Day Trips from Hilton Head Island

The obvious trip, and it earns it. Savannah's historic district is built around a grid of squares laid out from 1733, most of them still intact, shaded by live oaks and ringed with townhouses, churches and museums. You can walk the whole thing in a day and still miss half.

A workable first visit: park once in a city garage and leave the car there. Walk the squares between Bull Street and Abercorn, take in Forsyth Park at the southern end with its fountain, drop down to River Street for the cobbles and the container ships passing at eye level, and eat somewhere off the main tourist run. City Market and Broughton Street are the usual shopping. SCAD's presence means the galleries and the shop windows are better than a city this size would otherwise support.

Practical notes. Street meters run Monday to Saturday during the day and are enforced closely; the garages are simpler and cheaper than a ticket. The historic district permits alcohol in a plastic cup within posted boundaries, with specific rules about container size and where the boundary ends, so read the signs rather than assuming. Summer afternoons in Savannah are hotter than on the island because there is no sea breeze, so plan indoor stops for the middle of the day.

Going back after dark for dinner is the version most people enjoy most, if someone in the group is happy to drive.

Beaufort is the trip for people who found Savannah crowded. It is a small antebellum port on Port Royal Island, reached up SC-170 across the Broad River, with a waterfront park, a compact historic district of white-columned houses under live oaks, and a main street of independent shops and restaurants along Bay Street.

The town has an outsized film history: The Big Chill, The Prince of Tides and parts of Forrest Gump were shot in and around it, and local walking tours make a good living pointing out where. Henry C. Chambers Waterfront Park is the centre of gravity, with swings looking over the Beaufort River and a marina beside it.

Twenty minutes further out on St. Helena Island is the Penn Center, one of the earliest schools established for formerly enslaved people and later a meeting place for civil rights leaders. It is one of the most significant Gullah Geechee heritage sites in the country and deserves more than a drive-by.

Continue another half hour east and you reach Hunting Island State Park: a barrier island beach backed by maritime forest, a lagoon, and a lighthouse you can sometimes climb. There is a per-person park admission, and the lighthouse climb opens and closes for maintenance, so check before you build the day around it.

On the way back, the Old Sheldon Church Ruins near Yemassee are worth the short detour. Brick walls and columns standing open to the sky under live oaks, free to visit, quiet in a way the rest of the region rarely is.

The shortest trip on this list and the easiest to underestimate. Bluffton sits on the May River just over the bridge, and its Old Town is a few blocks of Calhoun Street running down to a public dock, lined with galleries, small restaurants, a couple of bars and houses that survived the town's burning in 1863.

At the bottom of Calhoun, the Church of the Cross stands on a bluff over the May River, a Gothic Revival timber church from the 1850s that is one of the most photographed buildings in the Lowcountry. Walk down to the dock behind it for the view that explains why people settled here.

The Bluffton Oyster Company on Wharf Street is the other essential stop: a working oyster house on the river, generally described as the state's oldest still operating, where you can buy shrimp, oysters and crab straight off the boats in season. Take a cooler if you are cooking at the rental.

Thursday is market day. The Bluffton farmers market runs in the afternoon through most of the year and shifts to a morning schedule in high summer, with produce, prepared food and local craft. Confirm the current schedule before making the drive for it specifically.

Bluffton is also where the Tanger outlet centres are, on US-278 before the bridges, which makes a combined trip easy if shopping is on the list.

Daufuskie lies across Calibogue Sound, visible from Harbour Town, and has no bridge. That single fact has shaped everything about it. There are no chain shops, no traffic lights and very few paved roads. Transport is golf carts, and residents number in the hundreds.

Public passenger ferries run from Broad Creek Marina on Hilton Head to Freeport Marina on Daufuskie, a crossing of roughly 45 minutes, with a schedule that tightens outside summer. Book both the ferry and whatever you plan to do on the island in advance, and pay attention to the return time. Missing the last boat is a genuine problem.

What to do once you are there: rent a golf cart or take a guided island tour. The island's Gullah history is the heart of it, with the First Union African Baptist Church and the Mary Field School, where Pat Conroy taught the year that became The Water Is Wide. There is an indigo dye studio working the crop the island once grew commercially, a small rum distillery, artists' studios, a lighthouse-keeper's cottage, and several miles of quiet beach. Horseback rides on the beach, which are not possible on Hilton Head, are available here.

Take cash, water and sunscreen. Facilities are limited, distances on a golf cart are longer than they look on the map, and the island's charm is directly related to how little of it has been arranged for your convenience.

Tybee is Savannah's beach, 18 miles east of the city at the mouth of the Savannah River, and the trip works best as a half-and-half day: the fort on the way out, the beach and the pier after lunch.

Fort Pulaski National Monument sits on Cockspur Island on the road to Tybee. It is a masonry fort completed in 1847 and rendered obsolete in a day and a half in 1862, when Union rifled artillery breached a wall that was supposed to be impregnable. The damage is still visible in the brickwork, which makes the history unusually legible. There is an entrance fee, and the site is run by the National Park Service.

On Tybee itself, the Tybee Island Light Station is the draw: a working lighthouse with a climb of roughly 175 steps and a view over the river mouth, with a small museum in the old battery across the road. The beach is wider and livelier than Hilton Head's, with a pier, a strip of shops and a different, saltier character than the manicured island you drove from.

Be realistic about the day. It is around an hour and fifteen minutes each way from Hilton Head, and the route passes through Savannah traffic. If you only have one day off the island and you have never seen Savannah, do Savannah.