by Heather Wolf Murphy

Like a dream, you notice the sound first. A dull, blowing noise provides a constant hum, randomly interspersed with the varying pitch of bird calls near and far. The soothing, rhythmic crash of gentle, rolling water becomes recognizable.

You don’t need a plane or boat to reach this seaside paradise. Simply drive to North Carolina’s coastal barrier islands, the Outer Banks, where a secret treasure remains largely undiscovered: the National Park Service campgrounds. Usually filled to capacity during Fourth of July and Labor Day, most of the season the campgrounds are largely vacant for camping.

Four NPS campgrounds, Cape Point, Oregon Inlet, Frisco and Ocracoke, offer something unique: the opportunity to sleep surrounded by natural beauty on the Hatteras National Seashore.

“It’s spectacular,” National Park Service Seasonal Park Ranger Chris Mullen said. “It feels like an island in the middle of the ocean.”

In the 1930’s, less than one percent of U.S. beach was federally protected. But Hatteras pioneered the preservation of beach ecosystems when it became the first protected coast in the United States.

Cape Point
At his station on Hatteras Island, the elbow of the Outer Banks and the farthest point from the mainland, Mullen guides visitors to the island’s most famous attraction – the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse.

Cape Point campground is closest to the lighthouse and can be reached only by a road skirting the perimeter of the nation's tallest beacon. The campground is a favorite of fishing enthusiasts who covet its neighboring proximity to Cape Point, which The Insiders’ Guide to the Outer Banks called “one of the hottest surf-casting spots on the Outer Banks.”

It’s also a favorite of wind surfers and kiteboarders who flock to nearby Canadian Hole, a small, natural cove where conditions are ideal for extreme water and wind sports.

Oregon Inlet
Like Cape Point campground, Oregon Inlet campground offers little terrain variety but a one-of-a-kind location. Situated further north on the Outer Banks, Oregon Inlet lies at the southern end of Bodie Island, where the chain of Outer Banks barrier islands break and the brackish Pamlico Sound waters mingle with the Atlantic.

Bodie Island is home to another Outer Banks’ lighthouse as well as nature trails and a marina, popular to the deep sea fishing charters that traverse Oregon Inlet daily to hunt massive marlin and tuna.

Visitors can access Coquina Beach, home to the ruins of the Laura A. Barnes, shipwrecked in 1921. Known as the “Graveyard of the Atlantic,” the Outer Banks’ shallow waters and dark coastline have a deadly past with at least 1,000 shipwrecks recorded off the coast since Europeans began to explore the area more than 400 years ago. If you choose to stay at Oregon Inlet campground, you can explore the Barnes and other local shipwrecks sometimes hidden by shifting sand.

Despite the area’s historical draw, Mullen has a different theory about its popularity.

"It’s close to Nags Head and all their restaurants and shops," he said.
Just 10 miles separate visitors from the commercially developed Nags Head section of the Outer Banks.

Frisco
Farther south than the lighthouse and Cape Point campground lies Frisco campground, the jewel of NPS campgrounds on the Outer Banks, according to Mullen.

"Frisco is the nicest campground," he said. "It’s the largest, most secluded, with views of the ocean.”

Campsites nestled throughout the dunes provide the most campsite privacy on the Outer Banks. Also, there are not many man-made attractions nearby, so those who are looking to really get away will find nature’s escape at Frisco.
 
Ocracoke
For a unique Outer Banks vacation, visitors can continue south to the southern tip of Hatteras village and drive onto one of North Carolina’s free year-round ferries for a 40-minute ride farther south to Ocracoke Island, where time seems to be frozen at least 100 years in the past.

Locally owned and operated eateries and artists’ galleries dot narrow streets that look more accustomed to horses and wagons than cars.

"If you want to relax, [Ocracoke] is a small, mellow island that has maintained its quaintness," Gail Fox, a locally stationed NPS park ranger said. "It’s very different from the rest."

Because its isolated and protected, Ocracoke provided a hideout to pirates and confederate forces as well as a target for German U-boats.

Visitors relive the island’s sordid past at the Ocracoke Preservation Museum and various historic sites. The oldest lighthouse in North Carolina and the second oldest in the country is here, which some say is haunted. NPS interpretive programs are popular, especially lectures about pirate history, since the famous pirate Blackbeard was killed here.

"You can walk from ocean to sound in less than five minutes," Fox said. "There is a nature trail in the maritime forest. The elevation changes as you walk on a carpet of pine needles to see views of the sound."

Here, birding enthusiasts find many species to keep their binoculars glued to their eyes. Also, a nearby pond offers sites of turtles and snakes. Crabs and other shore dwellers wait as well, just over the neighboring dunes on the beach, voted second best in 2005 in the United States by Dr. Stephen P. Leatherman, also known as Dr. Beach.