Pawleys Island

Note: Clicking on the pictures will take you to a larger photo gallery of Pawleys Islands...

On Monday, June 18, knowing that low tide (the best time for shelling on a beach) would be out before noon, we got up and headed south from our hotel in Myrtle Beach toward Pawleys Island - about 20 miles south of Myrtle Beach.

Pawleys Island is a town that includes a barrier island. The island, for which the town is named, claims to have been America's first resort. The families of South Carolina rice farmers came here to vacation during the 1700's. Twelve homes on the island date to the middle of the 19th Century or earlier.

We didn't look at homes on the island. On Monday we did spend about an hour at the beach on the south end of the island. Pawley Island has a number of beach accesses where five or six cars can park and you can walk 30 yards or so to the beach. The south end has a parking place for 30 or so cars. we parked there on Monday. We weren't sure what we'd find and hadn't brought our swimsuits.

We came back to Pawleys Island on Thursday, June 21. It was the first full day of summer and, wouldn't you know it, the town had chosen that time to close the biggest parking lot on the island and renovate it. Go figure. We parked at an access spot about half a mile away and walked down the beach to the south end. It was a pleasant walk. We found a few nice shells.

In all we spent about three hours on the beach on Thursday - the longest stretch we spent in the sun. Both of us got a little burned. We'll probably be back to Pawleys Island, though....