In 2020, John and I both had Juneteenth added to our list of company holidays. Over the last few years, it’s been neat to learn more about it and find ways to celebrate it that feel honoring. This year, Juneteenth was observed on a Monday, so we took the opportunity to stay overnight at the North Carolina coast and visit Hammocks Beach State Park on our day off. It was a delight (and uniquely fitting for Juneteenth), and I’d love to tell you about it!
Hammocks Beach appeared on our radar pre-kids, when John turned it up as a contender for our annual camping trip. There are primitive camping sites on the island, but the logistical hurdles seemed a bit steep, so we put it on the back burner.
In 2019, I read an article in my favorite North Carolina magazine about the history of Hammocks Beach. In short: a (white) neurosurgeon and a (black) wilderness guide became friends in the early 1900s. Sharpe (the neurosurgeon) bought the property – 4,600 acres! – and hired Hurst (the guide) to manage the land. The families became close, and in the 1940s, toward the end of his life, Sharpe offered the entire property to the Hursts.
Instead of accepting, they forged a new plan together: in 1950, they deeded the property to the North Carolina Teachers Association, an organization of black educators and community leaders. From the article: “Because of segregation, African Americans were banned from public beaches in the state, including parks for which they paid taxes. [This plan] would honor teachers and give black schoolchildren and families in the state access to one of North Carolina’s most beautiful beaches.”
In 1961, Bear Island became a state park for African-Americans. The 1964 Civil Rights Act banned segregation in all parks, and though for several years afterward it continued to be a destination primarily for black families, it’s now enjoyed by all North Carolinians.
A fitting destination for Juneteenth, no? And what a beautiful beach it is! John and I could NOT get over the color of the water – it truly felt like we were in the Caribbean. We loved our trip, but there are a few helpful things to know if you go…
Where to stay at Hammocks Beach State Park:
Aside from the primitive camp sites, there are no accommodations on Bear Island. We opted to stay at the Hampton Inn in the nearby town of Swansboro (photos directly above from in town). It was $170 for two adjoining rooms (so nice to have when traveling with kids!). We usually stay in Airbnbs when traveling, so the hotel breakfast was a special treat for our kids :)
Swansboro is a cute waterfront town. After arriving on Sunday afternoon, we walked the main drag, ate dinner right on the water at Saltwater Grill, shared ice cream cones, and even caught some of an outdoor concert set up in the center of town.
Boarding the ferry and pulling away from the mainland
How to get to Hammocks Beach State Park:
This is part of the fun! Bear Island – the 4-mile-long, undeveloped barrier island that’s the centerpiece of the state park – is accessible only by the park’s passenger ferry or by paddling a canoe or kayak. You can find the ferry schedule here. When we visited, ferries left hourly from the mainland and from Bear Island, offset by half an hour. A round-trip ticket was $6 for adults and $4 for kids (Annie was free, but also needed a ticket).
There are no advanced reservations and timed tickets are sold on a first come-first served basis. Since we were unsure of how hot demand would be for tickets, John opted to drive to the park office when they opened to buy tickets for the 10:30 ferry (it was only a 5-minute drive from the hotel, so not an inconvenience!). We probably also would have been fine arriving 30 minutes or so early, but our ferry did seem full.
The 15-minute ferry ride, which winds through pristine marshland, is beautiful!
What to know if you go to Hammocks Beach State Park:
It’s a half-mile walk from the ferry landing to the beach, so you’ll be hoofing it there and back. We all carried something on the walk!
Wagons are allowed on the ferry at the discretion of the boat captain. We did not bring one.
There is a concession stand and bathrooms on the beach. The concession stand has cold drinks, novelty ice cream, chips, and maybe some heartier food? The prices are adorably low: an ice cream sandwich was $.50.
There are no trash cans, so you’ll need to pack out any trash.
Like most beaches, there is very little shade (duh). Sunscreen is important!
When we arrived at the beach and set up our spot around 11, we were dismayed to be swarmed by small biting gnats. We opted to take a long walk down the beach first thing to avoid them, which worked well. By the time we were back at our things an hour later, the wind had picked up and sent the gnats packing. So maybe morning isn’t the best time to visit?
