The Inland Run

The inland South between the mountains and the coast gets driven through far more than driven to, which is the traveler's loss, since the corridor from the Upstate down to the Savannah River holds three towns doing their best work in decades. This route runs Greenville to Columbia to Augusta, wants two or three nights, and is best in spring, when the azaleas run the whole way, or in fall, when the heat finally stands down.

Start on the best main street in the South, described at length elsewhere in these pages, and give it a night, the falls and the footbridge at the bottom of downtown, the mile of sidewalk tables running north, and a proper dinner among the residents who fill the street nightly. Ride an hour of the rail trail in the morning before the drive south, which sets the trip's pace correctly.

Spend the middle day in the capital, a college town at heart, where the historic Horseshoe of the university's original campus makes the state's loveliest quadrangle and the three rivers meet below the fall line. The connoisseur's stop is half an hour south of town, Congaree National Park, where boardwalks run through one of the last old-growth floodplain forests in the country, champion trees standing in the dark water. Give it two unhurried hours and eat back in town in the Vista, the warehouse district that led the city's own revival.

End on the Savannah River in the city the world visits for one week in April and forgets the rest of the year. Walk Broad Street, one of the widest main streets in America, take the canal towpath in the morning mist, and if the golf clubs made the trip, play one of the public courses that share the famous sand hills and pines at civilian prices. Dinner downtown, a last walk on the riverwalk with the current sliding past, and the drive home in the morning. The inland South has been here all along, between the places everyone else was driving toward, and it keeps its manners for the ones who stop.