Contrary to how the state is portrayed in the media, South Carolina is hardly exclusive to natives with thick, flowery accents who still obsess over the Civil War and eat grits three meals a day. As you will quickly discover, the entire coastal area and much of the Upstate is becoming heavily populated with transplants from other parts of the country. In some of these places you can actually go quite a long time without hearing even one of those Scarlett O’Hara accents.

Some of this is due to the region’s increasing attractiveness to professionals and artists, drawn by the temperate climate, natural beauty, and business-friendly environment. Part of it is due to its increasing attractiveness to retirees, most of them from the frigid Northeast. Indeed, in some places, chief among them Hilton Head, the most common accent is a New York or New Jersey one, and a Southern accent is rare.

In any case, don’t make the common mistake of assuming you’re coming to a place where footwear is optional and electricity is a recent development (though it’s true that many of the islands didn’t get electricity until the 1950s and ’60s). Because so much new construction has gone on in the South in the last quarter-century or so, you might find some aspects of the infrastructure—specifically the roads and the electrical utilities—actually superior to where you came from.