We walked to Raj’s home, which was 10 minutes away, and hopped into his car along with Ravi. This was going to be Raj’s first long drive in his Mercedes. As a backup, we had Ravi just in case someone had to take over.
When we said we were heading to a beach, most folks asked if it was the Wilmington one or the Outer Banks. But our destination was further south of Wilmington Beach – Bald Head Island. This was a recommendation from a Nepali colleague who said this was his getaway place, and since most folks staying in Raleigh didn’t seem to know about this place, we decided to check it out.
It was a 3.5-hour drive; we stopped in a Starbucks on the way to grab something to eat for breakfast. We picked some pastry and a sandwich, but strangely, the menu barely had any hot coffee on it – it was loaded with cold coffee and frappe-type drinks, probably because it was the summer.
Around 11:30, we reached the Bald Head Ferry terminal – you have to take a ferry from here to get to the island. What surprised us was that the parking lot was packed with vehicles – were all these people on the island? Parking cost was about $12 and not charged by the hour.
We parked the car, and Ravi carried his laptop – he had a production issue to attend to yesterday night and stayed up the whole night. “When I go out somewhere only there will be a production issue,” he said, bringing his laptop.
The terminal building was pretty cool – there was a restaurant, restrooms, the ticket counter where you bought return tickets (about $20 per adult); ferries were there every 30 minutes – in the summer, they start from 6 am or so and run till late at night. The terminal felt a bit like a little airport.
We took the ferry at 12 – this was a fairly large ferry. We sat on the top, in the open, enjoying the ride. As we entered the dock, we saw a couple of folks holding boards welcoming their friend or a family member who had returned from rehab.
Motoring on the island
My colleague had said that you could rent cycles and go around the island, but we also spotted golf carts for rent and decided to take that since 4 of us could go in one vehicle. On Bald Head Island, there are no other vehicles that you’d see – it’s bicycles and golf carts. For the golf cart, they charge you for the day – so you don’t need to worry about timings; about $90 for the 4-seater one we picked. But we did see more luxurious types, like fully closed six-seaters, which would cost more.
We had a map of Bald Head Island for reference. No real plans or ideas on where to go to – off we went with Raj motoring along. Fairly simple to use – just accelerate and break, and there was the ability to switch into reverse gear using a button below. Raghav, eager to drive, took over from Raj and drove as fast as possible – but there’s only so fast you can drive the cart! There was a main road with trees on either side that made for a pleasant drive and branches off the main road, but we just stayed on the main road – planned to reach one end of the island, which was marked on the map as ‘Point of Cape Fear’ where there was public beach access. There were a lot of pretty houses near this spot – especially the ones just by the waters. Seemed like a really good place for a vacation – not sure if there were Airbnbs here but this would be a perfect getaway from the city.
We parked our cart on one side of the road, beside a few others, to get to the beach. We had to walk across a really long boardwalk from the road towards the beach – finally, we saw a bit of a crowd, but since the area was large, it didn’t feel crowded. The beach was clean, and the water was a clear blue – there was a smaller beach a little off the main beach – maybe it was a slightly high tide that led to parts of the low-lying land connecting the two beaches getting submerged. We crossed over to the other beach by wading through the waters – I wasn’t in shorts but waded through in my pants. We spent about an hour on the beach – clean sand, the vast ocean in front of us and the pleasant sound of waves. Couples and families were enjoying the beach. Something unique here was that you could see waves coming from two different directions converging at the edge of the beach – there was even a slight difference that you’d notice in the colour of the water coming from either side.
“Walk towards that side, and you’ll get to Spain. Walk that way and can go to London,” Raghav said.
We were on the edge of Bald Head Island and on the waters of the Atlantic Ocean – just endless blue above and below. Quite a sight – clean beaches are always a lovely setting to simply soak in the atmosphere.
As we walked back towards the road, my pants dried up – it was that sunny! And Ravi got a call about some issue that was running. Fortunately, he didn’t have to log in; he just needed to be on the call. With so many golf carts parked, figuring out ours took a while!
We headed to a restaurant in the central part of the island. Raghav noticed a board that said pizza, and being a fan of Italian cuisine, he wanted to get one. But the staff said the board was for another joint further down the road. Since we were already running late, we decided to stay in the same place – Raghav was a veggie, and at times, that can be a bit of a challenge – over here, he found a cheese sandwich in the kids’ section of the menu. We enjoyed a typical Western lunch with sandwiches, burgers and fries – we tried a dessert, but that was a massive slice of cake that was a little too sweet for all of us.
For those coming here, if you have restrictions on food, not a bad idea to bring some food to the island. There are a few other restaurants on the island, but we didn’t check them out.
After lunch, we motored along the other main road – there are just two main roads which pretty much cover the circumference of the whole island. Because it would take us 30 minutes on the ferry and another 3 hours to return home, we decided to take the 3:30pm ferry. You can easily spend another 2 or 3 hours on the island – there was a lighthouse that we spotted, there were a couple of other places for food as per the map and possibly a few more things to do – public beach access is there in multiple points around the island – the one we went to is just one of them.
Though there is a large Indian community in Raleigh, we didn’t see any today – neither on the ferry nor on the island. The island is a little far from the city but a really good getaway to take a break from the daily routine – and not having any other motorized vehicles added to the island’s charm.
You tend to see a lot more SUVs and larger vehicles in the US than in India; same was the case in this parking lot – and Raj’s C300 Mercedes looked tiny since it was flanked by a Toyota and Mercedes SUVs. We saw a notice board nearby that read, ‘There may be alligators in the area.’
I ended the day having a home-cooked Andhra dinner at a friend’s place – it was a feast since they had cooked quite a lot.
Map of the island: https://media.scurto.net/1033/Uploads/Locator%20Map.pdf
Official site: https://www.baldheadisland.com/