We decided to head for North Carolina’s Outer Banks after the 2019 Wally Byam Caravan Club’s International Rally in Virginia. We traveled on a Saturday and some of our friends at the Rally told us about some good back roads we could use to avoid the backlog of traffic heading to the Outer Banks for the weekend. That turned out to be an enjoyable route to kickoff our first visit to the Outer Banks.
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| Welcome to the Outer Banks |
We found the traffic as we pulled in to the Cape Hatteras KOA. The staff was trying to make room for all the RVs that were parked at the camp store to check in. After paying more money for a campsite than we had ever paid before, we were escorted to our site across the street from the dunes separating the campground from the Atlantic Ocean.
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| Our site in the campground |
If you have read several postings from this blog, you know I have struggled with KOA campgrounds. Some are great while others fail to measure up to anything more that a parking lot. This is more of a square peg fitting in a round hole.
For example, the campground is at a great location along the beach. Why distract from the camping experience by cramming as many sites as possible into the space? Our neighbor’s truck was close enough that we could touch it standing in Rosie’s door. (Rosie is our 25 foot Airstream trailer.)
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| The Atlantic Coast off the Outer Banks |
The closeness of the sites and the narrow roads meant we had to plan our exit from the park at the end of our visit. We could only imagine how the rigs bigger than Rosie pulled out of their sites.
This campground may hold some record for having the most families with small children. With more than 500 sites, the park is huge and July is prime time for family vacations.
The campground had many features that would attract families. These included the beach, swimming pool, the playground, the huge jumping pad and the pirate ship.
Speaking of the pirate ship, the park has one on wheels that was pulled behind a golf cart on weekend evenings and weekday afternoons. A pack of kids on bicycles followed the pirate ship as it meandered through the campground during the evening runs.
It was fun to watch the evening pirate parade the first time or two as it rolled past Rosie. The enjoyment waned a couple of hours later as it continued to pass playing its loud “pirate” music and followed by fewer and fewer children. Mercifully, it stopped around 10 p.m.
The afternoon visits had the pirate ship full of kids with super soaker squirt guns drenching anyone foolish enough to cross paths with it while the pirates were aboard. The afternoon pirate attacks ended when the buckets used to reload the water pistols ran dry.
Only a couple roads in the park were asphalt. The remaining roads were very narrow gravel paths. That meant the paved road attracted walkers, kids on bikes and scooters. You have to be very cautious when driving in this park.
There is no shortage of things to do when visiting the Outer Banks. The obvious draw to the area was the beach.
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| Sunset as seen over the Sound |
We both grew up in Florida living near the Atlantic and remarked that these beaches were very nostalgic to us.
Here are some specifics about this campground:
- Our site was gravel and a pull thru
- Our site was slightly off level
- Our site was across the road from the dunes along the beach
- Our site had 30 amp electrical service. You could pay an additional fee for 50 amp service. Our site’s voltage tended to hover in the 108-112 range
- Our site had a water connection
- Our site had a sewer connection
- The park had a popular swimming pool
- The park had a very well used playground
- The park had a jumping pad that was a favorite with the 12 and younger crowd
- The campground had three restrooms we could find. These were probably inadequate for the park’s size and they were normally sandy due to the beach traffic
- The park had a couple of showers for its guests. As expected, they needed to be cleaned
- The campground advised us when we checked in that the WiFi was terrible. That description may have been too optimistic
- AT&T placed two bars of 4G service over our site
- The TV Towers app on my iPhone could not find a TV station closer than 100 miles to our site. The park provided a basic level of cable TV service, but our TV antenna coax cable was only 25 feet and we needed double that to reach the box. Once again, our over-the-air DVR stepped up and provided our entrainment
I started this posting by calling the Cape Hatteras campground a square peg in a round hole. You start to think this is a good campground only to be shocked back into the reality of this being a maxed out parking lot that you couldn’t squeeze another camper in for any reason. After talking to the families around us, our view wasn’t unique. It is a great place to take young children to. If you are traveling without children, you may find the park is not geared towards you.
There must be better choices of campgrounds on the Outer Banks. I think we will hold out for a space in one of the National Park Service campgrounds next time.
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| Bodie Lighthouse |
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| Cape Hatteras Lighthouse |
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| Ocracoke Lighthouse |
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