Myrtle Beach: Best Nature Escapes
Beyond the sand, Myrtle Beach’s nature options cluster about 18 miles south, in and around Murrells Inlet, with two more spots closer to town for anyone who doesn’t want to make the drive.
Brookgreen Gardens
Brookgreen Gardens is America’s foremost sculpture garden, over 2,000 works set across a Lowcountry landscape of live oaks, ponds, and native plantings. The Lowcountry Zoo is included in the roughly $25 admission, not a separate add-on, and the ticket stays valid for 7 consecutive days, useful if you’d rather split a visit across two shorter trips than try to cover it all at once.
Huntington Beach State Park
Directly across US-17 from Brookgreen sits Huntington Beach State Park, and it’s genuinely a different place: maritime forest, dunes, and marsh, with serious birding, 300-plus species recorded over the years. Atalaya Castle, the Moorish-style winter home Archer and Anna Hyatt Huntington built in the 1930s, anchors the grounds. Admission runs around $8. Keep this park and Myrtle Beach State Park back in town straight in your head, they’re separate parks with separate gates, not two names for the same place.
Myrtle Beach State Park
In the city itself, Myrtle Beach State Park offers a quieter, less developed stretch of the same beach, plus a fishing pier and a campground, for around $5. It’s the option if you want a nature break without leaving town or paying for parking twice.
Murrells Inlet MarshWalk
Less a nature preserve than a nature backdrop, the Murrells Inlet MarshWalk runs about half a mile over the salt marsh itself, restaurants and nightlife on one side, open marsh and, often, dolphins on the other. Sunset here does double duty as both a meal and a wildlife-watching stop.
Pawleys Island
South of Murrells Inlet, Pawleys Island keeps its marsh-and-dune backdrop mostly undeveloped by local standards, quiet and a little worn at the edges on purpose, “arrogantly shabby” is the phrase locals use. It’s a good stop if the other options on this list feel too built-up.
Most of this stretch is close enough together to cover as one loop rather than five separate trips; see the things-to-do guide for how Brookgreen, Huntington Beach, and a MarshWalk dinner fit into a single day, or the 3-day itinerary for the pacing.