Hilton Head

Seeing as a few people here will have done South Carolina,
Reccomended routing, VS or BA to get there?

I'm aware doing it points savvy will mean likely Atlanta, Orlando or possibly NYC and drive down.
Which would you choose and why?

(we have about 200k VS left, probably can move another 300k if needed from MR points, maybe 500k max).
Keen I burn the points, and obviously looking for saver fares, but to save me looking up all routes, which is the drive you would do.

We're flexible on dates, it's timeshare, we fancy the area, just can't decide where to fly to/from and drive from. I can't see much point in the Savannah connection personally given it's waiting around in an airport to save a few hours, when you'll be sat in the airport the few hours anyhow, and we're quite comfortable about doing anything from 5-10 hours in a car on US roads.

Ideally I want to burn down the VS points with the new policy, but we could equally book BA, we have enough (and a 241 voucher) for that too -> more interesting in where you'd drive from and why, and where you would stop en-route as this is a topic this forum tends to give great reccomendations on.

I’d go BA First to ATL. Quite a bit of availability next year.

I’m assuming you’ll probably do day trips to Savannah / Charleston etc from HH, so I’m ignoring them on your drive to HH.

From MCO/TPA, the most interesting thing you’d see is a Buc-ee’s. Some people like St Augustine and refer to it as America’s oldest city… some think it’s a tourist hell hole and would strongly recommend you avoid the place.

From ATL, shortest drive from here obviously, still not a lot to do however.

If you’ve got so time to kill and don’t care about going the most direct of routes… what about into IAD and down through the Blue Ridge Mountains? You may want to play with a routing and make sure there’s enough to keep you entertained. You’d also end up around the Asheville, NC… you may remember they were quite badly struck a couple of months back so worth a check on that situation too.

I've flown into IAD and then driven down to South Carolina just for some BBQ on my way to florida. Was a good drive I'd recommend it and you could stay in DC for a night or 2.

Thanks didn't think of IAD (no idea why) but that sounds an nice alternative with some more interesting driving than Atlanta. Aware of the situation on ground in NC but will keep eye - we won't look to stay there anyhow.

And yes, Savannah and Charleston are the reason for our visit, we've never actually done the East Coast outside of Boston, NYC and Florida before, despite having travelled in the West/Central of US extensively (visiting near all the states over to TN from CA)

But the ATL 1st availability also sounds interesting, we've never actually done BA First before. As we are super flexible with the dates, we may be able to snap some of the availability up.