North Carolina is famous for its enormous coastline of outer banks that buffers the state from the Atlantic Ocean. From the Virginia border to South Carolina, barrier islands offer excellent havens for inshore paddling through salt marshes and sounds, inlets and bays, creeks and waterways.

Horses feeding along Maritime Forests edges of Shackelford Banks

    The northern barrier islands are better known as the Outer Banks and include the islands from Virginia southward to Ocracoke. The Crystal Coast is part of the Southern Outer Banks which stretch south and west from Portsmouth Village past Cape Lookout and Cape Fear to Sunset Beach.

    The Crystal Coast offers some of the best paddling in North Carolina. Historians can take in the sights of historic battlegrounds and forts that have been preserved by North Carolina. Tales of Blackbeard and the Queen Anne's Revenge can be shared with tales from the tattered ships and U-boats buried offshore in the Graveyard of the Atlantic. 

    Naturalists will find the Crystal Coast overflowing with wildlife that flourishes within the pristine ecosystems along the inland waters and barrier islands of Core and Bogue Sound. Wild horses share many barrier island habitats with with various shorebirds and a plethora of marine life.

Find Solitude or an Adventure

A Northern Right Whale calf stops by to say "Hi" as mom eases along side of him and guides him toward the southern migration route just off Shackelford Banks.

Loggerhead Mating season arrives in mid-May

Knobbed Whelk lays her egg casing on a sandbar

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