About twenty minutes inland from the beach strip, the city of Conway sits along the Waccamaw River in a way that most visitors to Myrtle Beach never bother to find. That’s fine with the people who live here. The Conway Riverwalk runs roughly two miles along the river’s edge, through a downtown that looks like it was preserved by accident — old storefronts, a working waterfront, cypress knees poking up from black water — and it costs absolutely nothing to walk it.
The trail starts near the boat landing at Kingston Street and follows the river northeast, with a wooden boardwalk section that takes you directly over the water at one stretch. The bald cypress trees out here are the main event. Some of them are massive, their trunks flaring out at the waterline, draped in Spanish moss, roots exposed like something out of a nature documentary. In spring and early summer, the reflections on the dark river are genuinely striking. A photographer friend of mine comes out here two or three times a year and says the light in late afternoon, bouncing off the water through the canopy, is unlike anything else on the Grand Strand.
The boardwalk section is accessible and mostly flat, which makes it workable for strollers and wheelchairs along the paved portions. The wooden sections have some gaps and weathered planks, so wear shoes with soles. The full loop, including a walk back through Conway’s small downtown on Main Street, takes most people about forty-five minutes to an hour at a leisurely pace.
Downtown Conway is worth your time once you’ve finished the trail. There’s a handful of genuinely good independent shops and a few restaurants that aren’t trying to cater to tourists. Rivertown Bistro has been on Main Street for years and does a solid lunch — the shrimp and grits is the thing to get. Expect to pay around fourteen to eighteen dollars for an entrée. Just up the block, Indigo Coffee has good espresso and the kind of slow pace that doesn’t exist at the beach in summer.
The best times to visit are early morning on a weekday, when you might share the trail with a handful of dog walkers and local joggers, or in fall when the crowds are thin and the light gets low and gold by four in the afternoon. Midsummer midday is the one stretch to avoid — it’s humid, exposed in sections, and the bugs along the river can be brutal. Bug spray in May through August is not optional.
Parking is free and easy along the side streets near the boat landing. There’s no admission, no ticket booth, no gift shop. If you’ve been in Myrtle Beach for more than two or three days and the commercial strip is starting to wear on you, this is the obvious antidote — a short drive west into a quieter version of the Lowcountry, where the river is slow and dark and the trees have been there longer than the whole tourism industry combined.
Conway doesn’t ask much of you. You show up, you walk, you look at the water. Sometimes that’s enough.
