Winter Fun

Enjoy Winter In NC's Coastal State Parks

Visitors to North Carolina’s coast in the winter experience an environment that the sunning, swimming tourists of summer miss. Let’s explore three state parks to see what travelers during the warmer weather seasons often overlook.

Pettigrew State Park, near Creswell, NC, lures fishermen during all seasons. Lake Phelps, the second largest natural lake in the state, is jumping with largemouth bass and yellow perch year-round. Millions of birds make this lake, surrounded by bald cypress, swamp chestnut oak, and tulip poplar trees, their winter home. Tundra swan and Canada geese, as well as kingfishers, herons and egrets, stalk the lakeshore seeking food.

Visiting this park is a trip back in time. The forest is old, populated by bald cypress with trunks more than 10 feet in diameter. Shagbark hickories, paw paws and persimmons soar into the leafless winter forest canopy, allowing the visitor to appreciate the size of these behemoths. December and January are the best times to see forest birds, like owls and hawks, too. You might even catch a glimpse of red wolf, mink, black bar and white-tailed deer.

Travel to relatively recent history in Pettigrew State Park as you visit Collins mansion at historic Somerset Plantation, once one of the four largest farms in the state. At one time, it had more than 100,000 acres under cultivation, growing rice, corn and wheat.

For more time-travel, visit Fort Macon State Park, where a reconstructed fort stands guard over Beaufort Harbor as it did during the Civil War. History and educational programs are the focus of this Atlantic Beach park during the winter. Twenty-six vaulted rooms are in this fortress with four-foot thick walls of brick and stone. Imagine yourself hauling powder from the magazines to the cannon emplacements so you can fire upon approaching troops. You could also flood the moat with waters from the Bogue Sound to keep the enemy from breaching the walls.

See historic re-enactments on the parade ground and take a guided tour of the fort to learn more about its history.

Nearby are the Theodore Roosevelt Natural Area and the North Carolina Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores. Children in your party will enjoy crawling through the turtle maze, learning what it feels like for a just hatched sea turtle trying to make it to the sea while avoiding various types of danger.

Hammocks Beach State Park, near Swansboro, is the final winter wonderland on our list. Most of the park is located on Bear Island, and during the winter visitors must travel there by water taxi or private boat. Intrepid souls paddle here, following the markers on the kayak and canoe trail. You are likely to see bottle-nosed dolphin on the trip to the island.

Loggerhead turtles, the park’s most famous inhabitants, are long gone before the onset of cold weather, yet the predators who snack on them during August are still here. Foxes and raccoons live here, as do ghost crabs.

Totally free of the commercialism you typically see along any coast, Hammocks Beach State Park is an unspoiled retreat for those who seek nothing more than the sea, the sand and the sky above. Pitch a tent at the dune side campsites and after nightfall see stars you probably have never laid eyes on.

Whether you come to one of North Carolina’s coastal parks this winter to commune with nature, to fish, or to paint or photograph the haunting landscape, it’s a winter trip worth taking.

added: December 29, 2008

updated: January 4, 2011