Cody’s blog

Oregon Inlet Campground
12001 NC HWY 12
Nags Head, NC 27959

252-475-9054

November 11 – 17, 2024

I left my previous campground, Chippokes State Park, at around 11 AM, stopping at the dump station on my way out. I got the timing just about perfect, pulling into the single dump station just as the previous RV was finishing up. There were at least two RVs lined up behind me as I pulled up to the dumps. Arrived at Oregon Inlet around 2 PM, having made one stop for gas along the way.

Being a seashore, the campground is mostly treeless and the sites are all in view of each other. So not much privacy but it wasn’t too bad. I’d chosen my site on the outside of the loop because it had trees behind it, so at least one side was blocked off. My brother and SIL had the site across from me and the bathhouse was behind them, so an easy walk to the bathrooms. The showers were more like seaside showers, unheated stalls with pull-chain showers and doors that were open at the top and bottom. Fine for beachgoers in the summer, but not ideal for fall campers when the weather is colder!

On Tuesday, we visited the Bodie Island Light Station, one of three lighthouses in the area. The light house sits in the middle of a field with a white picket fence all around it. You can buy tickets to tour the light house but we just observed from outside. There is a gift shop, where I bought a really nice nylon jacket that kept me warm in the wind, and three small charms of the lighthouses on a carabiner clip, which remains clipped to my bag.

There is also a boardwalk there that leads out to an observation tower that overlooks the marsh and seashore, and back to the light house.

After the lighthouse, we made a stop at a seafood shop, where I bought a bag of seasoned, cooked shrimp; and a Food Lion for other groceries. I had packaged salad mix with fried shrimp for dinner. Delicious, but I was still dealing with having the smoke alarm go off whenever I fried anything (later in the trip, I took the battery out of the smoke alarm). I also discovered that the shrimp I’d bought were still in their shells, so I had to peel and de-vein them before cooking, which I decided made too much of a mess in the van so I put the rest of them in the freezer to use when I got home.

The next day, Wednesday, we drove around Nags Head and other nearby towns. First we looked at the fancy houses along the road next to the ocean.

Then we stopped at a cute little shop called SeaGreen Gallery, which had lots of jewelry and minerals and art made of repurposed materials. I bought a tiny piece of bornite and a carved “happy Buddha.”

Next stop was Sugarland, one of many candy stores lining the main streets. (There were larger ones called Sugar Planet that had even more candy.) It had buckets of various kinds of candies, all sold by weight, so you would just go around filling a bag with whatever struck your fancy. They also had chocolate truffles. I got four truffles and a bag of candy for around $20.

Finally, we stopped for lunch at Fishheads Bar & Grill, located right on the ocean off a fishing pier. Great views and lots of food. We all had baskets of fish & chips with coleslaw. I thought it was good but a bit bland.

Then back to the campground. I had leftover French fries with fruit and candy for dinner.

Thursday we had planned to take a packed lunch to Pea Island, but my brother and SIL discovered a cracked wheel mount on their trailer and stayed home to work on that. While they were dealing with that, I took my van to the dump station, which was located across the road from the campground at the Coast Guard station. I wanted to fill my propane tank as well, since it was getting down to around half full and the weather was getting colder, but I couldn’t find anyplace in reasonable distance that could fill tanks attached to the RV.

Around 4:30 PM it started to rain, and a big storm rolled in at 9 PM-ish. Lots of wind and rain and there was some flooding of low-lying areas near the ocean. My brother said that it was a king tide with 50 mph winds, so lots of water coming onto the shore. Fortunately, our campground was safe. Just lots of wind shaking the van.

Friday was another cloudy and windy day at the campground. I hung out with J&J at their trailer for a while but otherwise stayed at the van. I was trying to save propane and not using the furnace, so the van got kind of cold, low 60s during the day and mid-50s at night. There was another storm forecast for the night.

On Saturday we were off exploring again! We stopped at the Wright Brothers National Memorial, the site of the historic first powered flights. The Visitor Center had lots of exhibits about the Wright Brothers, and a gift shop where I bought another clip with three Wright Brothers charms to go with the lighthouse one I bought earlier. A boulder marked the site of the actual flights, with stone markers showing the landing spots of each of the four flights. Reconstructed buildings showed the garage where the plane was built, and the cabin where the brothers stayed while they were working on it.

A tall monument stood on a hill behind the flight line. A long circular walkway led up to the monument, but we just observed it from the road.

Beyond the monument is a life-sized sculpture representing the day of the flights. There is a reproduction of the plane with one of the brothers piloting it, and various observers standing behind it. It was fascinating to explore!

Next, we visited Jockey’s Ridge State Park, home of the tallest living dune system on the Atlantic coast. We started on the Main Side, where we walked out to an overlook. From there, I walked out into the sand dunes. The scenery was beautiful! Once I’d gotten past the overlook into the dunes, I could easily have gotten lost among the dunes, if not for the many footprints leading out and back! There were people flying kites on a tall dune in the distance, and I came across a marker for the end of the North Carolina Mountains-to-Sea Trail.

Then we drove around to the Sound Side of the park, where you can walk out onto the beach. It was nearly sunset, and the sky looked beautiful over the sound.

We saw the real sunset at the Sugar Creek Seafood Restaurant, where we had dinner. Beautiful views of the ocean and delicious food. I had a shrimp quesadilla with fries and a cucumber salad. Enough left over for lunch the next day. The restaurant had a couple of pretty aquariums and a gift shop inside as well.

For one final stop of the day, we went back to the Bodie Island Lighthouse to take a few pictures of the lighthouse with its LED light on at night.

On Sunday, we split up — my brother and SIL to go on to another park in North Carolina, before leaving their trailer in its winter campground and heading home in an all-day drive in their van. I didn’t want to drive for nine hours in one day, so I headed north, planning to make two more stops along the way and arrive home at the same time as J&J.