Folly Beach, South Carolina: The Country’s Greatest Fourth of July

by Paul Brady on


This most recent Fourth of July, on a beach in South Carolina, a guy named Freddie handed me a beer after I took his photo in front of his American flag. He’d just done his best Iwo Jima pose, and as I tapped his email address into my phone, promising to send him the pictures very soon, he insisted I take a turn hoisting the stars and stripes. Road trip tip: Do whatever a beer-toting, banner-flying patriot asks on Independence Day and you’ll be handsomely rewarded.

Two months ago, I couldn’t have guessed where Folly Beach might be. Now, I’m singing its praises to anyone who will listen. I never thought I’d be planning my first trip to South Carolina, but after a short stay in Folly, I’m already thinking about my second.

Traveling the American Road – Folly Beach Fourth of July


The stay: I was staying at the Tides at Folly Beach, a converted Holiday Inn that enjoys an enviable position on the sand, right next to the fishing pier at the end of Center Street. Balconies look over the water. The beachfront bar bustles with activity as the sun goes down–a fantastic live act was jamming on July 4, and other combos are frequently on stage.

The crowd: These people are here to have a good time. That doesn’t mean getting sloppy drunk–though there’s some of that!–but rather that the crowds at Folly have a vacation mindset. Watches aren’t necessary, and what kind of appointment would you have anyway? Rita’s, an outstanding restaurant across the street from Tides, serves food all day, with the bar open until late. When that closes, head to Surf Bar, a pitch-perfectly themed spot just off Center Street that goes even later.

The vibe: On a scale of one to comatose, Folly is laid back, a step shy of vegetative, even after the morning’s hangover has worn off. No shirt? Not a problem. Barefoot treks to the breakfast food truck? Sure. Drinking a beer on the beach? Just keep it in a plastic cup. Riding motorcycles without helmets? Wait, how do you do it where you’re from?

The beach: It’s enormous, particularly at low tide. On what has to be one of the busiest weekends of the year, I had no problem finding a patch of sand not just for relaxing but for frisbee tossing. The one knock could be that the water approaches bathtub temperatures, but that’s actually a plus if you plan to spend all day swimming. (You should plan to spend all day swimming.)

The show: The night of July 4, I grabbed a bunch of sparklers and headed for the beach, where explosives experts were setting up the night’s show. The casualness about the fireworks was amazing, as families set up towels and beach chairs right below the blast zone. Before the official show started, we were surprised by random flashes and bangs, as people lit their BYO fireworks.

The departure: Perhaps the best thing about Folly is that it feels so removed from real life–while being just nine miles from Charleston, a city well worth seeing in its own right. That makes the beach accessible but at a small remove, a short drive that lets you mind decompress and switch into surf gear. A couple, fellow hotel guests, told me they could see the bridge back to the mainland from their room. That’s not a good thing, they said. It reminds them that the real world is just a few miles away.

Off the Road: Kayaking Conway, South Carolina

by Paul Brady on


The guy at the marina told us that alligators are usually scared of people, so we probably didn’t have much to worry about after the kayaks were in the river. But the Waccamaw flows with what’s called black water–water turned dark by tannins leeched from cypress trees along the banks–making it all but impossible to see beneath the surface. If there were gators about, we’d only know it once it was too late. The sleepy town of Conway, South Carolina was proving to be much more exciting than I’d expected.

Traveling the American Road – Kayaking Conway


A few miles outside Myrtle Beach, Conway is a historic Lowcountry village founded in 1732 that moves about as fast as the slow drain of the Waccamaw. I found it because my friend Rob has family there: They run The Cypress Inn, a Southern Victorian waterfront bed and breakfast that we planned to enjoy for a night. It’s right on the river, with rocking chairs on the porch and an appropriately enormous (and delicious) breakfast.

Conway, a port by virtue of its river connections to the sea, has developed its waterfront into a tourist-friendly walkway, with boardwalks over the Waccamaw, playgrounds and benches, where couples sit to pass the quiet evenings. Live oaks weighed down with Spanish moss lend the town a mysterious air–and some grow in the middle of the road. One guide to the town I picked up at the Inn warns:

Some of our streets split around live oaks and some bend and wind. Drivers should proceed slowly and watch for oncoming traffic, always remembering that when the street narrows to a single lane, the law of Southern courtesy prevails!

