Headin’ to Carolina – Emerald Isle and the Southern North Carolina Coast [November 20-22, 2015]

Shrimper followed by gulls at sunset

Over the years, we’ve enjoyed and explored the Outer Banks of North Carolina numerous times, but we’ve never spent time on the NC coast south of OBX.  We were going to South Carolina for Thanksgiving, so decided to leave a few days early and see what we’ve been missing.  It really is a lovely area, and worth a “look-see”.

Our first stop along the Crystal Coast “North Carolina’s Southern Outer Banks” was Cedar Island, where the Ocracoke Ferry lands on the mainland.  The Ferry terminal is at the end of a narrow, windy, residential road.  From there we wound our way southward through tiny towns and larger burgs like Beaufort and Morehead City.  This is also the location of Cape Lookout National Seashore, which we didn’t visit, but will certainly come back to see.

Just south of Morehead City is a long barrier island called Bogue Banks, that runs almost due east and west.  The western most town on the island is Emerald Isle.  Emerald Isle was developed in the 1950s when a bridge was built connecting that part of the island with the mainland.  Its name comes from the striking green of the maritime forests present on the island at the time.

We stayed in the Holiday Trav-L-Park Resort, an immaculate campground that stretches from the central Coast Guard Road all the way to the beautiful white sand beach.  Our campsite was at the top of a hill (in generally flat coastal Carolina, no less) with an unobstructed view of the ocean over the top of the protective dune system.  Since the beach runs east and w
est, you have a beautiful view of both sunrise and sunset over the water each day.

On the first day of our stay, we bicycled along a bike path that runs through the town to the town pier.  It was a Saturday so the pier was full of fishermen.  It gave us a great view of the coastline.  Emerald Isle has quite a few mobile home parks.  Many of the neighborhoods have older mobile homes that are being torn down to build lovely beach homes.  The town is really in transition.  We stopped at Willis Seafood Market for fish and oysters to cook at home, and ChowdaHeads for clam chowder.  About a block from home we stopped at a shrimp stand by the side of the road for locally caught shrimp, sold to us by a culinary school graduate who described several ways for us to cook the shrimp.We certainly eat well when we are on the road!

We had rain on the second day, so stayed inside and read and watched football on TV.  During gaps between squalls, we walked to the beach.  It was a nice, restful day.

On Monday, we headed south leaving the Crystal Coast.  Our first stop was Surf City, NC.  The houses here are built very close together with steep staircases over the dunes to the sand beach.  We were surprised that the houses had been built right on top of the dunes.  From there we went to Oak Island and the genteel town of Caswell Beach, near Cape Fear.