Dispatches From the Parks: Cape Hatteras National Seashore
The Outer Banks are a bustling hub of tourist attractions. It can get rather exhausting quickly, but if you look in the right places you will find a bit of nature in the middle of all of this commotion. The main source of that is Cape Hatteras National Seashore. Cape Hatteras protects portions of the Outer Banks for not only human recreation but also for habitat for an array of species. The park is separated into three districts: Bodie Island, Hatteras Island and Ocracoke Island. Despite only being at the park for two half days I was still able to visit two of the districts, which made for a fun visit.
My visit began at the Bodie Island district, which is the entrance to the seashore. The main attraction of the district is the Bodie Island Lighthouse, one of the three lighthouses in the park that visitors flock to. Being easy to access from some of the bigger villages in the Outer Banks, it’s one of the most heavily visited areas in the park and I was able to check it out twice. While the structure is quite gorgeous, what really makes this site interesting is the boardwalk behind the lighthouse that gives a great view of marshland that is frequented by herons and egrets. The only other area that I visited in this district was the Bodie Island Marsh Blind, hoping to get some more views of some of the area’s wildlife. It’s definitely something you can skip. The wildlife is much more diverse at the lighthouse boardwalk.
If you continue driving down the Outer Banks, you will eventually get to the next district of the seashore, Hatteras Island. This is a much more diverse section of the park. It’s bigger so that means more opportunities for hiking, but the habitats are also much more expansive. There are large beaches, marshes and even forests. The ecosystem also feels like something from the deep south, and I even saw some wildlife that is more common in the deep south such as a white ibis. In this district of the park, I started off with a visit to Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, which has a pink base that makes it much more distinctive than its sister on Bodie Island. Both of the lighthouse campuses have visitor centers for the seashore. They are both small and quite antiquated, but you can at least meet with a ranger for information and get your park passport stamp if you collect them like I do. From there I went right across the street to hike the Buxton Woods Trail. This is where nature really came alive with a lot of bird calls, insects chirping and even signs warning you to watch your step, so you don’t step on a water moccasin (another species more common in the deep south). I concluded my journey in the Hatteras Island district by walking through a field of dunes to check out the ocean. It was an amazing walk that I would have liked to have ended with a swim in the Atlantic but there was a red flag warning the day I visited due to a storm offshore.
With the short amount of time I had to spend at the park, I was unable to visit the final district of the park, Ocracoke Island, as it is truly an island and can only be accessed by ferry. Despite this I feel like I got a solid experience of the seashore. While you can never truly escape the tourist-y feel of the Outer Banks, Cape Hatteras National Seashore really does provide a diverse sense of nature. The amount of wildlife I saw here was quite memorable and the lighthouses are sights to behold.
