Hilton Head, South Carolina

The lively, family-oriented Grand Strand, a booming resort area along the South Carolina coast, is one of the eastern seaboard's megavacation centers. Myrtle Beach alone accounts for about 40% of the state's tourism revenue. The main attraction, of course, is the broad, beckoning beach -- 60 miles of white sand, stretching from the North Carolina border south to Georgetown, with Myrtle Beach as the hub. All along the Strand you can enjoy shell hunting, fishing, swimming, sunbathing, sailing, surfing, jogging, or just strolling on the beach. And the Strand has something for everyone: more than 100 championship golf courses, designed by Arnold Palmer, Robert Trent Jones, Jack Nicklaus, and Tom and George Fazio, among others; excellent seafood restaurants; giant shopping malls and factory outlets; amusement parks, water slides, and arcades; a dozen shipwrecks for divers to explore; campgrounds, most of which are on the beach; plus antique-car and wax museums, the world's largest outdoor sculpture garden, an antique pipe organ and merry-go-round, and a museum dedicated entirely to rice. It has also emerged as a major center for country music, with an expanding number of theaters.

Myrtle Beach -- whose population of 26,000 explodes to about 350,000 in summer -- is the center of activity on the Grand Strand. It is here that you find the amusement parks and other children's activities that make the area so popular with families, as well as most of the nightlife that keeps parents and teenagers happy. On the North Strand, there is Little River, with a thriving fishing and charter industry, and the several communities that make up North Myrtle Beach. On the South Strand, the family retreats of Surfside Beach and Garden City offer more summer homes and condominiums. Farther south are towns as alluring to visit as are the sights along the way: Murrells Inlet, once a pirate's haven and now a scenic fishing village and port; and Pawleys Island, one of the East Coast's oldest resorts, which prides itself on being "arrogantly shabby." At the south end of the Grand Strand lies historic Georgetown, founded in 1729 and once the center of America's colonial rice empire.

South Carolina's Lowcountry extends from south of Charleston to the state's southern border, including the barrier islands of Edisto, Fripp, and Hilton Head, and the charming town of Beaufort. Edisto (pronounced ed-is-toh) Island, settled in 1690 and once noted for cotton, is midway between Charleston and Beaufort. Some of its elaborate mansions have been restored; others brood in disrepair. Fripp Island, a self-contained resort with controlled access, is farther south, and still farther south is Hilton Head Island.

Named after English sea captain William Hilton, who claimed its 42 square miles for England in 1663, Hilton Head was settled by planters in the 1700s. It flourished until the Civil War, after which it declined economically and languished until Charles E. Fraser, a visionary South Carolina attorney, began developing the Sea Pines resort in 1956. Other developments followed, and today Hilton Head's casual pace, broad beaches, myriad activities, and genteel good life make it one of the East Coast's most popular vacation getaways.

Beaufort, some 40 miles north of Hilton Head, is a graceful antebellum town with a compact historic district preserving lavish 18th- and 19th-century homes from an era of immense prosperity, based on its silky-textured Sea Island cotton. The beau in Beaufort is pronounced as in "beautiful," and Beaufort certainly is.