June Road Trip 2013 - Ocracoke, NC to Surf City, NC

After leaving the Ocracoke Campground, we decided to stop at the Ocracoke Coffee Co., which is a great little coffee shop in town.  We were heading to the ferry to take us to Cedar Island, NC, at 10:00.  We shared an amazing smoothie called Jah Makin' Me Crazy and also a piece of lemon poppy seed blueberry coffee cake.  That also was incredible.  I would have liked to try many things on that menu - we'll have to visit again!

The line for the ferry was a lot shorter (we had to make reservations for this one).  It was a nice ferry - the upper section was an air-conditioned seating area.  We decided to eat our other apple ugly from yesterday on the ride over.  It takes 2 hours and 15 minutes.  You disembark in Cedar Island, NC, and we drove to Beaufort, NC, from there.  We walked around Market Street and checked out some shops, but weren't really hungry enough to eat anywhere yet (go figure...lots of pastries already today!). 

Not knowing where we were going to stay that night yet, we continued our drive along the coast.  First we drove along route 58 and checked out Atlantic Beach and Emerald Isle. Then we had to head inland, and finally headed south along the coast again along route 210 to look at North Topsail and Surf City.  Of all the beaches we saw today, the ones here (Surf City) reminded us most of the Outer Banks.

We ended up finding a campground just over the bridge from Surf City called Lanier's Campground. We checked in there and then went to get something to eat. This was not a fun camping night - it rained - hard... and for a long time. I woke up at 1AM and by that time the pop-top was already very wet.  So, we really couldn't put it down.  Doug said it would be fine as long as I didn't touch it.  I was up on and off all night afraid the rain would leak in.  It did, but just a little bit.  We will be getting a rain fly from Go Westy before our next big trip in Sandy!  The funny thing is, we didn't really think to check the weather forecast because we haven't really had this problem before!  We will be checking that from now on!