Beach Day

It’s our day off, time to go to the beach. It was starting to get crazy on the ranch, with RVs and horse trailers streaming in from every direction.  Time to get out of dodge.  We headed south, first destination was Holden Beach, one of the barrier islands  on the far south coast of North Carolina.  This one seemed like it would be a little less crazy than the more well-known resort beach towns.

And it was less crazy.  Probably mostly because of the time of year.  Mid-October is probably not the prime beach season.  However, the weather today  was quite nice, almost hot at times so a beach day seemed appropriate.

Holden Beach is composed almost entirely of beach houses, usually three-story, each one, it seems, trying to be a little bit taller than its neighbors.  Some even had a deck on the roof to allow seeing over the others towards the ocean.  Kind of fun to ride around and see all the beach-ey colors on these homes.  It seems that the majority of these are vacation rentals.

It’s always a bit difficult to find parking for an RV in these resort towns, even in the off season, but we found a small beach access parking lot that was nearly empty and I backed the RV into a space that was the least obtrusive.

We took a walk on the beach, enjoying the pleasant day. The beach is big and expansive (perhaps some of this due to the tide), and was relatively empty.  I can imagine in the high season a place like this can get really busy. 

Then after making lunch we unloaded the bikes and biked around the island for a while.  Rows and rows of vacation homes, many of them with their own boat slips opening up into the Intercostal Waterway.  At least it’s not the craziness of lots of high-rises and surf shops.  I find that hard to take.  The bike ride was sane, pleasant, and enjoyable.  We probably would have biked the entire length of the island but the clock ran out on our paid parking space so we had to move on. Plus, it was starting to get a little busier.

Next stop was Sunset Beach.  Same collection of three-story beach houses but much smaller and more low-key.  National Geographic rates Sunset Beach as one of the best 20 beaches in the world.  With that high praise, I expected more traffic and more stringent parking.  However, parking was just wherever you could find a space along the road that wasn’t blocking someone’s beach house (which wasn’t much) and you didn’t need a credit card or an app on your phone to park your vehicle.

Part of the reason the beach-house district is rather small is that half of this island is the Bird Island Reserve, a mostly swampy area with lots of water channels that were not really suitable for boat traffic.  It would have been ideal for a kayak, though, but, due to the lateness of the day, we opted to explore the reserve on foot.  Until we saw someone walking their bicycle back from the beach access.  Here was a bonus: this beach was suitable for bicycles.

So we walked our bikes over the boardwalk access onto the beach.

The Bird Island Reserve is really only accessible by boat on the Intercostal Waterway, or by walking (or biking) the beach from Sunset Beach.  And so we found ourselves doing what we so enjoyed a few years ago on a trip to Hilton Head Island:  riding bikes on the beach.  Better yet, riding electric bikes on the beach.  We both said what we said the first time we hit a beach on an e-bike:

Wheeeeeeee!

It didn’t take long to bike the entire length of the island to the southernmost tip.  We walked around the tip for a while and I found a perfect little sand dollar on the beach.

About halfway between Sunset Beach and the tip of the island, a mailbox sits on a post on top of the dune.  A guy named Frank Nesmith says he and a former girlfriend placed the original "Kindred Spirit" mailbox in a remote location (here) more than 35 years ago. They left a notebook inside, hoping people would leave messages. But they never dreamed it would be so successful.

Over the years thousands have come here to share their innermost thoughts, and to read about the lives of others.  When we got there, we found several notebooks in the box.  We sat on the nearby bench and read a few of the entries.  Anywhere from enjoying the day to pouring out heart and soul can be found in those pages.  And there were a surprising number of entries from today.  Must be a popular thing to do: walk the half-hour to the mailbox to share innermost thoughts.

I put the covers on the bikes when we returned to the RV because of the rain in the forecast.  

Next on the agenda was to seek out something to eat.  The town of Calabash is known for its seafood restaurants.  Deb found one that looked promising so we went there.

We found out that Calabash is also a style of cooking seafood.  Dale’s restaurant uses that style as do many Southern seafood houses and Deb really liked it. So she was wanting a repeat of that meal. We ended up at Captain Nance’s, located right on the waterway and requested outdoor seating.

They had senior specials and they considered “senior” to be 60 or more.  Perfect.  We’ll take the senior platters.  Deb had the shrimp, I had the ocean perch.  And, of course, the first thing that came out was the ubiquitous basket of hush puppies.

Wonderful meal and very fast.  There was no waiting line, even on a Friday night at 6:30, and we were in and out of there in under an hour.

We stopped for the night at a Cracker Barrel in North Myrtle Beach.  So we’re in the middle of the beach-town craziness, but we’re far enough off the road to be relatively quiet.