{"id":666,"date":"2011-10-22T18:58:30","date_gmt":"2011-10-22T22:58:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/?p=666"},"modified":"2011-10-22T23:32:33","modified_gmt":"2011-10-23T03:32:33","slug":"island-1-wrightsville-beach-north-carolina","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/?p=666","title":{"rendered":"Island #1: Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Source: http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/thosemoose\/234738428\/<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Situated just east of Wilmington, North Carolina, in the southern part of the state, Wrightsville Beach<\/a> is a narrow island about four miles long. Year-round, it has about 3,000 residents, but swells to more than 10 times that during the summer months.<\/p>\n

In this series, many of the islands I will feature, including Wrightsville Beach, are long and narrow in shape, separated from the mainland by the Intracoastal Waterway (the ICW). The ICW, which runs not only the length of the Carolinas but through most of the East Coast and beyond, was dug out by the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers to provide a waterway more easily navigated than the Atlantic. These long, narrow islands are often called barrier islands, in part because they help to protect the mainland from storm surges as well as to provide ideal conditions for the wetlands located between the Atlantic and the mainland, which are a crucial part of our ecosystem. The aesthetically pleasing aspect of barrier islands is that their narrow make-up lends itself to water views, either of the ocean or of the ICW, both beautiful in their own right. Wrightsville Beach is one of the many Carolina islands with an abundance of water views.<\/p>\n

If you visit during the summer or during fall and spring weekends, it will be both crowded and bustling with tourists. But overall, it has a much more residential feel to it than beaches like Myrtle Beach or the more popular Florida beaches, for instance. Once you cross over the bridge onto the island and turn off of Causeway Drive heading north or south on the island, it is largely residential.<\/p>\n

More than anything, the island is comprised of homes of varying sizes, but there are some hotels, like the Holiday Inn Resort<\/a>, Shell Island Resort<\/a>, and the Blockade Runner Beach Resort<\/a>. Several stores and restaurants line Causeway Dr., and a few are scattered throughout other parts of the island.<\/p>\n

In fact, the best way to visit the island, especially if you are traveling as a family or a group of families, is to stay in a house or cottage. Houses tend to be packed close together on small lots, but houses of all sizes are available to accommodate most groups. Many of the local rental companies, like Intracoastal Vacation Rentals<\/a>, Bryant Real Estate<\/a>, and Wrightsville Sands Realty<\/a> offer a variety of rental homes, and of course by owner sites like VRBO<\/a> can also oblige.<\/p>\n

Wrightsville Beach also gets decent waves, so surfing is popular. In fact, during the summer they even offer surfing classes<\/a> for children and adults. Many of the other popular water sports are available as well. And if you prefer to keep yourself on land but want exercise, The Loop is a 2.5 mile walking path that takes you over the bridge and right by some parks.<\/p>\n

Beach-wise, the water is oftentimes varying shades of blues and greens, rather than the darker, brown or almost colorless waters of some of the coastal areas. The light tannish sand isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t powdery, yet it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s soft on the feet and good for castle-building.<\/p>\n

If you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re looking for a place to eat, there are many good restaurants, but I have two recommendations. In Part V of A Carolina Island Life: How It Came To Pass<\/a>, I mentioned that LCB and I slowed down for an evening during our research trip to the Carolinas and ate a late-night dinner on a pier with the Atlantic under our feet. That restaurant was The Oceanic<\/a>. At night, dining on their pier by moonlight was, for me, nothing if not intoxicating. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hard to believe it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been more than ten years since that night when we walked the beach afterward, contemplating a future life in coastal Carolina which, in the end, actually came to pass. At any rate, if you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t eat on the pier, request an ocean view table, of which they have many. If, on the other hand, you prefer the ICW and boat watching, we liked The Bluewater Waterfront Grill<\/a>, which is ideally located on the water right after you cross over the bridge onto Harbor Island, the small island between the mainland and Wrightsville Beach.<\/p>\n

Oh, and if you are a history buff, Wrightsville Beach has a fascinating history that can be explored via books<\/a>, locals and the Wrightsville Beach Museum of History<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If you feel discombobulated without a mall nearby, rest assured that there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an outdoor mall<\/a> about five minutes from the island, with various chain stores and restaurants as well as a movie theater. And historic downtown Wilmington is also only a hop, skip and a jump away, offering an abundance of quaint shops and restaurants with all manner of good food, including seafood, Southern cooking and everything in between. Many of these shops and restaurants line the banks of the Cape Fear River. The city boasts carriage rides<\/a> and trolley tours<\/a>, as well as the Battleship USS North Carolina<\/a>, a serpentarium<\/a>, and various historic home tours. Also nearby and open for tours is Screen Gem Studios<\/a>, where large numbers of movies and TV shows are filmed.<\/p>\n

If you want to get away from neon-light-clad touristy areas, but you still want your conveniences close by, Wrightsville Beach might just be the place for your next getaway.<\/p>\n

Or, it might just be your future hometown.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Situated just east of Wilmington, North Carolina, in the southern part of the state, Wrightsville Beach is a narrow island about four miles long. Year-round, it has about 3,000 residents, but swells to more than 10 times that during the summer months. In this series, many of the islands I will feature, including Wrightsville […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[512,105,100,465,622,620,621],"class_list":["post-666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-islandlife","tag-beach-mom","tag-island-life","tag-island-living","tag-island-mom","tag-visiting-the-carolina-islands","tag-wrightsville-beach","tag-wrightsville-beach-vacation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}