One of our favorite things to do is take road trips. Holly and I both enjoy exploring places and the dogs do great in the car.
This month we decided to visit a few of the islands off the cost of South Carolina. We’d stay in Savannah and take day trips to—Hunting and Daufuskie island.
Hunting Island
Our first stop was to Hunting Island State Park. We decided to get up early, make the 5 hour drive and spend the remaining daylight at the beach.
This was not our first trip to Hunting Island. We spent a couple nights camping on Hunting Island back in 2019. Holly had stumbled upon it looking for a driftwood beach like Jekyll Island, but more dog friendly.
The beaches of Hunting Island were absolutely spectacular. Oddly though all the driftwood was gone. We walked several stretches of beach that were covered with driftwood. There was none we found on the beach. Perhaps a storm destroyed them? It’s hard to imagine the park service having them removed.
Because the beach was empty we were able to let the dogs run off leash. It’s something else. I love watching the dogs run.
We started to run out of light around 7 p.m. So we jumped into the car and headed to our Airbnb in Savannah.
We’re always looking for good patios where we can take the dogs for dinner. By chance we were a short from a brewery and pizza joint called Hop Atomica. Both the beer, pizza and patio were exceptional. We lucked out!
Dafuskie Island
The beaches of Georgia and South Carolina surfaced many times on our hunt for wedding venues. One of the places we stumbled upon was an Island called Daufuskie. It’s between Hilton Head and Tybee Island, but it’s difficult to get to. There are no bridges.
We caught a water taxi from the Bull River Marina in Savannah. It was about a 45 minute ride. I was concerned about having the dogs on the boat—especially if it was crowded. Fortunately, we were the only ones on the boat going both ways.
If you’re heading to Daufuskie, make sure you reserve a golf cart ahead of time. I had initially thought we’d walk from place to place. The island is too big for that. It might take an hour in a golf cart to get to a location on the other side. Once I realized my mistake the first golf cart rental place had said all their carts were reserved for the day. Fortunately, the second place had an available cart.
Much of the island’s activity happens at the Daufuskie Crab Company where you’ll the island’s preferred drink—the Scrap Iron. There is a lot of lore around this beverage, which consists of sweet tea, lemonade and moonshine. A spiked Arnold Palmer—if you will.
There wasn’t much happening at 10:30 a.m. when we arrived. The bartender was wiping down the bar and the chef was prepping for lunch. But when in Rome do as the Romans do. So we grabbed a couple scrap irons and walked around.
We had hoped to spend the afternoon with the dogs and let them run free like we had at Hunting Island. Unfortunately, it was high tide and sand spurs were everywhere. We spend half an hour removing them from Otto, who had no issue sticking his face right in brush covered in the stickers.
We drove around and tried to see as much of the island as we could in our golf cart. While looking at our map a woman came up to us and complimented my quarter zip. The woman happened to be the mother of the guy who started Rhoback, one of my favorite clothing brands. They’ve lived on the island for years. She told me several of their early promotional videos were recorded there. It’s a small world!
One interesting thing about the island—there’s a ton of abandoned and dilapidated houses. When there’s only a barge to get materials on or off the island, it’s difficult to demolish or repair things. So once things stop getting taken care of, nature starts to take it back. The occasional hurricane accelerates things.
Earlier I mentioned that we had looked at Daufuskie as a potential wedding venue. When you look for hotels on the island you’ll come across The Melrose Resort.
The Melrose Resort was a 50-room hotel and golf club on the coast. It was built in 1987 and abandoned around 2001. The property has been abandoned since.
It was the type of thing that sucked us in and we ended up finding several articles about the place and even a video of someone exploring it a couple of years ago. It’s worth a watch if you’re into that type of thing.
Storms were forecasted and we were trying to pick one or two things more to do before we got soaked. We chose to drive to that side of the island and visit the Melrose Resort.
There was chain-link fencing up, but it did not look like construction was happening. As far as I know nobody has purchased the property.
It started raining shortly after arriving, so we took the golf cart back. Fortunately, the captain called and asked if we wanted to get picked up early to avoid the storm. I wish we had more time to explore, but I was relieved. I was dreading everyone getting soaked for the 45 minute boat ride home.