I just got back from an awesome week at the beach! Usually, we got to Holden Beach in North Carolina, but we couldn’t find what we wanted in a rental house there, so we ended up at nearby Topsail Island (pronounced Topsill).
It was a lovely location, set back in a gated community amongst live oaks, with a short walk to the beach and a reasonable walk down to a community dock where we could launch our kayaks.
Talk about the best of both worlds!
We kayaked on the Intracoastal Waterway (and saw dolphins!), swam in the ocean (with some great waves for using boogie boards!), walked along the beach (lots of shells and jellyfish!), biked up and down the island (my one downside… there’s a bike path but it’s bumpy and hard to ride on), and generally had fun hanging out.
The trip was planned to celebrate my parents’ 40th wedding anniversary (which was actually last spring, but due to extenuating circumstances we pushed off the celebration until October). They had a great time, which was the real point of visiting the beach!
Walking along the beach the first day, we stumbled across a concrete tower poking out of the sand dunes. It turns out that this was part of “Operation Bumblebee,” a WWII-era Navy initiative to test the ramjet engine.
At the time, Topsail Island was mostly uninhabited, so the US Navy built eight towers to aid in the testing of missiles offshore. Seven of the towers remain. This is Tower #3.
An assembly building (now in the town of Topsail Beach) was also built to use as a facility for building the missiles. About 200 experimental rockets, 3-13ft. long and about six inches wide, were built and detonated on Topsail Island. It’s said that the “foundation of the modern world of rocket and jet propulsion were [sic] laid out… in Topsail Island,” though the site was abandoned because of irregular weather and an uptick in nearby sea traffic. More info here and even more info here.
Another interesting part of Topsail Island’s history is its name. Pirates used to hide in the bays behind the island (the live oaks hid the pirate ships from the view of passing sea traffic).
However, the pirate ships’ topsails were often still visible over the trees, alerting sailing ships to the need for caution.
There is some debate as to whether this story is true or not, but at least it’s fun to think about.
The beach is a nice width – wide enough to play on but narrow enough to not be too long a walk.
I enjoyed the seashells. There weren’t a lot, but there were enough to find a few special ones. There were also quite a few sandpipers.
There were also a lot of sea stones, polished smooth by the ocean. This was one of my favorites.
There were quite a few people out fishing. I don’t know if any of them caught anything, but they looked like they were having fun!
One of my family members made a sandy sea turtle. Wow!
We also did a fair bit of kayaking in the Intracoastal Waterway and nearby marshes. (More on that in another post!)
We landed on a little island covered in shells. Beautiful!
Kayaking also means quite a few birds in the reeds. This egret was especially nice.
In the middle of the marshy area between the Intracoastal Waterway and another channel, we found a shellfish farm. There were even signs about how to lease space at the farm!
One night, we went out to the boardwalk down to the beach. Actually, we started out by walking down the road…
Seeing a spider…
And then looked out across the Intracoastal Waterway.
We finally made it to the boardwalk across the sand dunes down toward the beach. A thunderstorm was happening about 30 miles out to sea.
It was fun to watch, and I had a great time trying to photograph the lightning (a new experiment for me). I loved some of the results of my 30-second exposures.
Another evening, I ran down to the dock to take pictures of the sunset over the Intracoastal Waterway. It was gorgeous!
Did I mention it was spectacular?
The end of the week, quite a few helicopters and Ospreys flew over. I’m guessing they were from the local Marine base.
The last morning, I walked out on the upper deck of the rental house. The moon was setting, so I caught a few last pictures of the sliver of a moon.
It was a long trip back home, but that meant lots of time to read and enjoy the fall colors in the mountains of Pennsylvania. There’s always something to look at, and it was a great way to end our trip!
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