The island part of the town is mostly made up of lots and lots of beach houses. Most of them sit behind the sand dunes. Like at Sunset Beach, all of the roads that lead to the beach end in a little parking area, with a walkway going over the dunes out to the beach. We picked one of the parking areas, walked across the walkway with Budger, and headed off down the beach. After about a half mile or so, Brad asked if I had noticed the name of the street we parked on. Ummmm.... Nope. Oops. We didn't worry about it till we were heading back. By then, we had remembered that the walkway we had used had a little pavilion at the top of the dunes, and it was a wheelchair-accessible walkway, so that helped us find the correct one. This is interesting... I read that they have beach-wheelchairs (with big fat inflated tires) available for free use, from the city hall.
I looked up some of the many rental houses along the beach, to see what the prices are. I saw them anywhere from $900 a week (beachfront) to over $1300 a night (beachfront). The $1300 one had 12 bedrooms and 12 bathrooms, and could sleep up to 32 people, so divided up, that really wouldn't be that much per night per person.
One thing I noticed, I saw absolutely no sand dollars on this island. Not even any pieces. Don't know why. We also didn't see any of the jellyfish that were scattered along the beach at Sunset Beach... Not even one.
As we walked toward the end of the public access on the beach (at the far end of the island is a private beach club) I saw this house. Most of the houses were set back a bit from the water, and separated from the water by dunes. This house is a little close to the water, even for me! We could tell that water goes up under the house at high tide. My guess is that this house, and the others next to it, were built before there were any building codes.
When we were talking to the lady at the bridge museum yesterday on Sunset Beach, I found out something I hadn't really noticed. Brad had asked her about hurricanes in the area, and she said she'd been around for 20 years, and there hadn't been anything there. People say it's because of their configuration to the ocean. These few barrier islands actually face south as you look out into the ocean. They are in the small little part of North Carolina that faces the south, and as a result, most of the storms end up bypassing them and move on up the east coast.
Tomorrow we move a little farther into North Carolina, to a park in a National Forest.
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