Due South: Adventures Beyond the South

Plus: Shark teeth, Beaufort, and getaways in the great outdoors

PHOTOS: ANNIE FAIRFAX; MEGAN HALEY; JEN JUDGE

Vermont’s Woodstock Inn; Wolff pottery in Connecticut; fly fishing in New Mexico.

Sometimes when we travel outside the South, we crave a taste of home—biscuits and gravy in Seattle, anyone? Other times we delight in shared pastimes, like trout fishing or garden strolling, that make us feel we’re all connected. From sea to shining sea, the flavors, flora, and above all, talented makers of the South crop up in surprising ways. Here’s where to find some of them, broken down by U.S. region.

Beaufort County, South Carolina. Just a jaunt away from Charleston, this coastal county was a perfect recent getaway for me, my husband, and a couple friends. We went ahead and marked winter’s Beaufort Oyster Festival on our calendars, but I bet we’ll be back before then thanks to…

Birds, birds, birds! My friend (and host) Ellen’s mom, Carol Schmedinghoff, carves intricate bird miniatures and places them in framed settings—they’re little works of natural art, on display and for sale at the Beaufort Art Association (and a few other locations in the South.) It felt fitting then that our first stop was the Port Royal Cypress Wetlands, a spacious boardwalk that dips beneath shade trees, peers over turtle habitat, and centers around an open-air rookery, where hundreds of birds nest, squawk, and swoop all around.
Beach bumming. In the morning, we beelined to Hunting Island State Park, a forested lagoon and ocean inlet that’s wilder than many of the Southern beaches I’m used to. My husband and I tried out our new Free Fly sun shirts (verdict: must-haves for bright beach days), walked the shoreline, found a few tiny shark teeth, and made plans to come back to meander the two-mile Maritime Forest Trail.
A new tradition. I still have all the love for our usual Beaufort dinner haunt, Old Bull Tavern (one time the chef gave me his recipe for their perfect butterscotch pudding). But this trip, we shook up our routine by checking out the local dive, the Fillin’ Station, where the live music rocked, the fish tacos were fresh, the beer was ice-cold, and the sunset view over the marsh kicked off summer right.