South Carolina Offers a Lot to Discover in a Relatively Small Space

Anchored by nearly 200 miles of beaches and coastal attractions – including world-famous Charleston (with Fort Sumter and scores of colonial homes and cobblestone carriage rides), leafy golf haven Hilton Head Island and family friendly Myrtle Beach (with more than a hundred golf courses of its own) – millions of folks make their annual beach trip to South Carolina. Attractions range from the affordable flashiness of Myrtle Beach – with its thousands of hotels and restaurants to fit all price ranges - to the quiet elegance of Kiawah Island, home to one of the nation's consistently top-ranked golf and beach resorts.

Perhaps the most affordable of all beach destinations are the four state parks that offer combinations of camping and cabins, surf and sun. But there's more to the coast than sand and surf for those who want to understand the complexity of South Carolina's past. And it doesn't take much digging.

For instance, those sweetgrass baskets, iconic symbols of the Gullah tradition still made by local residents at roadside stands and Charleston markets -- they're just a part of the living, breathing Gullah culture that grew from the long abandoned rice plantations that now form the heart of thousands of acres of nature preserves such as the ACE Basin. The Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor is now being organized to help preserve and tell that story, including at such sites as the Penn Center on St. Helena Island, home to the first school for freed slaves and still a center of African American culture to this day. The state also operates historic plantation homes that interpret the slavery- and post-slavery experience of planter and African American alike.

And as the South Carolina story spreads inland, through the pristine swamps and pine-filled Midlands to the Blue Ridge Mountains themselves, it's all available in one day's journey. Little known fact: More Revolutionary War battles were fought here than in any other colony, stories told at preserved national and state battlefield sites such as Kings Mountain and Musgrove Mill. Modern military buffs won't want to miss historic waterfront Beaufort and Parris Island.

Cotton fields themselves, something most northerners haven't seen in real life until they drive by, spread by the thousands of acres through much of the Midlands. Tobacco fields can be seen in the Pee Dee and roadside farm stands selling produce of all kinds dot the highways across the state. And then there are peaches. South Carolina grows more than any other state than California and the orchards and stands are hard to miss.

South Carolina also is dotted with unique small towns and big cities, each with its own cultural and culinary offerings. (Barbecue, of course, is a mainstay.) Greenville's robust downtown and unusual cantilevered bridge over the Reedy River falls is a good example not to be missed. Columbia, the state capital, offers Statehouse tours, its own dynamic museums, a major university and the nation's largest Army basic training base. Aiken and Camden, too, bear mention as unique equestrian towns of unusual quiet wealth and charm. And then there are hidden gems such as Newberry, Cheraw and Abbeville, filled with history and antebellum homes.

Then there's the great outdoors. From whitewater rafting on the roiling Chattooga in the Blue Ridge to paddling through quiet tidal creeks, and huge inland reservoirs in between, along with hundreds of miles of unspoiled hiking trails, South Carolina offers something for everyone, and all within an easy day's drive of most of the Eastern United States.

Some good places to begin the journey? Visit the state's official tourism website at www.DiscoverSouthCarolina.com or the South Carolina Association of Tourism Regions at www.scatr.com. Driving tours are at www.sc-heritagecorridor.org.