10 day road trip starting Charleston SC
 

My wife and I, living in Portland Oregon are planning a 10 day road trip in early June and plan to fly into Charleston SC (good air fare) and renting a car. We are wide open with our itinerary and want to visit historical and interesting cities and towns. I am thinking of visiting Savannah and heading North and perhaps flying back home from Washington DC. We are wide open to suggestions. Are cities: Myrtle Beach, Wilmington, Raleigh, and Richmond worth a visit? other cities, towns? Thanks for any and all suggestions.

Visit the SC coast from Myrtle Beach and south as far as Savannah GA. Return the car where you rented it in Charleston and then take the Amtrak Palmetto (90) north to Washington in coach. It leaves Charleston at 10AM (sometimes late). You get to see some interesting countryside from the train with no worry of paying a big drop off fee in Washington. Spend time time in DC seeing some of the Smithsonian museums before flying home. I prefer flying out of Reagan National because of the attached Metro station.
Dulles is much harder to reach from downtown.

Savannah and Charleston, yes!

I enjoy the mess that is Myrtle beach - off season for the beach and restaurants. In June it is a bee hive of shopping, restaurants, entertainment, golf courses, miniature golf and TRAFFIC! IMHO, give it a miss.

My suggestion: Make Asheville, NC your 3rd city. See The Biltmore house, Omni Grove Park Inn and some of the amazing crafts galleries and studios, really as fine as anyplace in the US - New Morning Gallery, Southern Highland Craft Guild, one of the glass places, and drive part of the Blue Ridge Parkway. However, that would leave practically no time for Washington DC.

Other very interesting places are
Charlottesville, VA. Just Google all the historic stuff there, like Monticello.
Richmond is a unique and pretty city with, of course, history and several interesting buildings.
Fredericksburg, VA. Tour the well preserved town and homes of famous early American leaders.
Washington DC. You need several days here.

Thank you for the great input. If you think of more, please pass my way!

If you head north from Charleston, stop in Georgetown to see where the rice planters of Charleston spent their summers away from the malarial mosquitoes--also a bit further up at Pawley's Island. Then there is the Tom Yawkey conservation center in Georgetown--make a reservation for a tour.
Continue on up 17 and just across the bridge from Georgetown is the Hobcaw Barony, dating from the 1600s (as a "barony") and bought by Bernard Baruch as a duck hunting preserve. It passed to his daughter who passed it to Clemson as an ecologogical study place.

Then just up a little further is Brookgreen Gardens, a former plantation purchased by the Huntingtons and a show place for Anna huntington's massive metal sculptures and their art collection, interspersed among beautiful gardens. Across the road from the gardens is their very interesting home, Atalanta, built in the form of a Moorish castle.

I would advise staying somewhere near here--Litchfield Inn or somewhere at Litchfield by the Sea because you will want to eat in Murrell's inlet and have the best seafood on the Southeast coast outside of Charleston. (Thiss is all about 15 mile south of MB)--I would pass right on through that traffic jam and head toward Wilmington which has a lovely river historic district.

If you wanted to just make a circle back to Charleston, head west on I40. You could stop in Winston Salem to see Old Salem and the Museum of Southern Decorative Arts.
Then continue on to Asheville and back down to Charleston.