What to do at Hammocks Beach State Park:
Bear Island is absolutely gorgeous! Pristine really is the perfect word to describe it. Our kids (6, 3, and almost 1) enjoyed walking on the beach, hunting for shells (we found whole sand dollars!), digging in the sand, and wading in the water (which was a balmy 80 degrees when we visited in June). We picnicked, we got ice cream sandwiches, and we even saw three dolphins surfacing just offshore!! Highlight of the day for sure. The ferry ride itself was another highlight!
What to bring to Hammocks Beach State Park:
With three young kids at a remote location, there were a few helpful things we brought beyond the beach basics:
Ergo | John carried Annie for the walk to and from the ferry and up and down the beach. She fell asleep while we beach combed, which was a great way to sneak in her morning nap.
Shibumi shade | This was only our third outing or so with our Shibumi, and my personal jury is still out for the price. But it is a snap to put up and gets major points (especially on this trip) for being light and easy to carry.
Cooler backpack | We packed gear in the top and our water bottles and Jersey Mike’s subs in the cooler compartment on the bottom.
Beach toys | Definitely worth the space!
Cash | For the concession stand.
Folding chairs | For the parents. Kids sat on towels, ha.
Sun hats for everyone | And lots of sunscreen.
My fellow North Carolinians, Hammocks Beach is totally worth adding to your NC bucket list! We loved our day trip and hope to be back. In the meantime, I’d love to hear: if you’ve observed Juneteenth, how have you celebrated?
P.S. More adventures here and more North Carolina here.
Are we getting soft in our old age? Perhaps. But for year ten of camping with our friends – ten years of wide-open wonder and crisp air and melty s’mores and fireside chats, but also packing and hauling and uncomfortable backs – we opted to celebrate in style, with a glamping weekend at Gold River Camp at the edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains, near Marion, NC. It was a delight. And you’re darn right we had matching tees. I’d love to share a few photos, if you’d like to see!
We arrived to Gold River around 5pm on our early June weekend. It’s a small, private campground that’s only about a year old; they offer cabins, RV sites, yurts, platform tents, and traditional campsites. Booking is all through Airbnb. The owners are onsite, but interaction is minimal (we unlocked our cabins with a code). We stayed in the Bower and the Cottage, which are connecting “cabins” – ours was one open room with a bed, a futon, and a bathroom with a shower; the Ray’s side had a living room area with a futon, a separate bedroom, a bathroom with a tub/shower, and the teeny kitchen. I put cabins in quotes because they’re really more like tiny houses – not a log in sight :)
The beautiful thing about not having to set up camp the way we usually do? We could start exploring right away! And there’s lots to explore at Gold River. The kids made a beeline for the creek, and though that was definitely a highlight of our stay, there were also Eno hammocks, Adirondack chairs, fire pits, and tables and chairs dotted around the property for anyone to use. (Less glamorous but maybe more important: trashcans were also always nearby – and were emptied multiple times throughout each day – which was convenient and appreciated.)
For dinner on Friday, we threw together spaghetti, sauce, and meatballs, frozen garlic bread, and cut veggies and dip (prepped at home to keep things easy!). We toted our plates down to the pavilion, a covered, open-air common space in the center of the camp. There were tables and stools to perch on, and best of all it was just feet from the babbling creek. After admiring fireflies from our front porch and getting kids settled in beds, the adults claimed a fire pit to close out the night.
Saturday morning dawned absolutely gorgeous – warm, sunny, clear. We had a quick breakfast of eggs, sausage, and fruit before packing up and heading to Toms Creek Falls. This hike was almost too easy for our taste – it’s a pretty much flat out and back that took about 20 minutes each way – but hiking in quickly meant we could spend plenty of time enjoying the waterfall at the end. And the waterfall would have been worth a much longer hike! We had great sight-lines to its dramatic plunge. The kids clambered over rocks all the way up to the pool at the base and there were sunny spots to enjoy snacks on, too. I just put my feet in but the water was coooooooold.
