Fourth of July Road Trip

Since the freshman Wake Forest athletes are moving in this weekend and Chris will be working pretty much non-stop until the end of the spring sports seasons, we decided to take a road trip to the beach for the Fourth of July weekend. Chris was finished by noon on Thursday, so we packed up our camping gear and drove to Wilmington, NC, which is about four hours southeast of here. Our initial plan was to stay at the Carolina Beach State Park.

However, they do not take reservations for their 83 campsites; it is only on a first-come/first-serve basis. Due to a couple of traffic jams resulting from some car accidents on the way, we did not get the park until 7:30 – and needless to say, there were no campsites available. Or should I say there were no green tags identifying available campsites. There were over 15 sites not used because (we assume) some people were paying for sites to save them for friends who were coming later in the weekend.

We ended up at Carolina Beach Family Kampground (any place that spells things wrong for no apparent reason is suspect to me anyway…), but it ended up working out fine. Other than tent locations being less than 10 feet away from your neighbor and having to sleep directly behind the garbage dump, it actually worked out pretty well. (White rectangle = campwide dumpster).

The biggest advantage was that we were able to build a small campfire for cooking purposes only at this site; whereas the state park was prohibiting the use of ANY fires not in a covered grill due to the drought-related fire hazard. I was skeptical that our miniature twig and stone cook-stove would actually cook anything, but we survived the weekend without any illnesses.

We went to the beach on both Friday and Saturday (and unfortunately have the sunburns to prove it – despite using nearly an entire bottle of sunscreen!). The waves were as large as we have ever seen them, and we had hours of fun wave-jumping, body-surfing, and just overall hanging out at the beach.

We saw the Carolina Beach fireworks from a distance on the third, and then drove into Wilmington for what is billed as the largest firework show in North Carolina on the Fourth. We had been using our bikes to toodle all around the state park, so we decided to use them to beat the crowds for the fireworks as well. (And therefore, we were wearing our bike helmets for an appropriate and necessary use - as opposed to extreme packing...)

In true Mike Miles fashion, we parked at a stop sign where we needed to make one right turn to get us back on the main road back to camp. Then, we rode our bikes down to a park on the riverfront where we had prime blanket space for watching amazing fireworks blast from an old battleship, the USS North Carolina. It was amazing – phenomenal fireworks and zero wait time due to traffic at the end! A practically perfect Fourth of July!
(To be continued...)