One Night Stand in Carolina Beach

We only planned to stay in North Carolina for one night. We didn’t want to waste much time anywhere where it was under 75 degrees, but we needed to stop somewhere to sleep, and Ben had seen a video about a place near Wilmington called Snow’s Cut, a man made channel between the Cape Fear River and the Intercoastal Waterway which was apparently teeming with blue crab.

We arrived at dusk and bided our time at the Shuckin’ Shack in Carolina Beach, waiting for the cover of darkness. You don’t want to stake out your boondocking spot too early.

Boondocking is like a one night stand.You want to get in and out as quickly as possible. Looks aren’t that important, because it’s dark anyway.

Ben had boondocked before, but only in the Prius, which is so unassuming you could probably park it overnight in front of the Lincoln Memorial and no one would even notice. I was a boondocking virgin. I was a little nervous but mostly excited.

After dinner we slowly cruised the backroads of Carolina beach.The live oak trees looked ghostly, with the moonlight shining through their curtains of moss. We finally found a spot on a dead end road that skirted the back of a strip mall. There was no one there but a raccoon perched on a giant pile of oyster shells.

We cut the engine and scurried back to the camper. We raised the top, which operates with a little remote control we keep velcroed to the wall, and ran around closing the blinds, then we cut the lights and went to bed. Allie, who’d spent her first night in the camper (at the Cracker Barrel in NJ) darting from window to window and chirping excitedly, was more relaxed this time, and spent much of the night curled up between us.

There was no knock at the door that night, and by 8AM we were gone, as if it never happened.