Short trip to Carolina Beach ...

One of the big pluses to making this move to North Carolina, aside from being close to Doug, Danika and the kids, is the proximity to the ocean and the numerous beaches.  They are pretty much within a 3-4 hour drive, with some as close as 2 hours.  Not a bad drive at all.  Just hope the coastal storms and the hurricanes don't have too much of an impact over here.

So, now that the Covid crap is over, we feel unencumbered in making day trips and maybe even longer ones.  So, with a pretty good weather forecast for the next week, we thought we would check out the Carolina Beach, an area we had heard so much about from our neighbors and relatives.  Since it was still early season (school still in session) and other people were still not quite ready to venture out, we were able to get hotel reservations at the Hampton Inn on the beach.  Our bags are packed -- lets head out.  Just have to remember that most shops and eating places are closed on Tuesdays.  Don't know if it is because they can't get help or what (lots of them are also closed on Mondays.)

This is a really nice beach.  Just a short walk down the boardwalk and there it is.   (Click on this link for a short video of the beach).  Beach picture 

We took several pictures from our balcony overlooking the hotel decking area, and several shots down the boardwalks.  I wasn't all that impressed with the boardwalk area, but the beach and the hotel facilities more than made up for it.

 

We found some really good places to eat -- one on the boardwalk and one pretty nice place called Freddies.  It was a really small place, no outdoor dining like lots of the beach places, but the food was really good and servings were very large.  No excuse to go away feeling hungry. 

So, what else did we do there -- well, they were actually shooting a movie on the island, just down from the hotel.  It was a teenagers movie (some beach thing -- not like the Beach Boys or Annette F.).  We drove down past it but they weren't shooting at that time.  It was a night beach scene -- hmmmm.

We also drove down the beach to visit the aquarium that was there and then visited a place called Fort Fisher, which was a Confederate fort keeping the port of Wilmington open for blockade-runners supplying necessary goods to the Confederate armies that were inland. It was overcome by Federal troops in January 1865.  

This picture shows the mounds where the gun emplacements were.  They really had a commanding view of the river and the ocean from there.  One other nice thing about Fort Fisher is that there is an Air Force campgrounds there which has camping spaces and cabins which can be rented out by service members. 

So that's pretty much our three day trip to Carolina Beach.  Great time and looking forward to doing this again some time.  We have 3 or 4 more beaches that are on our list to visit so we hope the summer weather holds up for us.

Click on this link to see more pictures of this area.  Additional pictures of the visit to Carolina Beach.

 On these trips, the only worry you should have is if the tide is going to reach your chair.  

Hooah