TravelBlog: Bald and beautiful… since 1817!
Where to go… What to do… Who to smell…
DESTINATION: Bald Head Island, NC.
[For Margaret Schneck (one of the two #40,00 winners) who wrote in and asked about what I do on Bald Head Island. She'll be honeymooning there in September!]
Still standing... "Old Baldy" bares the scars of a hundred powerful storms blowing in from the Atlantic from 1817 until now.
If you’ve never been, Bald Head Island is down in the far right bottom corner of North Carolina. It’s the exact the point where the Cape Fear River barrels into the Atlantic Ocean. It’s sub-tropical climate makes it a haven for wildlife of all types. You can get onto the island only by boat or ferry. No cars are allowed. You park them at the ferry landing. Once on the island it’s bikes and golf carts only! Bald Head is a privately owned Island with very controlled development.
Home to the oldest standing lighthouse in North Carolina the beauty of Bald Head Island is the silence. Wind, waves, birds… and more waves. This is one of those “leave the rat race behind” type places. It has a couple hundred dwellings, a small boat harbor, an ancient lighthouse and beautiful, long, empty beaches.
The lighthouse, “Old Baldy,” was built in 1817 and it bares the wounds of a hundred hurricanes and nor’easters. The light is no longer in service but remains a big attraction for island visitors. I’ve talked with people who have jimmied the door open and rode out hurricanes inside the old light. This is actually not allowed… but has happened. The folks who did it figured, “If it’s gone threw every hurricane since 1817, it’ll handle one more.” But let me be clear, this is not allowed. Mostly.
One of the highlights for me is Loggerhead Turtle hatching season from early August to early October. If you log-on to the Bald Head Island Conservancy website they have a running turtle nest count (currently 31). This is a rare island because they have a full time staff dedicated to the preservation of the island’s wild inhabitants and the education of its human visitors. BHI beach is one of the densest Loggerhead nesting sites in the country.
Bald Head's beaches are serene and unaffected.
It’s well worth giving the conservancy a call, 910-457-0089, to find out about the turtle nests and where you might see one hatch (which almost always happens under cover of darkness). Each turtle nest on the island is marked, protected and monitored… and as a nest gets closer to hatching there is sometimes 24-7 monitoring. This is one of the five beaches in the country where they are tagging every adult female nesting on BHI.
The “Who to Smell” on Bald Head is not a person. It’s these tiny Loggerhead hatchlings. Only a small number of the tens of thousands of baby loggerheads hatched along the east coast will live to maturity and lay more eggs. And those few survivors will spend their lives circumnavigating the globe… until pregnancy. Then each pregnant turtle will find its way back to the exact beach where it was hatched decades earlier and lay it’s own eggs there. It is one of the most beautiful stories of earth-creature connections you will ever hear.
For the human creatures there is golf on BHI. But what I love to do in our coastal marshes is Kayak. It’s great fun and very popular on Bald Head Island. It feels like you’re on the other side of the planet. It’s nothing to be afraid of but worth noting, there are alligators living on the island. One great place to spy a gator is at the Wildlife Overlook off Stede Bonnet Wynde road.
If you must got out to dinner for the evening I recommend leaving the island and eating at “The Cape Fear Restaurant” at 101 W. Bay Street in Southport, NC, Ph: 910-457-9222. Fresh seafood at a family owned eatery on the water. Can’t beat it! Southport is the historic fishing village directly across from Bald Head Island. Its claim to fame is one of bloody gore… but the Hollywood kind. Much of the 1997 teen slasher movie “I Know What You Did Last Summer” was filmed here. If you stand on the corner of Yacht Basin Drive and West Bay Street and look toward Bald Head Island, the fish house on that outer-most point is where the creepy man in the yellow fishing suit with the giant hook did his dirty deed. You can walk right in. I have. Met a man there named Ivy Gaskill… a fisherman who kept a live alligator on his boat. But that’s another story…
Well, honeymooners, enjoy the smells of Bald Head Island… MR
Bald Head Island sounds like heaven! I have always wanted to see the loggerheads!
Have I mentioned I can’t wait until your book comes out? :)