In July of 2006, we traveled down the coast of the United States and one of the locations we spend some time was on Ocracoke Island. This was not a scheduled stop, but it turn out to be one of our greatest mistakes.
Ocracoke is a village on Ocracoke Island, part of North Carolina's coastal Outer Banks region. The landmark 1823 Ocracoke Lighthouse overlooks the village and Pamlico Sound.
Set in an early 1900s house, the Ocracoke Preservation Society Museum traces the island’s history.
Nearby, the tiny British Cemetery contains the graves of WWII sailors. Silver Lake is dotted with boats, and shops and restaurants line its harbor. For more about the history of the island, check out our following video.
The only way to get to Ocracoke is by boat (or small plane). Free ferries from Hatteras Island run continuously throughout the summer season to Ocracoke Island; wait times may average one to two hours. During the off-season, the ferry Hatteras ferry runs on the hour.
Now, I want to explain why this stop was our greatest mistake. During our honeymoon, we drove down the East coast of the United States with our final southern location being across the state of Florida and to Sanibel, Island. This travel route took us down the outer banks of North Carolina. If you want to drive this path, there is a ferry that you need to take from Cape Hatteras, to Ocracoke, to Cedar Island to keep going. Little did we know that the ferry from Hatteras to Ocracoke was an extremely busy one, and by the time we got to Ocracoke, we missed the connecting ferry to Cedar Island. Why did we miss the ferry, well, the night before we got in late to Cape Hatteras and was not able to go into the lighthouse. The morning we were to drive down to Myrtle Beach (using the ferry system), we decided to go down to the lighthouse first. Luckily, we found an open room at Captain's Landing, or we would of been spending the night in the car.
Once we got settled into our room, we went next door the the "Jolly Roger, Pub and Marina" to grab something to eat (and figure out what we were going to do since we had rooms booked at places ahead of us on the road).
We then went back to our room, and this is when the greatest mistake happened. Sitting out on the deck of the hotel, the sun started to set. The boats started to come in for the evening, and we witnessed one of the most beautiful evenings we have experienced in a long time. From that point on, we decided to try to push our reservations at the other hotels along the way and try to spend another evening on the island so that we could do some exploring.
The next morning, we got up and decided to go out and do some exploring of the island. This island is where the famous pirate Edward Teacher a.k.a. "Blackbeard" was captured. There is a museum on the island called "Teach's Hole," and of course we had to stop in there and check that out.
For more information about "Blackbeard" and his ghost, check out our following video.
One of the goals of our honey moon was to stop and see as many lighthouses down the coast that we could. This was before we were into the paranormal and ghost hunting. At the time, we had no clue about the paranormal claims surrounding the island and it wasn't until later when we started "Our Haunted Travels" did we realize that a lot of the places that we stopped has some really interesting ghost stories. The Ocracoke Light House is one of those locations, and a very interesting little light house.
If you would like to hear more about the ghost stories and interesting paranormal claims on the island, please watch our following video.
As mentioned a couple of times already, stopping and spending time on this island was our greatest mistake from this trip. We are constantly thinking about trying to get back to the island and spending more time there. If you have been to the island, or would like to visit it in the future, please let us know down in the comments below.
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