study. He’s very quiet. He apparently only has something to “say” if the neighbor’s cat gets too close to the house.

The homeowners left about mid-afternoon yesterday after a doctor’s appointment. Before they left, they took us to a local place for breakfast (We treated since they had fixed us dinner.) and then showed us the location of a Marsh Walk. We went back there today after a walk this morning around a nearby subdivision.

The following are photos from the Marsh Walk, a boardwalk behind a number of restaurants and from which you can go on a number of different types of boat rides. A shop that we stopped into sold shirts that said, “Murrells Inlet, a quaint little drinking village with a fishing problem.” You definitely have a number of opportunities to drink and fish along the Marsh Walk.

On this rainy Wednesday, Bob and I had a look around the nearby Needham Center and Museum and learned a bit more about the local history.

As we have found in other local history museums, it had an eclectic mix of artifacts from Needham’s older and more recent history. The following are some of the things that caught our attention.