Took my 1st trip since buying my
Parkliner in February. This was my 1st time traveling/camping in an RV of any kind, so I had the usual novice problems. (I'll post those in another thread.)
Camped on the
Outer Banks of North Carolina. (Click on View Map at Outer Banks link to see locations). Hatteras Island has always been my favorite place to vacation since I was a teenager. I've probably visited 40 times over the years, owned a rental vacation house for a while, and even lived there for about 6 months.
Hatteras Island is a narrow island that extends far out into the Atlantic Ocean. It is shaped like a boomerang with the point of the boomerang called Cape Point. That is where the famous Cape Hatteras lighthouse is located. The town nearest to Cape Point is Buxton.
The Cape Hatteras NPS campground doesn't open until the Friday before Memorial day so I couldn't stay there this trip. So I spent the 1st 2 nights at Frisco NPS campground which is little farther South than Cape Point.
Frisco campground is located in big sand dunes close to the ocean. Lots of scrub pine and other low growing trees throughout the campground. Bathrooms, cold showers, trash bins are located close to campsites.
Rookie Error - Parking was too steep.
There were 2 boardwalks to beach - one was long and the other was really long
View toward ocean from farthest point in campground. The
light colored rectangle right in the middle of the picture where a little of the ocean is visible is an access ramp for 4-wheel drive vehicles. You have to purchase a permit to drive on the beach.
Three generations Fishing - Sorry, had to crop a little to make it fit.
The 3rd night I stayed at Oregon Inlet NPS campground. I had originally planned on doing the campgrounds in reverse order, but the Outer Banks was being buffeted by a storm with high winds when I got there. Oregon Inlet is right out in the open, so I went to the more protected Frisco first.
Another Egg at Oregon Inlet.
Access to the beach is a killer. It's maybe a quarter mile at the most, but you have to climb some pretty steep sand dunes in loose sand.
Oregon Inlet Marina (free Dumping Station Available)
All in all, a good 1st trip. I had put in an RV mattress plus 4" of foam on top and My Pillow pillows. Slept great for it not being my bed. Everything seemed to work OK except the
refrigerator froze everything (except the beer). Trailer towed fine, except for a little bouncing on a bridge!
Learned a lot in just 4 days. Plan on building shelves to make storage more efficient, making my portable
solar panel not portable, optimizing tow vehicle as storage space, buying a laptop and not depending on Kindle, and taking half as much clothes.
Trailer was hard to keep clean. Frisco especially because of the prickly pear cacti. They stick to everything and then
fall off in your bed, on the floor, everywhere. They stick to your shoes - tennis shoes and sandals. And they especially stick to your feet.