We departed New Jersey by way of a ferry to Lewes, Delaware. It was a quick but choppy ride across Delaware Bay as we continued south on our East Coast Adventure.
Before we knew it we left Delaware behind (blink and you’ll miss it, Delaware is tiny) and we were suddenly in Ocean City Maryland. I’ve never witnessed so many hotels and mini golf courses packed so tightly together, and the strange thing was, there was nobody here. I’m not sure what it is like in the summer, but I’m guessing it’s not pretty if you are looking to get away from it all on your trip to the beach.
East Coast Adventure Video Series, Part 2: Mid Atlantic Coast:
Our destination for the day was Assateague Island National Seashore. Situated on a barrier island, the seashore features white sand beaches and a herd of feral horses that roam freely. We had barely arrived and we ran into a few of the ponies.
They don’t appear to follow the traffic signs.
Consistent with our experiences to this point, even though the campground was open and charging full price, several of the facilities were “closed for the season” I’m still not sure what season is open season, but this wasn’t it. That shower we paid for as part of the camping fee was not to be. It was hardly winter, being April with temps in the 50’s and 60’s. Oh well.
We walked the bay and enjoyed a nice sunset before dinner back at camp.
The next day we left Maryland behind and crossed the Chesapeake Bay on the 17.6 mile long Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Tunnel. Before we knew it we also left Virginia behind and we were in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, site of the first flight taken by the Wright Brothers.
The Wright Brothers Memorial is a must stop if you have an interest in history. It was pretty awe inspiring to see the spot where humans originally took to the sky.
There are stone monuments marking the distances of the four flights the brothers took on December 17, 1903, each one successively longer than the last.
After a night at the (windy) Oregon Inlet Campground at the Cape Hatteras National Seashore we were once again headed south. We planned to stay a couple nights on the Croatan National Forest, and catch up on some logistics during a forecasted storm that was supposed to bring a lot of rain.
And rain it did. Two days of driving wind and rain pummeled the coast. Before the rain we did get out to enjoy a bit of the forest, with nice large loblolly pine mixed in with the hardwooods.
We also visited Fort Macon, which was built in 1826 to protect the Beaufort Inlet. It was captured by the Confederacy during the first days of the Civil War, then recaptured by the Union in one of the first battles that utilized rifled canons, in 1862.
Our rainy wet time in North Carolina drew to a close and we headed south to South Carolina the next day, landing at Honey Hill campground. Honey Hill, located on the Francis Marion National Forest was sunny and quiet, and as a bonus it was free to stay. All the amenities were open as well. In what became a theme for the trip, the price of the campground is inversely related to how much we enjoyed it. Honey Hill was our best overnight spot yet, and we listened to the birds and watched the sun set through the trees.
We had finally found warm weather, leaves on all the trees, and this was about as far south along the east coast as we planned to travel. From Honey Hill we took a turn west and started to follow the South Carolina Adventure Route (SCAR) up towards the Great Smokey Mountains. The SCAR takes you through 1000 miles of backcountry routes through rural South Carolina. We were passing near cities and interstates, but following the SCAR gives you a feeling that you are closer to the middle of nowhere than passing though the massive nearby cities. We were looking forward to slowing the trip down and enjoying the back roads of South Carolina, but things didn’t quite turn out that way. More on that in a minute.
Studying the map on where our route was going to take us, we noticed a National Park we had not heard of before, Congaree. We decided to take a detour, and I’m glad we did.
Travelling the back roads, it took us an entire day to get near the park, and by then we needed to find a place to stay the night again. As was a challenge along most of our East Coast Adventure, your day is somewhat determined by attempting to find a place to camp. We regularly spent over an hour trying to find a place to camp that was also open in April. Public land is not all that plentiful in the east, making camping logistics a bit of a challenge. We did find a nice county park to stay the night at (Mill Creek), and although there were over a hundred sites it was nearly abandoned when we arrived so we sat back and watched the hundreds of squirrels, along with watching one of the largest pruning saws I have ever seen clear the power line right of way.
