Wheeling on OBX

mybigredjeep

New Member
Joined
Aug 2, 2005
Location
NJ
Hey guys new to the forum. Ok so i will be in the OBX, NC next week starting on the 13 just wondering if anyone is up for some wheeling while im down there. Either on the beach or in the woods is fine with me. I always like to meet new jeepers when i go on vacation let me know if anyone is interested.

Jeremy
Maybe get a coffee or a drink afterwards???
 
Where will you be on the OBX?

At the very north end, where Hwy 12 ends in Corolla, there is 11-12 miles of beach road (in between dunes and water) running to the VA border. There are no paved roads up there, and there are roads all behind the dunes. These are real roads, so you can't get in trouble for driving on them, but they are not paved or really maintained - it is all sand. I was there in Feburary and there was some deep stuff and hardly anyone there, but in the Summer the beach gets really crowded. This is a wild horse sanctuary, so cool that you can drive around and see lots of horses.

On Southern OBX you can drive on the beach in Hatteras and on Ocracoke. You can drive on the sound side and the ocean side. There may be other places to drive on the beach in the "middle" OBX like at Duck and Nags Head but I'm not sure if it's always open.
 
Fart said:
Is it ok to camp there?
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I don't think so, because the beach is actually considered an NC highway, pretty high traffic in the summer, and you could get run over in the middle of the night. :) But there may be a campground out there.

If you are searching the web, Corolla is the northern-most town on Hwy 12 - still paved road. Then there is Swan Beach, Palm Harbor (I think), and Carova north of that in the unpaved section.
 
mybigredjeep said:
anyone wanna wheel?
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You dont "wheel" on the OBX but you can drive on the beacj in designated areas. Stay the fawk off the dunes as access is threatened right now by the NPS and green groups.

If you wheel on the dunes I hope you roll and the seagulls peck your eyes out.
 
Fart said:
Is it ok to camp there?
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The are campground in Waves, on Ocracoke but ZERO camping on the beach.
 
Franklin said:
You dont "wheel" on the OBX but you can drive on the beacj in designated areas. Stay the fawk off the dunes as access is threatened right now by the NPS and green groups.

If you wheel on the dunes I hope you roll and the seagulls peck your eyes out.
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Yep - no driving on the dunes. The only place I know of where you are allowed to drive behind the dunes is up north of Carolla in the unpaved area. There are legitamate cut-throughs to get from the beach to behind the dunes, where there are sand roads all behind the dunes - that's how people get to their houses. Look Carova up online if you are interested - if you can find a map of the roads up there, it looks like a giant neighborhood, but it is all sand roads and some of it goes through "maritime forest".

The roughest part of the beach is as far north as you can go. There is a fence at the Virginia line that keeps you from driving into Virginia. Since that's the end of the road, few people go up that far, so the sand is the deepest up there, if that's what you are looking for.

To give you an idea of the terrain, I drove my 1990 Burb with rear locker and 33x12.50 MTs aired down to 20 psi. Used low range (so not to overheat the auto trans), and had no problem. Friend had a 1987 Burb out there with no rear locker and 265/75/16 tires (smaller than mine), but aired-down he also had no prob. Other friend had stock Grand Cherokee on stock small street tires aired down, and he got though everything to the house we stayed at, but I'm sure he could have gotten stuck in some of the bad places if not careful.

There was some interesting stuff north of Corolla in February since no one else was out there (HEAVILY rutted and soft beach, and no one had driven on the roads behind the dunes). But now during the summer the beach gets so packed that you probably don't have to use 4WD unless you go behind the dunes. Watch it when you leave Hwy 12 and first get on the beach - there are stumps all over the beach. We asked the fire/rescue folks if anyone ever hit the stumps, and they said that people who hit those stumps usually die - they are going 35 mph and hit a solid stump at axle level and flip over onto their roof!
 
mybigredjeep said:
anyone wanna wheel?
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Would like to go out there, but I'm 4-5 hours away. Would be interested in coming down there, but we're headed down for our anniversary the weekend of 8/27 instead. If it wasn't for that, I'd be up for it.

Another interesting place to go is the south end of Hatteras Island, where you can catch the Ferry to Ocracoke. Drive past the Ferry onto the sand road that leads to the beach, then turn right to take an access road to the sound-side. When you hit the sound, you can take a left and drive all the way around the southern end of the island and then be headed back north on the ocean side beach. But you can't do this at high tide because the water touches the dunes on the sound side.
 
thanx for all the info guys.........i found out that we are staying in corolla so im def. going to do some of the beach stuff. I would not mind driving off the island for about an hour to 2 hours to get somewhere else to wheel maybe in the wood does anyone wanna meet up and do that instead? THanx for all the info guys. Let me know :driver:
 
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