Do you have a favourite campsite?
That is a really tough question. I have a lot of favorite campsites, or at least a specific favorite at every place I visit repeatedly. Hell, I have favorites at places I’ll probably never see again. Views, sunrise/set, privacy, breeze, ease of landing, etc. Sometimes that is situational to the type of place or terrain, like a prevailing breeze to knock the bugs down, or afternoon shade in the desert, or privacy when I just want to be alone.
One of my favorite off-season sites is a whopping two mile paddle away from the launch. Hammocks Beach State Park in North Carolina, site #12.
https://files.nc.gov/ncparks/maps-an...-paddlemap.pdf
The paddle in sites on Bear Island are a scant 2.5 miles from the mainland, across a fairly protected marshland route. Tide matters though. Wind too, it’s the NC coast. Get both of those wrong and it’s a long couple of miles.
There are 11 sites along the beachfront, or at most one dune behind. Those are some of the nicest paddle-in
beachfront sites in the mid-Atlantic region. But, there is no natural shade, little wind protection and not much in the way of trees for hammocking there at Hammocks Beach.
Still awesome beachfront sites with the right prep and gear, and the “No campfires” rule means the windswept sand is clean and not festooned with charcoal bits. Beachfront site camping at Hammocks is novel.
http://s1324.photobucket.com/user/Jo...?sort=2&page=1
However, if the peculiar rigors of beachfront camping aren’t your thing there are 3 sites along the paddle-in route, all very different from the beachfront sites, and all different from each other. Those three are all a ½ mile paddle to the beachfront, convenient for a visit to the Atlantic (easier to paddle than walk over, and a good beach for shells), and all have easy proximity for day paddling the Maritime Forest and etc on Huggins Island.
http://swansborohistory.blogspot.com...ns-island.html
Those 3 sites:
Site #14 is a big open site surround by trees. It can seem damp and dreary on overcast days, but it is the shadiest place at Hammocks Beach and the best single site for multiple (3 - 4+) tents. Unfortunately, while most sites at hammocks are pristine #14 can be a bit trashy from inconsiderate groups and hard use.
Site #13 has two distinct levels. The bottom level is backed against a very tall (and very steep) dune to the west for afternoon shade; the upper level is atop that towering dune. East facing for morning sun, and the view from the top floor is amazing, looking out from high above the beachfront and far into the Atlantic ocean horizon.
Site #12 is my barrier island jewel. A shady grotto encircled by a grove of stunted live oak, backing a level sandy clearing with room for tent, tarp, chair and kitchen. Easy landing, either directly at the site at high tide, or 50 feet away at low.
I like watching tidal landscape changes, and the tidal difference at site #12 is spectacular. It is situated near a shallow sandbar in the narrows of the approach to the beachfront. Since that approach fills and drains an inner-island “lake” it can get fast flowing midway in the tidal twelfths.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_twelfths
Just watching the water rush in and out can occupy me for hours, and that narrow approach looks totally different at low tide than it did at high. I love it when I stay put and the landscape around me changes, or I can taking a progging explore, walking & wading ankle deep along the low tide channel on firm packed sandbars. Trippy different throughout the day, like moving camp without ever packing up.
BTW, the birding at Hammocks Beach can be magnificent, even outside the Atlantic flyway migration. From an old November trip report:
“Sitting motionless in the chair reading I noticed something moving fast in my peripheral vision and glanced up to catch a glimpse of a small accipiter, Sharp-shinned or Coopers, coming in on a glide path at 12 o’clock, aimed straight for my head. He (she?) pulled up at the last second and landed a few feet behind me in the live oak grotto.
I knew the instant I lifted my head it would take flight, and it did, but it is the closest I’ve been to a wild hawk since mist netting in the 70’s.
That would have been the bird highlight, even with the constant view of something aflight, osprey, marsh hawk, eagle, egret, heron, and sundry warblers. But at one point I heard a splashing and crashing of water and arose from my hammock recline to look down the low tide inlet.
A mixed flock of everydamn thing – gulls, cormorant, egrets, herons and etc – has gathered into a dense mass and is driving a school of small fish up the inlet into the shallows.
The cormorants were the herding pros and would line up 6 or 8 abreast across the shallow inlet in front of the rest of the flock, beating the water with their wings, driving the school of fleeing fish further and further into the shallows until it looked like the water before them was boiling”
This was one of the coolest ornithological things I have ever seen, especially the diversity of specie involved.
#12 at Hammocks Beach is an awesome site, in an odd and curious place with an odd and curious history; from pirates to Rebel fortifications to early governor’s abode to a NY surgeon’s privately own hunting island, willed by him to his local hunting Guide, willed by said Guide to the Black NC Teachers Association during Jim Crow, eventually taken over by the State as an early “Blacks only” segregated State Park to today’s off-season canoe-in gem.
That’s a lot of history on a couple specks of weathered, shifting sand.
Paddlein on a high but falling tide, back out on a rising one. If you need more of a challenge than a 2.5 mile marked trail with the current going your way just reverse the tides and pick a windy day.
Camper Caveat: Camp Lejune is adjacent. That
isn’t thunder, it’s artillery. Those
are in fact Osprey flying in formation, but they are the tilt rotor kind. And that distant vee in the sky may get loud when it becomes a flight of Marine helicopters thundering overhead.
That uncommon overhead display is an awesome treat to witness once you tune out the distant boom of artillery. And cannon fire has been going on at Bouges Inlet since the heyday of piracy.
Maybe I do have a favorite among favorites.