The gentility extends to the waterways, many of which are now marked as “blueways,” narrow channels designated for recreation that extend all the way to the North Carolina border. Rob and I took to kayaks–leaky kayaks as it turned out–to paddle the rivers. We got turned around in the forks and bends, but with nothing to do except avoid getting eaten by alligators and water moccasins, our outing was a success. At $30 for the half-day rental, it was one of the best deals of the trip so far.

The area, a farming region since Antebellum times, continues to capitalize on the rural relaxation that’s increasingly popular worldwide. An AgriTourism Passport put together by Clemson University Extension promotes a variety of activities available in the area, including roadside produce stands, you-pick fruit farms, historic landmark plantations, farmers markets, vineyards and museums.

But if you spend the whole trip on eating biscuits and gravy at The Cypress Inn, you’ll have a wonderful time, too. Just remember to paddle off the calories in the Waccamaw.

The Greatest Road Trip Radio Show in History

by Paul Brady on


The best radio station I’ve listened to on this road trip is Road Dog Trucking on SiriusXM. It’s a channel dedicated to truckers, with an ample time for call-ins and opinion-and a plethora of regional dialects, a selective sample that seems to indicate that most of the truckers in this country are white men from the south. It’s endlessly fascinating, this window onto an oft-overlooked subculture, and the pinnacle of the station is a show hosted by Dale Sommers, who goes by the name Truckin’ Bozo.

I don’t recall how I found the Bozo’s show, but at number 106 on the dial, it was likely through some desperate channel surfing. He was talking about, well, something and taking calls from truckers. They almost always go by their handles, names like Seatcover Chaser and Grizzly Bear and Kemosabe and Elvis. (Listing the handles heard on the show is a staple of writing stories about the Bozo.)

Working at WLW in Cincinnati in the ’80s, he developed an overnight country music show that caught on by truck stop word of mouth. Jerry Springer called him “a lone but powerful voice crying in the night” in 1991, introducing a WLWT segment on the host. He was snatched from the brink of retirement by satellite radio in 2004, to bring his show from the third shift to afternoon drive time.

The current program meanders through its three hours. An odd cast of frequent guests call in, filling their roles in story lines still inscrutable to me after listening for six weeks. The Bozo goes on political rants, aimed more at “politicians” than any one in particular, unless its President Obama, who gets dinged almost daily. Some bit of news that’s of interest to professional drivers-cross-border trucking, construction projects, new in-cab computer systems-will be dissected and re-dissected. A producer, Ritchie, will talk about Long Island, where it seems he’s from.

The Bozo’s show is, in other words, almost impenetrable for newcomers. And yet listeners keep coming back, jamming the phones to get a chance to greet the host with the phrase everyone uses when they finally get on air: “Hey there, Bozo.” If they’re lucky, callers will be “given a boost,” hung up on with an explosion sound effect. For how little sense it makes, it’s extraordinarily popular.

By inviting everyone to call in and tell their own stories in their own words, the Bozo has created a tight-knit, pan-American trucking community. After watching the final shuttle launch, I decided to join the club. I dialed in, told Ritchie what I planned to talk about, sat on hold for more than an hour and finally got to talk with the host about the experience.

The Bozo opined about the lack of industriousness and imagination in this country-we’re turning our space program over to the Russians, you see!-and then told a story about seeing a night launch’s exhaust trail from Tampa, more than a hundred miles away. I told the Bozo it was my first time calling in. He gave me a boost for the road trip, firing the explosion sound effect and proclaiming “Liftoff!” Now I just need to come up with a handle.

Staying with Friends: On the Porch in Raleigh, North Carolina

by Paul Brady on


One thing you won’t find in New York City, at least at my apartment, is a screened-in porch. But in the summer in the south, the porch is the living room, kitchen, dining room and bar, a focal point of a home to rival the greatest of fireplaces. I know because I had the pleasure of enjoying a porch for a couple of days recently in Raleigh, North Carolina.

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Through my friend Rob, I’d met Tim and Susan, a couple that left New York City after about fifteen years to slow down and try their hands in the south. Like our friends in the Outer Banks, they were standard bearers for North Carolina’s wonderful brand of hospitality, immediately shuffling us out to the porch, plopping us down in chairs and handing us frosty beers plucked from an ice chest. One of the greatest things in North Carolina is the beer-filled cooler that holds a prime position on porches across the state.

