Mad Hatteras

Road to Cedar Island

Our ferry pulling into Cedar Island

Carolina Beach set the pace for the segment for our Outer Banks experience. We only had a few hours to catch the early afternoon ferry...the first of two boats required to reach Cape Hatteras. This roadway out into the far reaches of the Atlantic Ocean is another world or at least one that is very foreign us desert dwellers. Many bridges links these small island communities together and if that isn't enough, you must drive onto a couple boats to complete this crescent shaped tour.

Sharon enjoying the ride

Cheeky taking her first boat ride

Our first destination is Cedar Island. There we drove onto a car ferry for a two hour twenty three mile voyage. Then we disembarked at the port of Ocrecoke, had a less than palatable lunch and drove approximately 20 miles to the port on the other side, drove onto another car ferry for a one hour, ten mile voyage to Cape Hatteras.

Ocrecoke Island coastline

Hatteras is a sleepy unique remote sea village. I stopped for some petrol and asked a local on the other side of the pump where a good camp ground would be located. After a long discussion on every option within a hundred miles, he suggested Frisco Beach where the road to it was right across the road where we stood. Winding our way through the sand dunes, past the airport, we arrived at the entrance where once again we arrived to late for personal service so we had to go through the exercise of late registration. Not every park is the same when using the late check in and this park had a real clumsy system, one that required us to pick up our tent and move it to another site about 50 yards away after I discovered our first one was reserved but it was just as nice. This camping area was different than any we've ever camped. Every site was nestled into the sand dunes with scrub brush vegetation serving as privacy and wind break. Setting up camp was quick and dinner came soon after. The only real draw back to this site was the showers only had cold water which meant we didn't shower that evening. Once again the temperature was perfect and soon we drifted of into dreamland.

The ambiance was great but the food sucked