Southport

And now we journey to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. If you've never been, its an absolutely gorgeous part of North Carolina. While there are your traditional tourist beach areas, its so easy to avoid them here. The Outer Banks is a 200 mile stretch of thin barrier islands along the North Carolina shore line. It's the home of Kitty Hawk where the Wright Brothers flew for the first time, Roanoke where the Lost Colony landed and disappeared, and the home of Blackbeard. It's also the home of 9 lighthouses. There is a lot of history and some very interesting towns.

And so we begin our adventure in South Port. We left Charlotte around 6:30 and arrived in Southport in time to catch the ferry to Bald Head Island. We were there to see Old Baldy, the lighthouse on the island. It's the oldest lighthouse in North Carolina and a grey, patching thing. The coast guard used to whitewash it yearly, but has quit when it was decomissioned that hence the fading. It was 109 steps to the top and a steamy climb it was. The top has a nice breeze where the light used to be. It was decomissioned because of the building of the Cape Fear lighthouse which has a fully mechanized light and can be seen for 24 nautical miles. 

Across from the lighthouse was a great beach access that lead straight out to the edge of the cape. After having my last two vacations being Greece and Hawaii, it was nice to spend time exploring my home state. We stayed in Southport at the Southport Angler Outfitter. If you've seen Nicholas Sparks' Safe Haven, this is the town where the movie was filmed and you can see where we stayed in opening flyover shots of the town. It wasn't quite on the water but there was just moring and marshed between us and the waterway. For dinner we went to Fishy Fishy Cafe. It had great seafood, live music, and sat right on the water. We had a great view of sunset. There was a boardwalk leading out to gazebos where we walked after dinner.