A Week in Southport, NC

Spending a Week in Southport, NC | Oak Island Beach | August 2024

Over the last 2 years with this new job/lifestyle, Curtis has had to travel to Wilmington, NC 8 times. One could say we’re getting a little burnt out on the Midwest to coastal NC drive, and being in Wilmington. However, after a week long training in Wilmington this August, he was finally given the chance to work at a power plant just South of Wilmington, in Southport, NC. This week that we had in Southport gave us a new appreciation for this area, and we wouldn’t mind coming back here again someday!

After leaving Wilmington, we drove the 50 minutes South to Southport, where our hotel was nice enough to let us check in early. The heat had returned after a very mild week, and we were thankful to have an air conditioned room to wait out the hottest hours of the day! We stayed at the Hampton Inn & Suites, which had spacious rooms, good hot breakfasts, plenty of room outside for Charlotte to wander around, and chocolate chip cookies fresh out of the oven in the evenings.

One of the reasons why Southport was a much more enjoyable town for us this time around was because the beaches here are dog friendly in the summer, and most have free parking, at least after 5pm — as compared to Wrightsville Beach, which is the closest beach to Wilmington, which doesn’t allow dogs and charges for parking between March and October, and is much busier. We went to the beach on Oak Island almost every night for sunset, and Charlotte loved going for long walks in the sand!

We also enjoyed going out for dinner at new restaurants each night with Curtis’ colleagues. During our week here, we had pizza from Sebby’s Pizza (they had one with a delicious focaccia crust!) Southport Smokehouse for barbecue, Rusty Hook Seafood, Alpaca Chicken which serves Peruvian style chicken and fun sides, Mr. P’s for fine dining, and we ended with Turtle Bar & Grill on the beach for sunset on our last night. They even had a dog menu, so we couldn’t help but order Charlotte her own meal. She also got a lot of love from other guests at the bar, we forgive them for being a bit on the tipsy side of things.

Our week in Southport went by quickly, and soon enough we were preparing to make our return trip to New York for Curtis’ next assignment. While the drive wouldn’t be much different than our route coming down, we were very excited to escape the heat of the South and return to the Blue Ridge for a few days. Until next time, North Carolina!