NoVA to Charleston 3-day trip

Planning a road trip from NoVa to Charleston for the Memorial day weekend. Will start Friday night and catch a friend at Durham. Will drive together to Myrtle Beach and then Charleston. I enjoy scenery, nature, people watching. With a network of roads on east coast, not sure which road to take as I look on the Map. Obviously i-95 is the road, but I generally go on US routes to enjoy small towns. Wondering if US 1 is full of traffic lights. Also, this being the busiest weekend and hell lot of traffic, don't want to risk with experimenting routes.

Anyone suggestion on scenic routes from DC - Durham - Myrtle Beach - Charleston - Durham - DC ? US route numbers that could be enjoyable and less traffic will also be helpful. As of now planning 1/501/52 in Durham - Charleston routes. But again looks like there are so many possibilities.

Welcome aboard the RoadTrip America Forums!

There really is no collection of roads, particularly "US routes [that will let you] enjoy small towns", that will allow you to complete the trip and the tasks you've laid out in the time you have available. If you stuck strictly to the Interstates wherever possible and saw no significant traffic at any point over a holiday weekend on those major arterials and made no stops whatsoever while driving except for the bare minimum of getting fuel and some food to eat in the car, then you would have about two or three hours to spend in each of the cities you'll be spending so much time driving to. If you take the kinds of roads you say you'd like, this trip will turn into little more than an exercise in burning gas and filling the pockets of innkeepers.

AZBuck