Congaree National Park is the largest remaining bottomland old growth forest left in the United States. It should have been predictable that with all the rain, the bottomland would be flooded, and yes, it was. That didn’t stop us from enjoying an adventure on the boardwalk above the floodwaters, and in fact I’d guess it made it all the more interesting.
Luckily the meter was on the “low” side.
There were several pileated woodpeckers finding breakfast in rotten logs.
As well as some other wildlife using the boardwalk to keep their paws dry.
Congaree preserves something that was once plentiful, but now very unique. If you are ever in the neighborhood, stop by for a stroll, you won’t be disapointed.
When we returned to the parking lot we had a voicemail. It was Jaque, the guy in Vermont storing our boat for the winter asking what day we would be picking it up. “We’ll be there in about a month when it’s scheduled to be out of storage”, I said. “No”, he said, “It’s scheduled to come out of storage this weekend.” “Well, that is going to be difficult as we are in South Carolina at the moment.” There was silence on the end of the line. This put a serious kink in all our plans. I had the wrong date for when we needed to be back to get our boat out of storage, just a “minor” miscalculation. This changed everything for our trip. We negotiated a slightly later pickup date, but our trip would be cut significantly short. No more taking it easy on the back roads (which we had just started to do that day). We left the South Carolina Adventure Route behind and made a bee line for the Great Smokey Mountains National Park, where we’ll pick up this tale in our next post.
Logistics:
- Toll roads: Cape May, NJ to Lewes, DE ferry was $52, but it saved a long detour and kept us on the coast, the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Tunnel was $14, again, it saves time and a lot of extra miles.
- Camping: We reserved stays at Assateague, Oregon Inlet and Flanners Bay (on the Croatan NF) a day or so in advance through recreation.gov. Even in early spring Assateague and Flanners were nearly full and I recommend getting a reservation. You cannot pay on site at the NPS campgrounds (Assateague and Oregon Inlet), you can only camp there by going online, and service is sketchy at best to make your “reservation” once you arrive, so get one in advance. Oregon Inlet had a “tent loop” that we stayed in as we didn’t want or need hookups, nor did we want to pay for them since we wouldn’t be using them. Other trailers and rv’s were in that loop as well, although we were told (as we were packing up to leave) we couldn’t stay in the tent loop because we were an “rv”. Flanners Bay was about half full, but may have been busier if it wasn’t a near hurricane. Mill Creek County Park was nearly empty, and at the time of our visit seemed like an out of the way spot that must fill up during a different time of the year. There was no way to pay, (no iron ranger, no host) and although the sign said staff would be by we never saw anyone. Honey Hill and the nearby Elmwood hunt camp (we drove through but didn’t stay) on the Francis Marion were both free sites.
- Parks: Fort Macon was free to visit and could easily offer a half day or more of entertainment. The Wright Brothers Memorial and Congaree National Park admission is included with an America the Beautiful Pass. Word of warning though, don’t had your pass over to the girl staffing the entry at the Wright Brothers Memorial. Our pass wasn’t punched with an expiration month, she asked when we bought it, when we told her November she promptly punched in to expire in April, the current month, then handed it back saying “oops”. She then punched November and assured us it wouldn’t be a problem. We couldn’t get a replacement pass. IT must have involved paperwork they didn’t want to be inconvenienced with. We’ll see if we make it to November without a ticket!
- Routes: You can download the South Carolina Adventure Route here: https://scadventureroute.wixsite.com/website/download We uploaded it into Gaia GPS, you’ll need it to in order to follow the route for sure. We also planned to follow part of the Georgia traverse, before we got the news that we needed to be back in Vermont a month earlier than planned. You can find the Georgia Traverse here: https://www.georgiaoverland.com/download.html Between these routes and the Backcountry Discovery Routes further north (future posts) you can manage to get away from it all (or most of it) even on the east coast.
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