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| Cape Fear and Frying Pan Shoals |
The third and southernmost major Cape of North Carolina is
Cape Fear, located near the city of Wilmington.
Cape Fear is part of an island, that appears to be named Smith Island, but
is referred to by the name of the village that is located there, Baldhead
Island Village. To call Baldhead Island
“swanky” is to engage in understatement.
We were told by someone earlier in our travels that the houses there
were so costly, that you only buy a quarter of a house. The houses that we saw were pretty special.
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| A Baldhead Island house |
There are no cars on Baldhead Island. You travel there by passenger ferry, leaving
your car in a pay lot at the fancy ferry terminal in Southport. If you have luggage, it is packed into closed
carts that are rolled onto the stern of the ferry. Upon arrival, you are met by a tram with
seats for passengers and luggage wagons that will take you and your bags to the
vacation rental or private club where you are staying. You may call ahead to the grocery store on
the island (which we never saw) and have your food order delivered and unpacked
into your house before you arrive. Your
rental includes access to golf carts to drive around the island.
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| Cape Fear, Frying Pan Shoals, and Royal Terns |
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| Thatsalota Royal Terns |
We rented a golf cart for the day and drove down lovely, tree
lined streets called "wynds" (Scottish for a very narrow street) the length of
the island to reach Cape Fear and the dreaded Frying Pan Shoals. The pointy end of Cape Fear is a huge
isolated expanse of sand, populated by hundreds of Royal Terns, all standing
facing the same way, into the wind. The treacherous, shallow waters of Frying Pan Shoals churned for 20 miles out on the horizon. An
exceptional location for a picnic lunch.
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| Old Baldy Lighthouse |
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| 2 old baldies |
The lighthouse on Baldhead Island (called “Old Baldy”) is
the oldest standing lighthouse in North Carolina and has splotchy, brownish,
stucco plaster. Sadly, we
didn’t have time for a lighthouse tour, we had to catch the ferry home. We saw the lighthouse on Oak Island from the
ferry, but will have to return to visit that one. It was a pleasant ferry ride.
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| On the ferry, preparing to head home |
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| Lighthouse on Oak Island |
We had left chilly Beaufort NC about a week earlier and
raced over to Tennessee to enjoy a visit with our family there. They also had abnormally cold weather with
early morning temperatures around 20.
When we arrived back in North Carolina in Holden Beach, the weather
abruptly changed, and it was finally (almost) warm. The warmth and the presence of palmettos and
palm trees made us feel like we were more in South Carolina than North
Carolina. Of course, Holden Beach is
only a half hour drive from the border so, we were almost in South
Carolina.
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| Our campsite at HBRV |
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| HBRV Tiki Trolley |
We stayed at Holden Beach RV Park, a delightful campground 2
miles inland from the beach. This
campground is expanding with efforts being made to preserve the trees and
shrubs between the campsites as they make new sites. They are building a new pool which will be
spectacular when completed . The
campground has a Tiki Trolley bus that carries campers to the beach, and local stores
and restaurants. A very cute place.
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| A misty, moisty walk on Holden Beach |
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| Holden Golden Memory mailbox and wishing tree |
There was a dense fog on the beach at Holden Beach the first
time we walked there. We had been given
insider advice to reach an end of the beach where Schooner could run free. Other beach walkers emerged out of the grey
mist as they came closer. If you walk to
the very end of the beach there is a Holden Golden Memory mailbox where people
leave love notes, poems and stories. You
can also make a wish by putting a seashell onto the branch of a tree
there. Very romantic. There are three such mailboxes at different
locations on Holden Beach. A similar
mail box on another beach is featured in a Nicholas Sparks novel. When we finally saw the beach in sunshine, it
was spectacular – wide, and flat.
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| Spectacular Holden Beach |
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| Our 5th Ferry - Southport to Fort Fisher |
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| A pelican at Kure Beach |
Further down Ferry Road in Southport from the Baldhead
Island Ferry is the Fort Fisher Ferry, a NCDOT operated automobile ferry across
the enormous mouth of the Cape Fear River.
Even though this was the first warm Saturday in a long time for the
area, this would be our 5th ferry on this trip, so we just had to brave
the potential crowds and take it. The
ride is 35 minutes long, and the ferry departs every 45 minutes. The ferry takes you to an historic Civil War
fort and then beyond to several beach towns and eventually Wilmington. We ate our picnic lunch on Kure Beach, then
turned around and headed home. We
arrived at the terminal just as the 1:30 ferry was leaving. There was a line of cars backed up into the
road for the 2:15 ferry. When we loaded onto
that ferry, there was a line backed up for the 3:00 ferry. A warm, Spring, Saturday… The cost of the
ferry is $7 each way.
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| Our view at Pirateland |
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| Sunrise at Pirateland |
We left Holden Beach and drove a whopping 50 miles to South
Myrtle Beach to spend a few days at Pirateland Family Campground. We had enjoyed the previous Thanksgiving
there with Leslie and her family. We
called the day before to see if they had an open campsite, and told the nice
lady making the reservations to put us near an entrance to the beach. We got a great site, across from one of the
entrances with a beautiful view of the ocean through the gap in the dunes.
Here is a video of a drive down a Baldhead Island wynd.
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