We talked. Rob updated his friends on news from New York and I grilled the couple on life in Raleigh and how it compares to the north, particularly because Tim will soon open his own bar near the campus of UNC. “The bottom line is, with Research Triangle Park, there is this really well-educated community and an awfully diverse community here,” he says. “My thing is that there’s a phenomenal number of ‘classic American’ bars but there aren’t really a phenomenal number of bars that have been influenced by Europe. And it’s not that I want to create a ‘European bar’ but there are a lot of things that the Europeans get right with bars,” like lighting, music, ambiance and drink selection.

Tim’s new spot should be, like his porch, a great place for gathering. The idea of televisions in pubs is repellant to the long-time bartender, a pointless intrusion on the real reasons for going out: the people and the booze and sometimes the food. Construction at his place is still underway, but he’s already found that the business of building a restaurant in Chapel Hill is, in many ways, much easier here than in New York City. Rent is cheaper, of course, but so are construction costs, contracting fees and permits. Bureaucratic headaches are nothing compared to what restaurant owners confront up north. It’s the kind of place, says Tim, where he can actually open his own business; that wasn’t a certainty in his former hometown. (He also has more room in his house for power tools now.)

Critically for the area restaurant scene-if not his place-the local products are good, says Tim: “There is some very good beer being brewed in North Carolina. I was shocked to say so when I moved but there’s some fabulous beer being brewed down here.” Lonerider’s Shotgun Betty and Foothills Pilsner from Salem, North Carolina are a couple of his favorites. 3 Cups, a Chapel Hill gourmet shop, stocks plenty of international groceries and wines, but its event program is all about local chefs and farmers. “There is good food here,” Tim says. Much of it is on view at the Raleigh Farmers Market, which has so much to offer that it’s open daily.

While his future bar is across “The Triangle” from the capital, Raleigh’s downtown alliance is encouraging development in the heart of the city, where there’s already a healthy dining and nightlife scene. Poole’s Diner is a foodie favorite occupying a restored luncheonette, bustling until the wee hours as friends finish that last bottle of wine and linger over dessert. The chef there, Ashley Christensen, is embarking on a new triple-concept restaurant, adding to the offerings in downtown with Beasley’s, Chuck’s and an as-yet-unnamed bar. It’s not just eating and drinking: The Contemporary Art Museum opened earlier this year in a converted warehouse on West Martin Street.

The nerve center of it all is Morning Times, a killer coffee shop where friends bump into friends by coincidence and everyone seems to greet the baristas by name. Tables line the street, occupied by couples reading the paper and neighbors “visiting,” that southern form of chatting that makes a conversation much more than just small talk. There are salads and sandwiches and wraps to order, sure, but the egg and cheese biscuit is what you really want for breakfast (and probably lunch too).

For all the positives, development work continues, as The Raleigh Connoisseur blog, which tracks downtown news and notes, describes in its mission statement:

Transit, urban planning, and land use are new problems that we will face as the city grows. What will downtown’s role be in all of this? I am trying to follow Raleigh’s attempts at bringing back the urban center it once had in the early 1900s.

Indeed, in this growing city and metro region, sprawl could be public enemy number one, with engineers commuting to RTP, suburbanites driving downtown for a night out or an entrepreneurial bartender living in Raleigh opening his place in Chapel Hill. All the driving makes economic sense now, but will it still as the population continues to grow-and gas prices keep rising?

The Ultimate Road Trip Detour: Go Kart Racing?

by Paul Brady on


At the outset of this road trip, I invited friends and readers to jump in the car with me. After more than a month on the road, one of my buddies finally took me up on the offer, planning to meet me in Virginia Beach after I toured Colonial Williamsburg.

I’ve known Rob for more than 10 years, and while we get along wonderfully, we love competition. So it being a road trip, there was no better place to spar than on a go kart track.

Traveling the American Road – Go Kart Racing


By a fantastic coincidence, Virginia Beach Motor World has a loop inspired by Watkins Glen International, a place I’d visited earlier this summer–and driven on the pro-level track. It wasn’t an exact replica, but I planned to put some of my driving experience in Upstate New York to good use in Virginia.

Rob and I have raced before, in Chile of all places, in super-speedy karts that required helmets. Splitting a few races this time around, we still haven’t determined a champion. We’re hoping to do that when we get to the Orlando Kart Center. But first we have a stop to make in the Outer Banks.