From Shallotte, NC: Vacation Report #1

Ok, we are at the hotel here in Shallotte, NC, since it's a part of the chain I work for I get the employee discount rate of $35 a night. It took us about four hours to get here from Charlotte, a straight shot down US 74 to Whiteville, then down NC130 to Shallotte.

Compared to Wilmington or Myrtle Beach, Shallotte is more of a working class sort of place; lots of old wooden shacks and trailer parks, little developement to speak of, either residential or commercial. Consequently there isn't much in the way of shopping or dining opportunities.

We ate at a place called Loves BBQ & Seafood upon arrival, right around lunch time. Large crowd of locals, all eating from the buffet. We too ordered from the buffet, which we discovered did not include BBQ; I ended up getting shrimp and fried chicken. Hush puppies were tasteless and leathery from being overcooked. Were we to go back we'd probably order off of the menu insead of eating the buffet.

Aftet lunch we decided to look around a bit, made our way to Holden Beach. It was hot and no breeze at all, and we were in our travelling clothes, so we left after a few minutes looking around. We then drove to the Southport area and onto Oak Island, where we drove out to Caswell Beach. We stayed there for a while before leaving to check into the hotel back at Shallotte.

The hotel, which is a two-story with interior corridors, has no elevator. The desk clerk offered "We're trying to get one!" but if you have a lot of luggage and get put at the far end of the 2nd floor, you're going to be unhappy. Our own room was on the 2nd floor right above the front desk, not too bad, but no elevator? What architect designed this hotel?

After we checked in we decided to go look at Ocean Isle Beach, then find supper. The beach was nice, lots of shells to look through, more than any NC beach we've yet found:



Spent a lot of time trying to get a picture of a small sandpiper:



We eventually left the beach in search of dinner. We found it at The Bridge Bar & Grill, where we had hamburgers that, although good, tasted rather more like meatloaf than of hamburger meat, so I guess a filler was involved. The waitress was rather stupid, too, having to be told twice to bring the nacho chips appetizer, which finally arrived after the entrees, rather like an afterthought.

After dinner we went looking for an ice cream for dessert, and found it back at Ocean Isle Beach, catching a nice sunset over the Intracoastal Waterway on the way over the bridge:



After dessert, back to the hotel for sleep.