Traveling Huntleys

Inspiring travel stories, tips, and guides from a couple exploring the world one destination at a time.

Dog Friendly Beaches

Edisto Beach & Lake Greenwood, South Carolina: Shelling, Dark Skies and a 4,000-Year-Old Shell Mound

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Last Updated: August 3, 2026

Edisto Beach sits about an hour south of Charleston at the end of Highway 174, a two-lane road that simply runs out of island and stops at the Atlantic. That dead end is the whole reason the place is still quiet. Fewer than a thousand people live in the town year-round, there is no high-rise and no boardwalk, and the main attraction is a beach so thick with shells you can hear them clatter in the wash. Low tourism, low industry, and miles of sand to walk was exactly what we were after. From Hanna Park in Jacksonville it was a four-hour drive north.

Sandy Huntley walking looking at sea shells on Edisto Beach, South Carolina
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Hanna Park, Jacksonville, Florida: Oceanfront Camping, Boneyard Beach & the Historian Behind the Name

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Last Updated: August 2, 2026

Hanna Park is about 450 acres of mature coastal hammock at Mayport, in the Jacksonville Beaches area of northeast Florida. Its full name is Kathryn Abbey Hanna Park, and the name is worth pausing on rather than skimming past — more on her in a moment. Winthrop Bancroft donated the first five oceanfront acres to the City of Jacksonville in 1967 on the condition that the park carry her name; the city bought up adjoining land and the park opened in 1972.

Wide Atlantic beach and surf at Kathryn Abbey Hanna Park, Jacksonville, Florida
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Ormond Beach, Florida in January: Oceanfront Camping, Shorebirds & the Scenic Loop

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Last Updated: August 1, 2026

Ormond Beach sits on Florida’s Atlantic coast just north of Daytona Beach. We have stayed a little further north at Flagler Beach before and liked the stretch, so we came back to it. This time the weather had other ideas. A bitter, windy, wet storm sat on us for most of the week and we got perhaps two days of sunshine out of seven. We lost the daily beach walks we had been looking forward to — but we were given something else instead: a dramatic, grey, heaving Atlantic in full winter temper, twenty feet from where we were sitting. We never did get a photograph that did it justice. The day below was the nicest one we had.

Atlantic Ocean and open sky on the one clear day of a stormy January week at Ormond Beach, Florida
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