On the Road: Back to Nature

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Back to Nature

There’s only one road to Edisto Beach, and on the way, in the shade of oak tree limbs, is the tidy U.S. Post Office in Adams Run, the one with the hand-painted signage. “It’s not fancy, but we get the mail just the same,” said a woman who’d just stepped out of the building, a batch of envelopes in her hand. It was a warm and breezy morning along SC-174, a road lined with vegetable farms, white-painted churches, and unpaved lanes that dip off into the pinewoods.

We’d just passed the second-hand store named “Before Edisto,” where jazz and blues recordings are the backdrop for browsing; and ahead there’d be Po’ Pigs Bo-B-Q, only open three or four days a week, depending on the season. But maybe it’s more helpful to explain what isn’t along this route—fast-food chains, big-box stores, or cafés that sell $3 and $4 frothy-topped coffees. Instead, visitors ease into Edisto with views more peaceful and rural, on a road edged by thousands of acres that have been officially protected for parkland and wildlife.

The unhurried scenery continues on the beach side of the 68-square-mile island. The developed beachfront on Edisto is only about three miles long and includes state-park campsites in sight and earshot of ocean waves, one grocery store (a Piggly Wiggly), the beachfront Pavilion with its dance floor and Saturday-night shag lessons, and roads lined with mostly old-school beach houses. The island, just south of Kiawah and Seabrook (but so very different in style), is known to be the summer refuge of generations of family and friends who gather for long days on the porch and in the surf, and then cook up hamburgers or seafood on barbecue grills at night. (Well, that’s how we spend the days when—through friends of friends—we get lucky enough to be invited to stay in a beach house there.)

On a recent trip, we took our time on the last few miles of the drive in (about 240 miles from Greenville) and checked out the Hollings National Wildlife Refuge and the grand manse there at the end of a half-mile lane of oaks. The Grove Plantation House was built in 1828 as the main house for a rice plantation and is one of the few antebellum mansions in the Lowcountry that survived the burning and ransacking from the Civil War.

It sounds cliché, but the house really does have a wide, river-facing porch with tall white columns and is surrounded by moss-draped oaks. Birders treasure the refuge. We met a man that day who’d come to watch the Mississippi kites that swoop and soar overhead, and through his field glasses he said he’d also seen indigo buntings, redhead and mottled ducks, orioles, and tanagers. Another visitor was unloading his knobby-tired bicycle from the roof of his car, getting ready to ride the looping trails there and follow the old rice dikes for views along the Edisto and Dawho rivers.

A few miles further toward the beach on SC-174 is the new driving tour along the dirt roads of the nearly 4,700-acre Botany Bay Plantation Wildlife Management Area, which was just opened to the public last year. (If you like to pedal, the tour can also be done by bicycle.) There are paper maps in a box at the entrance, and the property includes two former plantations, Bleak Hall and Sea Cloud, with ruins of each to see. There’s a garden shed with thick oyster-tabby walls, a brick beehive-shaped well that’s said to have been built by enslaved Africans in the 1700s, and a tall Gothic Revival–style ice house. The land itself is naturally stunning with marsh views, freshwater ponds, and deep forests of saw palmetto, pine, and oak.

Nearby on SC-174, many vacationers make it a tradition to stop at King’s Farm Market for a casserole or a tomato pie to pop in the oven later at the beach house or condo. (Edisto Island is known for its big, sweet tomatoes. A couple years ago I watched a young woman be crowned “Tomato Queen” during a festival down near Whaley’s, a tavern on the south end of Edisto Beach.)

Visitors also often go to George & Pink’s, another vegetable stand, this one with dirt floors and local produce and art for sale, including birdhouses painted to look like some of the island’s oldest churches. There are more retail shops and businesses the closer you get to the beach, but it’s less flashy and smaller scale than in other coastal towns. The most activity is along the first few blocks of Jungle Road, where there are a handful of restaurants and cafés, along with kayak and bicycle rentals at Island Bikes and Outfitters. For those who love the sea, there are fishing charters leaving daily from the Edisto Marina, and there’s fresh shrimp, crabs, and fish for sale at Edisto Seafood, which backs up to the docks.

Before we’d even gotten to the store, we’d heard talk at the marina of a big catch the day before. And sure enough, there were huge slabs of fresh snapper in the refrigerator case at Edisto Seafood. The staff was cooking up a pot of blue crabs for the rush of customers who’d arrive just before closing. The sun was dropping with a nice evening breeze picking up, and we talked of going over to Whaley’s for a shrimp dinner on the wooden tables outside, near the old gas pumps. (The former filling station is known for its beer, pool tables, and bacon-wrapped local shrimp.)

Why not? The air smelled like salt, there were seashells in my pocket, and, like the woman we’d met earlier at the old post office had said, “It’s not fancy…,” it’s Edisto.

Eat:
Edisto Seafood 3729 Docksite Road
(843) 869-3446
www.fontainecharters.com/edistoseafood.html

King’s Farm Market fresh and frozen casseroles, dips, and cakes, 2559 Hwy. 174
(843) 869-3600,
www.kingsmarketedisto.com

Main’s Market Lowcountry cooking, 1084 Hwy. 174 at Eddingsville Beach Road, (843) 869-1337
Whaley’s 2801 Myrtle Street,
(843) 869-2161
www.whaleyseb.com

Stay:
Atwood Vacations condo & home rentals
(843) 869-2151
www.atwoodvacations.com

Edisto Beach State Park camping and cabins, 8377 State Cabin Road
(843) 869-2756
www.southcarolinaparks.com

Wyndham Ocean Ridge resort with golf, tennis, swimming, 1 King Cotton Road
(877) 296-6335
www.wyndhamoceanridge.com

Explore:
Botany Bay Plantation Botany Bay Road (follow signs from Hwy. 174 toward Edisto Beach)
(843) 844-8957
www.dnr.sc.gov/managed/wild/botany/description.html

Edisto Island Marina inshore and offshore fishing and cruises, 3702 Docksite Road
(843) 869-3504

Hollings National Wildlife Refuge and Grove Plantation 8675 Willtown Road, Hollywood
(843) 889-3084
www.fws.gov/acebasin