Thursday, March 08, 2007

Ocracoke: Second-best beach for shells

North Carolina's Ocracoke Island has been named the second-best beach for shells, by Coastal Living magazine.

No. 1 on the top 10 list is Florida's Sanibel Island.

"The rare Scotch bonnet, state shell of North Carolina, sometimes turns up [on Ocracoke's beach]," writes the magaziine. "Even during the frenetic summer season, few tourists venture outside Ocracoke Village at the south end of this 16-mile-long Outer Banks island. In winter, when restless weather stirs up all sorts of treasures from the deep, only the gulls are likely to share the northern beaches. Stephen 'Dr. Beach' Leatherman ranked Ocracoke third on his 2006 'top beaches' list. ..."

Behind Ocracoke are beaches in Bandon, Ore.; Galveston, Texas; Tunnels Beach, Kauai, Hawaii; Flag Ponds Nature Park, Lusby, Md.; Cumberland Island National Seashore, Ga.; Eleuthera Island, The Bahamas; Great Peconic Bay, Long Island, N.Y.; and Stinson Beach, Calif.

3 comments:

TSnow said...

I remember as a kid, vacation was one week in Myrtle Beach each year and I loved walking and looking for sharks' teeth. I'd always come back with cool shells and teeth which were easy to find and plentiful. In fact, you could hurt your feet in many places walking on large areas of shells. I noticed all of this changed on a high school spring break trip after hurricane Hugo. The shells were almost completely washed away or covered up with a couple scattered here and there. It's good to know there are still places for kids to explore and find small treasures.

M. Lail said...

Speaking of kids finding cool treasures ... are there any bullets or relics left on the battlefields anymore? Does anyone find arrowheads anymore?

TSnow said...

There was an article in yesterday's Greensboro News & Record about "relic hunters" who break out the metal detectors whenever there is construction near the Guilford Courthouse battlefield site. They have found buttons, bullets, pieces of Spanish coins, and cannonballs. If you find anything in the national park you can't, of course, take it and they ask that you tell a ranger without moving it so they can better track the movements of the battle.