Things to do: Sunset Beach

Sunset Beach is a small town.  It's big tourist draw is the beautiful, sandy beaches.

From the map above (courtesy Google Maps (thank you, Megan)) you can see how close Sea Trail is to the beach.  Between the beach and the mainland are salt marshes that you can rent kayaks to explore.  Here are a few fabulous things to do in Sunset Beach and the neighboring towns of Calabash and Ocean Isle Beach.

Ingram Planetarium

Sunset Beach

The planetarium offers lots of family activities throughout the summer.  There are shows to see and a Science Center to explore.  Some activities they've done in the past are building a comet, assembling rockets, and shadow drawing.

Museum of Coastal Carolina

Ocean Isle Beach

The museum has seven themed galleries, dioramas of local animal and plant life, family programs, a touch tank, and a show about snakes (I'll skip that one).  They also have an outdoor classroom and birdwalk.

Miniature Golf

There are two putt-putt golf courses in Sunset Beach, Par Harbour and Bridge Grill Pizza and Golf.  There are a ton more in Myrtle Beach that might make a blog post all their own.  They are amazing!

Callahan's of Calabash

Calabash

While this is a shop, it is also an attraction unto itself.  Callahan's is made up of Callahan's Nautical Gifts, Pea Landing Mercantile & Fudge Shop, and St. Nick's Nacks.  Here you can find all you tourist doo-dads and tchotchkes, some of them tacky and some really classy.  (This was my family's first introduction to Sunset Beach, 20ish years ago)

Stay tuned for things to do in Myrtle Beach and Wilmington.

Kite Video

I have one other video I want to share.  This is someone who attached a video camera to their kite.  AWESOME!  It's long, but beautiful.

The Sunset Beach Bridge

It used to be that you had to wait to cross the one-lane pontoon boat bridge to get from the Mainland out to the island and beach.  It used to be a horrible nightmare during the busy summer season.

But that has changed with the opening of the new bridge.  This is a high rise bridge that spans the intercoastal waterway.  The views from it are amazing.  I found this short video with pictures of the grand opening.  At the end there is a video of the old pontoon bridge and how it worked.  The pictures from the bridge are beautiful.  You can even see some of Sea Trail and the golf courses.

The second video give's a little bit of history of the area and how the old swing bridge worked.

Enjoy!