From there, we had lunch at Hillman Beer in Old Fort before heading back to Gold River. What a cool spot! Retrofitted from an old factory, it’s a cavernous, open-air space nestled right next to a creek (lots of creeks on this trip!). The food was delicious and it was neat to see all the brewing equipment through big glass walls.
Back at camp, a few of the littles napped while the rest of us spent the afternoon at the creek. (As a reminder, on this trip our kids were 7, 6, 4, 3 x 2, and almost 1 x 2.) The water was about a foot deep at its deepest, so it was easy for the kids to enjoy floating downstream, digging in the sandy bank, and splashing in the shallows. The adults supervised from camp chairs in the water, and this is possibly the most treasured part of camping weekends for me: sitting and doing nothing besides enjoying the surroundings and the company, with not even phantom tasks or the pull of household chores or a laptop to distract. It’s an opportunity to slow time way, way down, and it is good for the soul.
Dinner that night was the traditional hot dogs over the fire, with chips, veggies, and baked beans on the side, plus another round of s’mores for good measure. Bedtime is always easier on the second night: the initial buzz of excitement has burned off, and everyone’s exhausted from being outside all day :)
Sunday was another gorgeous morning, and we carted our pancakes and bacon down to the pavilion to eat by the river, pajamas and all. I think the kids spent the next three hours before checkout entirely in the Eno hammocks, ha. Most of them fell out multiple times, but good times were had by all.
Gold River will certainly go down in history as one of our favorite camping memories – the kids proclaimed it to be “the most fun ever” many times over throughout the weekend. If you’re nervous about camping but itching to give your family an outdoors experience, I can’t recommend it highly enough. Though we’re planning to return to our more rustic roots in 2023, I’m sure we’ll be back to Gold River at some point in the future!
Any questions about camping, in North Carolina or with kids? I’m always happy to help!
An annual getaway to the mountains is a beloved tradition for our family, dating back to our first fall in North Carolina. As Asheville has become more and more popular over the last decade (and more crowded, and more expensive…), we have enjoyed branching out a bit to nearby mountain towns: Highlands in 2021, and last year, Black Mountain! We’ll always remember this trip as our first big adventure as a family of five (John and I to each other all weekend: we’re actually doing this!!), and for that reason and more, it was truly magical. I’d love to tell you about it and share a few photos today!
And friendly PSA: if you’re considering an NC mountains trip this fall, right about now is when we like to book our stay! Things book up quite quickly for peak leaf weekends.
Onward!
Black Mountain is a small mountain town just a hair closer to the Triangle than Asheville (about a 3.5-hour drive for us). We loved that it has its own distinct culture, but is only 15 minutes from downtown Asheville (meaning we could still hit some of our ride or dies). We headed west right after school on Thursday, arriving in time to make a drop at our Airbnb and feed Annie before driving the three minutes into town for a late dinner on the patio at My Father’s Pizza. It wasn’t too fancy – your standard pizza and pasta joint – but it got the job done when we needed a quick crowdpleaser.
As always, John did a fantastic job scouting our Airbnb. It had three bedrooms on the main level and even more room in the basement if we had needed it (though I’m glad we didn’t – it was sliiiiightly creepy, ha!).
Perhaps our favorite part about it, though, was that we could easily walk into town on the sidewalk along the main road, which we did for breakfast the next morning! Being able to walk to destinations on vacation is my favorite – it invites us to move at a more leisurely pace, and just makes the days feel so set apart from our normal life… so vacation-y :) The sky was perfectly blue and the leaves were beautiful on our walk!
Our breakfast destination? Four Sisters Bakery, tucked into a neighborhood of cute old homes. We split several pastries and ate them in the sun while the big kids played on the lawn and climbed trees. While chatting about our plans for the weekend, we got a wild hair: what if we had dinner at the Grove Park Inn one night? We hadn’t locked in any of our dinner plans because we weren’t exactly sure what our schedule would be, and though I was doubtful they’d have any availability on such a prime weekend, we figured it was worth a shot.
I called up the front desk and, lo and behold, they had a table for four at 6:45 (just past sunset!) the next night!! The concierge was as surprised as me it was still available, ha! As soon as I hung up the phone the nerves about taking two little kids and a baby to a fairly fancy restaurant bubbled up, but we were thrilled to have the opportunity.
