Last weekend, we decided to go see the ocean. It was too expensive to stay at Wrightsville so we booked a hotel at Southport, somewhere we’d never been before. I was excited to check it out because Safe Haven, the movie based on Nicholas Sparks’ novel, was filmed there.
We drove the three hour drive starting at 7:30am, arriving at the Southport Pier and Waterfront Park. This is a cute area with benches and swings along the waterfront, and fishermen fishing off the pier. There is no shade at all in this area. We walked along it, and continued east along East Bay Street, then walked west to Yacht Basin Drive to eat lunch at Frying Pan. Here you are high up with great views, shielded from the wind by huge windows. We had ok food. Then we walked over to Flava’s for an ice cream. The waffle cone was stale, which was a shame. At this point we had run out of things to do already! So we drove over to Dutchman Creek Playground on the other side of the Intracoastal Waterway. This is an adorable spot, a curved waterfront area with a huge lawn and a large awesome playground. You can watch the little speed boats go by. Idyllic. We drove past South Harbour Village Marina, with boats and modern buildings. We continued on to Oak Island Beach, at Yaupon Fishing Pier. The beach was blown out, chilly (I guess end of April is not the best time for the beach), and the sand was streaked with icky black oil. I’m not sure what this is about, but there seems to be yucky black streaks in the sand on most beaches south of the Cape Fear River. I have noticed this at Myrtle Beach, the beaches near Charleston, and all the way south at Jekyll Island in Georgia. The only beach where I didn’t notice this was on Hilton Head Island- do they bring nice white sand in to Hilton Head Island because of the resorts? North of Cape Fear, such as at Kure Beach, the sand is coarse and golden brown, much prettier. Anyway, we were not impressed at all with the beach at Oak Island, and decided to head to our hotel, HIE Southport, ten minutes away. It was in the middle of nowhere which turned out to be not the best plan. This meant we drove a lot, and we missed nice things like the sunrise or sunset over the water. It was the kind of hotel where you have no balcony and can’t open the window so we couldn’t enjoy the cool spring air. But it was more affordable than a hotel with balcony, so that was the tradeoff.

Our hotel room wasn’t ready, at 1:30pm, so we waited in the lobby, then rested in the room. At 3:45 we headed back into Southport to check out the maritime museum, but found that it was incredibly musty. One step in and we turned around and headed back out the door. We walked around the town a little, past antique shops. A surf shop, Ocean Outfitters, turned out to be more of a souvenir store with tacky tshirts, not cool surf brands. We headed over to Fort Johnson,  the adorable area we had walked on East Bay Street earlier in the day. Cruising on the blue adirondack chairs, we enjoyed the sea wind, but there was no shade. Next, we walked around looking for a place to have dinner. The seating at Dry Street Pizza didn’t look that nice. Two Thai restaurants had a really weird bathroom smell when you walked in. Gee, hard to find a restaurant! So we walked back to Yacht Basin Dr, where we’d had lunch, and ate at Fishy Fishy, on the water. The view of the salt marsh was gorgeous. The food was ok, greasy, but tasted good. Expensive. My husband noticed a walkway on the salt marsh so we checked it out and discovered the most beautiful part of the whole trip, the absolutely gorgeous area along Brunswick Street, with the sweetest houses from the 1870s, looking out on the salt marsh. We walked along the boardwalk called Marsh Walk checking out amazing birds and the fantastic views of the cute buildings along Yacht Basin Dr, where’d we’d eaten lunch and dinner. I wanted to wait to see the sunset over the salt marsh but this was pretty tricky since the sunset wasn’t for another hour. Waiting around proved to be a bad idea- lesson learned about booking hotel in the middle of the action, not way out in the middle of nowhere.

In the morning, we left early to get the Southport Ferry to Fort Fisher, across the Cape Fear River! We arrived fifteen minutes early and then boarded the 8:30am ferry, which you drive your car onto. It was great fun! We enjoyed passing the little sand islands, watching the choppy water, and feeling the warm salty air. The ride is 35 minutes long. Once at Fort Fisher, we drove to the 1921 Fort Fisher Monument, where there are great views of the blue-green water over coquina rocks. If you walk north from there you come to an amazing maritime forest of twisty trees. What atmosphere! A lady was having photos taken of her in belly dancing attire. Across the street you come to Fort Fisher Historic Site, which you can walk around even if it’s closed. This was one of the nicest parts of our trip. We checked out the unusual mounds that look like the set of Teletubbies! We walked to the top of some stairs and checked out the gun. The views here are amazing- so expansive. It reminded me of growing up at Curl Curl Beach in Sydney, where land stretched out endlessly, covered in wildflowers. This was pure joy! After, we drove to Kure Beach which I was excited to see since it had delighted me last year in May. The colorful houses looked as cute as ever. I love them! We parked near the pier and set up a beach umbrella but the middle of the day wasn’t the best time to come since we were so sunburned from yesterday, red as beets. So sadly, we left the beach without me getting my ocean fix. We headed to Fort Fisher Aquarium, and checked out the tanks. It was quite shocking by now how many morbidly obese people we had seen on this trip, almost half the population. We ate lunch at Sea Witch at Carolina Beach, which turned out not to have sea views. It was typical bar food, which we were pretty sick of by now, and were starting to realize why everyone was overweight here, with only greasy choices for meals. We walked along the Carolina Beach boardwalk which reminded us of Myrtle Beach. Under a gazebo, we looked down at the beach which looked way prettier than Oak Island Beach, with blue-green water and nice sand. It was quite a festive scene down there with lots of people enjoying the sun, but we were too sunburned. It would have been better to stay near the beach and come down to the shoreline at sunset or sunrise, to avoid the midday sun. I wanted to visit the cute ice cream shop, Squiggley’s, again so we went there even though we had way maxed out our fat intake for the week. Kure Beach and Carolina Beach have the sweetest colorful architecture. We had run out of things to do at this stage, since we were too sunburned to do outdoor, shadeless activities, so we drove home.