Beach blanket bingo! Ocracoke North Carolina beach camping extravaganza!!

Lookig for a summer vacation that will be specatuclar and wont make you broke. I gotta trip for you.

We will be beach camping for 9 days on the outer banks of North Carolina. You can come down and stay with us for as long or as short as you like. This trip (11 hours driving) is contingent on how many drivers and non-drivers we have...there really is no good mass transit to this place, so all event goers will need to hookup with a driver who is also going. Depending on how many drivers we have, some people who are not driving may or may not be able to go.

Some activities we will be doing are camping, swimming, surfing, wind surfing, kayaking. backpacking a few nights on the uninhabited Portsmouth Island, hanging out in Ocracoke the town etc. We will be staying part of the time in the National Park Service campground on Ocracoke which has toilets and cold showers and has campsites right of the beach. We will also be spend part of the backpacking on the island of portsmouth which has NO facilities and you must brng your own water.

For the National Partk Service campsite on Ocracoke, we will need to reserve a campsite. The cost is 23$ per night per site. Each site can have up to six persons. I have rented another site for myself and 5 others and I will not rent an additional site until I have phone call commitments from people who say they are definitely committed to coming and will pay me back. So if you dont give me your cell number when you sign up, I will remove you from the rsvp list.

These campsites are on a string of islands that reach as far as fifty miles out to sea. The outer banks stretch for about 200 miles and vary in width from a stones throw to a few miles. 130 miles of these barrier islands are under the jurisdiction of the national park service, and are a national park. 56 miles of these islands are uninhabited and are run by the park service.

These islands, inhabited and uninhabited, are unbelievably beautiful. The small villages they do have are separated by miles of open beach. You can wake up in the morning and take a 10 mile “stroll” down the beach if you like and see virtually no-one, and that's on the inhabited islands!

There are countless shore birds, dolphins fifty feet out to sea, giant manta rays jumping out of the waves, giant sea turtles coming out at night laying eggs, pelicans constantly combing the shoreline. At dusk, raptors come out from the fragile coastal woodlands to feed on the shore.

Starting early in the summer, the water is crystal clear and as warm as the Caribbean. It is also one of the premiere places on earth for learning to wind surf or kite board. Also great for surfing and kayaking and observing sea creatures in the many animal refuges along it's shorelines. You will also see sea the tracks of sea turtles from the night before where they crawled from the sea to lay their eggs.

During the night, the skies are unbelievable, there being no light to dim the stars. You will be utterly awe struck but the brightness of the milky way. Watching lighting storms 50 and 60 miles out at sea is also truly unforgettable. On some special nights the wave ocean foam turns blue with the bodies of phosphorescent sea creatures.

The park service runs a campground which has showers and bathrooms. These campsites are all a stones throw from the beach. The uninhabited Portsmouth island has a "camp anywhere on the beach" policy, no facilities and bring your own water.

The drive down is long, but not boring. The eastern shore of Virginia is way cool, especially when you cross the 24 mile bay tunnel-bridge over the Chesapeake Bay at the end. You can’t see the other side when you start. It is really bizarre. Then you drive still further south…

for some nights we will be staying on Ocracoke Island. It has a park service campground which costs $23night/site for 6 people. There is a fun party town on the island called “Ocracoke“ (only town on this 20 mile island in fact), which being the last town in the island chain, has that “end-of-the-road” atmosphere that province town and key west once had, but is also a lot more laid back. It is also situated just north of the first uninhabited island, called Portsmouth.

Here are two google satillite map links so you can see how remote this place is.
google satellite map of Park Service Campground:
http://maps.google.co...

google satellite of un-inhabited Portsmouth Island where we will be backpacking:
http://maps.google.co...

Hope some of you can make it
If you come down here, you will not want to leave when its time to go home..

What you wull need
Beach stuff and backpacking stuff