The North Carolina Outer Banks are one of our favorite spots, so we decided to start our exploration of the North Carolina coastline here. Our trip got off to a rocky start with a dead alternator 1½ hours from home. Russ and the Roadside Assistance folks kludged together a fix involving a jumper cable and the generator that provides electricity to the house part of the motorhome. We limped home to our wonderful Ford truck repair guys who already had a new alternator ordered before we got to them.
A campground to ourselves
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| Sunrise over the ocean in Rodanthe |
The trip resumed two days later when we drove to Camp Hatteras Campground in Rodanthe, at the Northern end of Hatteras Island. [We've blogged about this area before in 2018, and 2021.] We love walking on the seemingly endless beach there. It being early March, we shared the 300+ site campground with about 15 other rigs. We enjoyed having our own private campground and beach. Most businesses in the area were closed, except for our favorite lunch spot, the Taqueria Las Ahumaderas taco truck. Grilled fish tacos on corn tortillas! So yummy we returned for a second lunch the next day on our way out of town.
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| Yummy, yummy tacos |
The next day, we drove 40 miles South to the town of Frisco, just
past the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. Much
of Hatteras Island is focused on tourists with restaurants and enormous vacation
rental houses, yet Frisco feels like real people actually live and work there
mixed in with a few tourist-focused businesses.
Frisco faces Pamlico Sound. We
camped at the utterly charming Frisco Woods Campground in a Sound-front campsite. So beautiful with crazy, gorgeous sunsets.
Sunset over a calm Pamlico Sound in Frisco
Have you ever stood at the end of a major Cape? Being so near the Lighthouse, we went to see the pointy end
of the actual Cape Hatteras, known as (wait for it…) Cape Point. It is a huge, sandy, fishing location, and
the way there requires both a 4 wheel drive vehicle and an Off Road Vehicle
permit, neither of which we have - so we walked. First you follow a crushed shell road for
about a half mile, and then scramble through soft, rutted sand for another half
mile until you reach the ocean. The
ocean is truly impressive here with powerful, thundering waves.
The Lighthouse on the way to Cape Point
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| Cape Point |
Frisco has an absolutely gorgeous, wide ocean beach with huge old
sand dunes, so the next day we took Schooner to play on the beach. The beach here is very flat with shallow water,
making for interesting waves. The winds
were beginning to pick up, so the waves were pretty big.
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| Very tall sand dunes |
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| Gorgeous Frisco beach |
Later that day, we escaped the winds hiking in the Buxton
Woods Coastal Reserve, a bit of protected Maritime Forest. It has lovely trails following ancient, relic
sand dunes and overlooking sedges, the lower ground between the dunes, that are
often wet and marshy. The reserve is
part of the largest remaining tract of contiguous Maritime Evergreen Forest on
the Atlantic coast. It also is the northernmost maritime forest containing dwarf palmetto plants. It really is quite
pretty, clambering up and down the heavily wooded ancient dunes. We took the Lookout Loop Trail. To get there you walk about ¾ of a mile down
Old Doctors Road (again, you’d need a 4 wheel drive vehicle at spots to drive). A lovely, quiet afternoon walk. The entrance to the Reserve
is not well marked on Highway 12, and the directions on their website aren’t the
greatest. Should you go, take the Old
Doctors Road entrance and park either in the old family graveyard parking lot or next to the kiosk with the trail map. The other road mentioned in the directions is,
well, a bad choice…
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| Hiking up a relic dune |
A sedge - the low and often wet area between relic sand dunes 
Northernmost forest containing dwarf palmetto
Our first evening at the campground was picture
perfect. The next day we awoke to gale
force winds blowing from the North right across the Sound into our
campsite. Our motorhome shook with the force
of the wind. The Sound was alive with white
crested waves. The winds were supposed
to die down the next day so we thought we would stay at this beautiful campsite
and appreciate watching this actual “force of nature”. The winds became so strong, that we could
barely open our motorhome door against the wind, and one of us had to hold it
open for the other and Schooner to enter or exit. After a long night of listening to the wind
roar and the motorhome rattle, we moved to a more protected, inland campsite. Our last night there was peaceful, while the
wind continued to rage over the Sound.
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| Calm enough to put out our new flag... |
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| Then gale force winds - water being pushed over our road |
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