Quote:
Originally Posted by nyathrt
I moved from New York a couple of years ago to the Charlotte area. I'm thinking of moving to Nags Head or Kitty Hawk. I have 2 teenagers and a ten year old. Do you think it would be wise to wait until they're all out of school or is this a good place to raise a family? It looks like Nags Head has more crime than Kitty Hawk but we want to be where there are things to do. I'm just not sure if it's something that would be better for my husband and I to just come down after the kids are in college. Hurricanes are another concern. But it seems like people do it or there wouldn't be anyone living there year round. Would it be wise to look 20-30 minutes inland and not have the beauty of the beach right there. Way further down someone else mentioned Cape Carteret. I don't know much about that area either.
Any insight would be helpful.
Thanks!
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Five years ago we looked at living in Nags Head, Hatteras, or Ocracoke. We decided the northern Outer Banks were just too exposed for us and too crowded in the summer. I am sure there are year around neighborhoods in the Nags Head area, but we never found one that we liked.
The Crystal Coast from Beaufort to Cape Carteret-Emerald Isle-Cedar Point is a great place to look. Locals sometimes refer to the area as SOBX or Southern Outer Banks.
The Cape Carteret area which you asked about has several advantages especially if you have children. The schools are very good. Croatan High School which covers the Cape Carteret area recently won
a national award as one of the top six hundred schools in the country.
One of the key advantages in my mind is that the area is actually a group of loosely connected
small towns. That means the area is rich in community activities and the kind of events that provide entertainment to whole families.
I interview a few students for college each since my alma mater is committed to putting a person face on admissions. I have been very impressed with the young adults who have come out of Croatan High.
The Cape Carteret area also has the advantage of being from five to ten minutes from the beaches of Emerald Isle. You can get a feel for the area from
this map. Just zoom down to street level. We live on the White Oak River in a subdivision called Bluewater Cove. It takes five or six minutes to get to Cape Carteret and another five to get to the first beach access on Emerald Isle.
One of the other good things is that we have modern services. We have a new Lowes Home Improvement Store, four supermarkets including one Lowes, two Food Lions, and one Piggly Wiggly within ten minutes of our home. They also just opened a new Harris Teeter on the west side of Morehead City. We can be there in under twenty minutes.
That is also the location of Walmart, Belks, Sears, Bed, Bath, & Beyond, Best Buy, Marshall's, and TJ Maxx.
Of course we have plenty of water to enjoy. Bogue Sound,
Shackleford Banks, the White Oak River, Intracoastal Waterway and the Atlantic Ocean are all on our doorstep.
This slide show,
Mackerel Morning, from our dock out to the Atlantic is one of my favorites. It is less than twenty minutes to the Atlantic by boat from our dock.
The area beaches themselves are hard to beat. This is one of
my favorite collections of pictures from early last summer and
this slide show is from mid-summer.
We also have wonderful
kayaking in the area. I can just slide my kayak in the water from my back yard and be in the middle of the White Oak River in less than ten minutes. The river is almost two miles wide where we are.
Our area is also blessed with
some wonderful hiking trails and the 158,000 acres of the Croatan National Forest which I believe will help protect us from over development.
One top of that we have a number of interesting places to visit like
the Maritime Museum in Beaufort, Fort Macon, the
the Beaufort Historic Site, the Core Sound Museum, The History Place in Morehead City,
Tryon Palace flower gardens, and the
NC Aquarium in Pine Knoll Shores. We even went to
a wonderful open house at the Duke Marine Lab near Beaufort. We really enjoy events like
the Swansboro Arts Festival and the
Emerald Isle Saint Patrick's Day Festival.
Crime is very low in the area, we have a strong set of barrier islands to protect us in all but the most severe weather.
If you love natural beauty and being able to actually surround yourself with it while living a more sane relaxed way of life, I do not think you will be disappointed with the Cape Carteret area. There are homes to fit almost any budget, and it is an area which is very accepting of new comers.
The first summer we were here, Cape Carteret threw a cookout for their forty-eight birthday. We were new and showed up at the park. I went over and asked the guy cooking burgers where the party was. He pointed to the building and told us to go there. It turned out he was the Mayor. We had a nice chat later after he finished cooking.
Even the tourist traffic here is not nearly as heavy as it is on the Northern Outer Banks. On top of that almost all of the restaurants and business in our area stay open all year. Some restaurants will close for a week or two in January for vacations.
It is a great area, just visit and you will fall in love. You might find
my blog about the area interesting. This
a link to past posts.
This is
a travel guide for Emerald Isle (http://coastalnc.org/emeraldislenctravelguidecd - broken link),
one for Beaufort (http://coastalnc.org/beaufortnctravelguidecd - broken link) and
another for Swansboro. Both Beaufort and Swansboro have more than their fair share of cute shops.
Swansboro is home to my favorite restaurant for grouper,
Riverside Steak and Seafood. Beaufort has lots of very good but somewhat expensive restaurants. Visiting Beaufort is how we ended up down here. My wife and I came to Beaufort for our 30th anniversary and had dinner at the Blue Moon Bistro. We fell in love with the area then and moved down three years later
I will be glad to answer other questions. That is part of my job.
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Cape Carteret is a good year around area.
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