After walking back to our Airbnb, we hopped in the car and drove just a few minutes away from downtown into Montreat. Montreat! Such a delightful, strange little spot! It is a town of about three square miles with fewer than 500 residents, and seems to mostly be taken up by a Christian conference center and a tiny college.
And, as it turns out, a wonderful hike – Lookout Trail. It’s a moderate out-and-back with some scrambly sections that took us a little less than two hours with a five- and three-year-old (and a baby on John in the Ergo). Also, Shep and I worked together to carry this large stick up the whole hike at his behest:
The kids enjoyed pretending to roast s’mores at the top :)
From there, we drove into Asheville for lunch at White Duck Taco. For our family, literally no trip west is complete without a stop!
After lunch, we walked along the river to the River Arts District. I had read about a pysanky egg artist with an open studio in Our State, and wanted to pay a visit given my family connection. Though nerve-wracking to squeeze amongst so many breakables with two small children, it was SO fun to see all of the beautiful designs. I splurged on an egg to add to my collection in honor of my grandmother, and can’t wait to nestle it next to my heirlooms when we celebrate Easter in a few weeks.
Next, we popped over to Asheville Bee Charmer in downtown for a quick honey tasting. They were in a new storefront since our last visit, but the honey bar was intact and a highlight, as always. We took home a custom trio of our family favorites: Meadowfoam, Orange Blossom, and Sourwood.
It was late afternoon at this point but not quite time for dinner, so we drove back to Black Mountain and stretched our legs at a playground we had majorly rubbernecked in Montreat earlier in the day. Y’all, this was one of the coolest playgrounds I have ever been to!! Little islands of wooden playground equipment were dotted between rocky streams, making for a magical play experience. The water was too cold to wade into during our October visit, but during the summer I’ll bet it’s heaven.
We could have stayed for hours, but eventually packed up and drove the few minutes into town for dinner at Black Mountain Bistro. Even with chilly temps, it was cozy on the patio under string lights and heat lamps.
We finished the evening with chocolate treats from Kilwins and a turn in the hot tub. Yes, this was a major attraction of this Airbnb and June and Shep were SO EXCITED to finally take a dip after 24 hours in its vicinity.
The Thomas clan is often slow going in the morning. On Saturday, we opted for a late brunch at Open Oven Bakery. It was quite busy, so while we waited for our table, John took the kids to play at the church playground across the street while I walked around the corner to Sassafras on Sutton, a truly delightful bookstore and toy store. John’s physical therapist had actually suggested it to us, and I figured I’d pick up a few… incentives for our Grove Park dinner that night. I got that and more – it is exactly the kind of spot I look for throughout the year to help fill stockings!
After brunch on the patio (delicious!), we drove out on the Blue Ridge Parkway to the Orchard at Altapass.
We were lucky to have another absolutely gorgeous day and enjoyed the mountain views as much as ever.
I’m sorry to say our Honeycrisp-sweetened taste buds mostly turned up their noses at the humble apples of Altapass, but everyone enjoyed the act of picking, “bowling” fallen apples down the paths, and the apple ugly, slice of pie, and cup of cider we shared.
We had just enough time to hit a short hike on our way home in the late afternoon – Roaring Fork Falls. This hike was a delight, and perfect for kids: it’s flat, took us less than an hour, and culminates in an impressive waterfall.
And then to the big event of the evening: dinner at the GPI! The grand lobby with its massive fireplaces was hopping, as you’d expect on an October weekend, but we were shown right to our table on the Sunset Terrace at 6:45. The sun had just set over Asheville, and the sky was still on fire. A pinch-me kind of moment!
From the cost of valet parking to the actual food itself, this dinner was our biggest splurge of the trip, but it was a truly special and memorable experience. The kids did a great job (including Annie, who slept through part of the meal in her carseat under the table, nursed, then sat in my lap for dessert) and even got commendations on their behavior from an older couple sitting nearby. Proud parenting moment :)
This experience has actually inspired me to write a whole post on dining out with kids – hopefully this month! We are not experts and neither are our kids, but we have been eating at restaurants with them since they were born (pandemic notwithstanding) and have figured out a few simple tricks along the way. Would love to be able to encourage anyone for whom this sounds intimidating!
