Waking early at Litchfield Plantation, one steps out into a heavy fog both haunting and beautiful. Mockingbird song echo in the trees, and cypress bogs and marshes edged with old rice dikes blur into the blue morning—a sense of timelessness enveloping the misty grounds.

That was a Sunday. And, by then, it was difficult to imagine that for most of the Friday before, it didn’t seem such a good idea for my travel companion and I to start our weekend driving toward Pawleys in the pelting rain. And when we arrived and stood under a moss-draped cedar tree watching raindrops splash on a tombstone marked ALICE, we still weren’t sure about our decision. But then, this was Pawleys Island, where a sometimes eerie peacefulness can be part of its enticing ambience.

Because at Pawleys local lore and ghost stories live on along with the “arrogantly shabby” appeal of old-school beach houses and the remnants of what was once America’s wealthiest rice culture. (Think oak-tree shade, riverfront mansions, plantations-turned-golf-courses, and a one-house-wide island.)

Our first stop on this trip was Alice’s grave, in the centuries-old All Saints Church cemetery on Kings Grant Road, west of Highway 17. I’d wandered this cemetery a few times as a teenager, back when everyone knew you were supposed to walk around the plain marble slab thirteen times backwards, and then lie down atop the mid-1800s tombstone to see whether you’d feel the lovesick Alice tugging at your ring finger. Evidently the legend and tradition are still popular—a wide circle of worn, bare ground wraps around the gravestone. Before leaving the churchyard, we touched the smooth columns and peeked in the windows of the impressive All Saints Church, part of a parish begun in 1767. And we stopped by the gravesite of twentieth-century South Carolina poet laureate James Dickey (author of Deliverance), who had lived in a villa on the grounds of the adjacent six-hundred-acre Litchfield Plantation. We’d stay in a luxurious guesthouse there on the second night of our trip.

But on our first night at the beach, we were eager to get to the oceanfront of Pawleys Island, and soon we’d crossed the South Causeway—built in 1846, they say it’s the nation’s oldest continuously used causeway—and were walking up wooden steps to the Sea View Inn. The rambling, oceanfront Sea View, first built in 1937 and reconstructed after Hurricane Hazel in 1954, is a rare and quirky throw-back—a boarding house providing three hot meals a day (cocktails are b.y.o.). Each of the twenty rooms has only a half bath, with hot water showers at the end of the hall and outside on a wooden pathway to the beach.

After a hearty Sea View breakfast, our Saturday unfolded with a mix of sun and sprinkling rain as we spent the morning in the quiet beauty of Brookgreen Gardens, a few miles up Highway 17. It’s almost unfathomable to imagine the vision, energy, and wealth of Archer and Anna Hyatt Huntington, the New York couple who purchased some six thousand contiguous acres of South Carolina coast and riverfront land in the 1930s, and then built their dream home (a castle, actually), along with a sprawling outdoor sculpture garden that they immediately opened for public tours. It’s a peaceful, pensive place, where we overheard one visitor remark, “It’s almost religious to be here.” To which her friend nodded, “Like a Neverland.”

Directly across Highway 17 is Huntington Beach State Park, also part of the Huntingtons’ original estate, made up of the land of four former rice plantations. Along with a marsh adrift with alligators and a stretch of wild beachfront, the park’s primary draw is the fortresslike castle that the Huntingtons built as their private oceanfront residence. Archer Huntington designed the thirty-room brick-and-iron dwelling in the Moorish style, naming it Atalaya, Spanish for “watchtower.” The early-1930s structure was never modernized, and in recent decades the raw brick walls have become a popular setting for special events, including the Atalaya Arts & Crafts Festival, held for three days each September.

From these garden and castle explorations, we drove to the longtime Pawleys Island landmark, the Hammock Shops Village on Highway 17, where some twenty specialty shops are housed in brick buildings with tin rooftops and wide wooden beams. At the Original Pawleys Island Hammock Store, visitors can sway in hammocks still made from a design created by a Pawleys Island riverboat captain in 1889.

Ready for an early dinner, we walked over to the lively open-air porch at Louis’s Fish Camp for some of Chef Louis Osteen’s shrimp and okra stew, a juicy steak with a side of collard greens, and a dessert of creamy panna cotta drenched in red wine. All was delicious. (Next time I want to order the creamed spinach that earned Louis’s a special write-up in Saveur magazine.)
Once satiated, we drove through the iron gates and followed the oak-lined drive to our digs for the second evening, the circa-1750 Litchfield Plantation. Located on the Waccamaw River side of Pawleys Island, this spot is one of the region’s famed former rice plantations—at once lovely, intriguing, and tragic, with a shared history of being built by enslaved Africans and privileged planters. Our lodging was a suite in the guest house, with its clay-red walls, antique paintings, and French theater prints, a bookshelf lined with titles in German and English, and a double whirlpool tub beneath a wall of woodland-facing windows.

Before sundown, we walked the grounds and visited the property’s river marina and wood-paneled library. We read and talked of what we knew of the past, and at some point we learned that the main house is where the ghost of a former owner of the plantation is said to visit from time to time.

By that point in our Pawleys Island travels, we knew not to expect anything less.

Eat & Drink:

• Bove: Italian and Lowcountry fare, 11359 Ocean Highway, (843) 237-7200

• Chive Blossom: formal dining with a more casual option in a former home, 85 N. Causeway Rd., (843) 237-1438

• Frank’s and Frank’s Outback: formal dining with a more casual option in a former home, 10434 Ocean Highway, (843) 237-3030

• High Hammock Maverick Kitchen: Lowcountry cuisine and local ingredients, 10880 Ocean Highway, (843) 979-0300

• Landolfi’s Italian Bakery & Deli: known for its pastries and brick oven pizza, 9305 Ocean Highway, (843) 237-7900

• Pawleys Island Tavern & Restaurant: 10635 Ocean Highway, (843) 237-8465

Shop:

• The Original Hammock Shop: 10880 Ocean Highway, (800) 332-3490, www.hammockshop.com, along with the Hammock Shops Village—twenty or so shops that have formed around it since the 1930s, www.thehammockshops.com

• The Island Shops: 10659 Ocean Highway (across from the Hammock Shops Village) with more gifts, crafts, and clothing, including The Mole Hole

• Ebb & Flow Art Co-op: local surf art, other paintings, sculptures, and furniture, 4763 Highway 17, Murrells Inlet, (843) 651-2386, www.ebbandflowartco-op.com