Our "naycation" at Hideaway RV Resort, Myrtle Beach

We made a command decision to book an RV site for a couple days so we could get on hookups, run our AC, and get Buggy truly storage-ready. Our site at Hideaway RV Resort delivered. It was long enough to open our back ramp door and seamlessly move things in and out of the RV and truck. It gave us the hookups we needed (though if you read our posts, you know that Buggy didn't receive them very well). But beyond the necessary circumstances for us to have a productive couple of days, we found ourselves admiring this RV park. It was the 4th one that we had been to in the area, and we quickly realized that, had we booked an actual stay there, we would have quite enjoyed it. Hideaway turned out to be a budget-friendly gem amidst the more expensive Myrtle Beach resorts. It's understated, and because of this, we fear that it gets overlooked because visitors favor the big-name or oceanfront resorts that are a destination in their own right.

The campground's history supports our theory. It used to be Cypress RV Campground, but in 2018, it faced foreclosure. Things got pretty murky, too. Evidently, the campground offered memberships for long-term campers, and after the foreclosure, no one got any refunds. This made a lot of people feel slighted and angry, especially since they claim the campground owners assured them that they were staying open, when in fact, they weren't. Afterwards, the campground was purchased and extensively renovated, eventually reopening in 2020 under the name Hideaway RV Resort.

Read our Myrtle Beach campground posts:

A New Side of Myrtle Beach

Our second season of travel started like the first, which meant making our way south quickly in order to escape the pending winter weather. We changed things up a little this time, though. Last year we traveled more inland, while this time we decided to stick more coastal. We followed

Brighter on WheelsNicole Anderson

Child-free couple at the #1 family campground: Ocean Lakes Family Campground, Myrtle Beach, SC

So far, Season 5 had taken us all the way to the southern tip of the east coast, and now we were on our way back north. The goal: get back to New England as soon as campgrounds started opening for the season. This would give us the flexibility to

Brighter on WheelsNicole Anderson

We made a bold move...now what?

💡We made a bold move after hitting our final breaking point on the road. Now we enter a new, surprise chapter. Catch up on the previous posts: We need to talk about this. A major curveball no one saw coming...not even us! We’ve had some stressful trip planning

Brighter on WheelsNicole Anderson

Even years later, we got the sense that the campground attracts more seasonal RVers than transients. It's probably not always this slow, though. The staff did insinuate that this year had been particularly quiet; perhaps the heat deterred some visitors. We also went in the middle of the week, after back-to-school for the local kids. But if we can do our part to put this campground on people's radars, we want to. It doesn't offer the luxury amenities like some other resorts in the area, and it's not on the ocean, but it offers a really cool alternative water feature: the Intracoastal Waterway.

It goes without saying that most visitors to Myrtle Beach come for the ocean, but the Intracoastal Waterway boasts tons of fun activities for tourists and locals alike. There's no shortage of recreation, including boat rides, fishing, shopping, and waterfront dining. Wildlife is abundant in the waters. You can spot dolphins, alligators, plus tons of crabs, fish, and birds.

But what is the Intracoastal Waterway? It's a manmade inland canal, built to connect natural water sources for shipping. The Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway starts in MA and runs to FL, and the section at Myrtle Beach was the last section completed, during the Great Depression. The waterway served as a major strategic advantage during WWII, as American ships could haul cargo and supplies further from the ocean, hidden from international ships. Another perk of this section of the waterway was that it lowered the water table enough for swamp land to become suitable for residential living and farming.

We haven't spent much time around the Waterway, except for taking a dolphin cruise for my birthday, so we were excited to visit the campground. But first, we needed to get there.

You might not think that a drive across town could yield a blog-worthy story, but this is us! Since we were just moving the trailer a short distance, we didn't prepare for a typical drive day. Anthony didn't bring our bag of cockpit equipment, such has our Garmin RV GPS. Not a huge deal since we knew the roads, but we hadn't factored in that, to get to the campground, we needed to go over the Intracoastal Waterway via one of its 13 bridges. We assumed they were all RV-friendly, but as soon as we got in a left turning lane, we saw a sign that was barely legible from so far away, but we knew it said something about "no trucks." We thought it initially said "No trucks or trailers" and we started freaking out. We had no way to get out of our turning lane and go straight! Thankfully, once we turned, we could see the sign more clearly...but that doesn't mean we understood it more clearly.

No trucks over 6 tires? Or no "combined vehicles" over 6 tires? Our truck as 4, but our whole rig has 8. Nothing we could do anyway, so we just assumed "trucks" meant trucks, and over the draw bridge we went. Considering we then later saw a weight restriction sign that put us way under the weight limit, we guess we were allowed. But why word the first sign based on number of tires and then second sign based on weight? This seems like unnecessary confusion.