On Sunday morning, our last morning, we had planned to try Louise’s Kitchen for brunch, but the line looked truly epic, so we happily headed back to Open Oven and might have ordered the exact same thing on all sides of the table.
Our last adventure before driving home was a hike in Newland: the Upper Creek Falls Loop.
It was noticeably longer and more challenging than our two previous hikes – it clocked in at about 2.5 hours and required several stream crossings as well as navigating steep and rocky sections. It was even rated “most difficult” by the Forest Service according to the sign at the trailhead, though to be fair that description seems a little overblown.
This little hiker guy with his Halloween socks kills me.
Just a little casual Highlights reading break mid-hike :)
Everyone except our intrepid driver was very happy to snooze on the drive home, grateful for an incredible trip and memories made!
If you have any questions about a mountain trip or anything here, I’m happy to answer! And thus concludes my 2021 travel recaps – on to 2022! :)
It’s been awhile since I wrote a Life Lately post, but we’ve had a number of smaller adventures recently that deserve their time in the sun! April and May have been sweet months to soak up our last few weeks as a family of four, knowing that things will get more complicated (but even sweeter!) soon enough.
The weather has been perfect – mild (mid-70s) and sunny for the most part. We’ve had several trips to the strawberry patch as well as lots of picnics around the Triangle, like at Bond Park for kite flying, the Raleigh Rose Garden to see the flowers, and all sorts of playgrounds.
We planted our garden – kale, basil, jalapeno, and lots of tomatoes (Patio, Sun Gold, Super Sweet 100, Celebrity, Husky Cherry Red). Below are the three pots that we planted for the first time last year. They were a huge part of getting us to our 1000 tomato count in 2020, so I’m expecting big things from these three!
We took our family photos with Ally! It’s… a lot to get everyone ready for photos, but we were SO lucky to have the most picture-perfect (literally) weather, and I cannot WAIT to see what she returns! Feeling very grateful to have this season of life professionally captured the last time around. And gosh, Ally is just about the sweetest person on earth. John was like, “do you think all photographers make you feel this good?” Ha!
On Mother’s Day weekend we drove north to Charlottesville to meet up with John’s sister and our brother-in-law, a reunion 1.5 years in the making thanks to COVID. Funny story: we headed up the mountain for a hike on Saturday morning. It was about 65 at our Airbnb, but by the time we got to the Humpback Rocks parking lot, off the Blue Ridge Parkway, it had plummeted to 49 (!). June was in the worst shape with shorts and a short-sleeve shirt, so after rummaging in the diaper bag I tossed her Shep’s emergency pair of (2T) sweatpants to see if she could squeeze into them. She could, though they looked a bit like European joggers, ha! Shep rocked his nap blanket like a cape for warmth.
We survived to enjoy some other Charlottesville highlights, too: MarieBette Bakery (incredible – we went twice!), walking around the UVA grounds (Joe is a double alum), dinner at Selvedge Brewery at the Wool Factory (SUCH a cool space with massive glass walls!), playing at Riverview Park and scooting along the Rivanna Trail, Crozet Pizza, and takeout from the Dairy Market (Take It Away sandwiches and Chimm Street pho).
Durham Bulls games are one of our very favorite spring and summer activities in the Triangle, and we were grateful to squeeze in a trip (to only their second home game of the season!) before the weather got too hot. Some benefits thanks to COVID: there was no one sitting anywhere near us, and concessions could all be ordered from an app (and they’d text you when it was ready!).
Last but certainly not least, I took the day off work on Friday to redeem one of June’s Christmas presents: pedicures and afternoon tea at Fearrington Village!
We had the most beautiful weather and enjoyed our pedicures, our tea, visiting the shops, goats, and gardens, and many hours of conversation. She is just the best little friend to spend time with and I love her so.
Clearly, the day took it out of her, ha!
I hope y’all have been enjoying this spring weather, too! Planning to use part of our Memorial Day weekend to make a summer bucket list and keep the fun rolling :)