I got so caught up researching waterway bridge restrictions that, when I finally went back into Maps, I realized we missed the entrance to the campground! If we had our Garmin, it would have told us to turn, but I don't have voice navigation on in my Maps app. As if we hadn't freaked ourselves out enough, we now had to find a place to turn around, and we did, but it forced us to take a gnarly left turn into a busy road to get back to the entrance.

We thought we had finally arrived safely, only to discover that, all this time, Google Maps was navigating us to the back entrance of the campground, which was closed off! Thankfully, the entrance had a keypad, so we could call the office to let us in. However, the frustration came from the fact that, had we known we should have gone around to the other side, we could have saved ourselves the stress of turning around.

But we had made it, and now all we had to do was tow through the whole campground, go very slowly over all their speed bumps because our stuff wasn't in typical secure mode for travel, and after checking in at the office, had to go around the building to face the right way, so we could get to our campsite. Whew!

Note about their speed bumps: Despite putting signs, they are insanely difficult to see, as some aren't bumps but divots. Drive carefully!

Turns out, they allow RVs in through the back gate, but they specifically say it's not an exit. After that, we started using the front entrance just to be on the safe side. This posed its own problems, as the road leading to the front gate is through a high school campus, and if someone is coming from Socastee Blvd, there are no signs at the turn onto River Rd (where the RV park is located), letting people know the campground is down there. From the main road, it just looks like the school. There is no sign until we pass between the rec fields and arrive to the front gate.

At first I thought maybe they deter people from taking the back gate because of the bridge, but all my fears of RV restrictions dissipated when we left the campground, and this time, had our RV GPS. It took us out the front and circled us around, back to the bridge, navigating us over it. If the route is good enough for the RV GPS, it's good enough for us!

Finally, we made it to our site, which had a view of the waterway. We needed to decompress after our drive, so we decided to head to the water and explore.

Hideaway makes sure to feature the waterway as an amenity, offering kayak rentals, a boat launch, fishing piers, sitting areas, and even a small beach. Just watch out for the gators, as they're known to frequent plant growth on the edge of the water, and here, the plants are plentiful. The cypress trees, rooted with their knees sticking up from the shore, are the embodiment of the Southeastern US.

Other amenities at the campground include a dog park, pool, playground, and fishing pond with a nature trail around the circumference. We obviously didn't have time to partake in all of them, but we did try to balance our productivity with leisure time. The weather continued to be muggy, but one evening we took a sunset walk around the pond. It would have been quite peaceful if not for the traffic noise from the nearby main roads. We tried to focus on the dusk insect chorus instead. The path is short but feels secluded. It's in the back of the campground, where we found several RVs being stored. We've noticed in Myrtle Beach especially that a lot of the campgrounds offer storage for the seasonal RVs. When families are ready to camp, they just bring their rigs out and park them. We wonder if this is the case here.

Because part of our storage prep was sanitizing and draining our water lines, we used the bathhouses quite a bit during our short time there. People have differing opinions on this, but I'm always a fan of individual bathrooms that house the toilet, sink, and shower in one private room. These bathrooms weren't large, but they gave nice privacy. One of the bathhouses is next to the laundry building, so we poked our heads in to check out the machines. Mostly as expected from a campground, with a decent number of machines, reasonably priced.

We may have gotten off the road full-time, but our years of living at campgrounds have made exploring them feel like second nature. Despite the heat and our stressed-out state, we really enjoyed checking out another option for RVing in Myrtle Beach. We could envision future trips with our RV, hopefully when we're less stressed (is that a thing for us?). We also talked about the possibility of seeing more of SC by taking little staycations. These couple of days, though? We didn't a take a trip anywhere, so it wasn't a vacation. We didn't stay over at the campground, so it wasn't a staycation. It was more of a "naycation." It worked for us, though. Hideaway RV Resort gave us the ability to get our storage prep done, while also helping us balance all our hard work with a little bit of leisure time. Plus, we got to see how this park fills a void in RV camping in Myrtle Beach. To camp here, you don't need to pay exorbitant prices to be crowded into tiny sites. Here, you can get the RV park experience with room to breathe. You can get a waterfront experience away from the ocean. But, if you want to hit up the beach, it's only a short drive away. You don't need all the amenities right at your campground because there's plenty to keep you entertained in town. There's a lot we love about Myrtle Beach, but the more campgrounds we visit, the more we realize that this city understands people's different preferences for camping. You can choose a state park or a giant mega resort, or anything in between. Hideaway is a perfect "in-between."