First time visiting OBX / Corolla Beach

[cthomas31]

Hey All,

We planned a vacation at OBX Corolla NC beach for the first time this year and wanted to provide some feedback from my experience.

First off. Make sure you air down before you reach the beach! This might be an obvious one but many people tried to pull off to the side and air down and beach patrol will make you move immediately. There are a couple gas stations a mile or so before the beach. I was gonna air down to around 20 psi until a local told me he lives there and has ran 12 psi with no issue for years.

Use Google Maps instead of Apple! Apple Maps didn’t recognize the beach so it was constantly trying to direct me off the beach and take back roads with much worse deep sand conditions (for which I got stuck behind a buried Honda pilot at one point).

Keep moving in deep sand! People would slow down or stop and get stuck in the deeper sand and have to wait to be pulled out by a patron or tow service.

If you’re going to take multiple vehicles make sure they are all traditional 4x4s. I saw way too many crossovers completely buried waiting on tow trucks.

Our place was 35 minutes from the main island so stock up on food and supplies before you plan to make the trip to your beach house.

Anyway. Just some feedback for people that might be planning on visiting the beach.

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[MntGoat]

Did you see the horses on porches? Dennis Andersons school bus on 66 inch tires, in his backyard?

 

[cthomas31]

Did you see the horses on porches? Dennis Andersons school bus on 66 inch tires, in his backyard?

We saw a lot of horses! I think I missed the school bus somehow lol.

 

[HoboJeep]

We love going to Corolla and the outer banks of NC. Besides your advice, I would add turn off traction control and avoid the standing pools of water-some are much deeper than they seem.

 

[MntGoat]

Best time was starting at Corolla lighthouse and traveled 12 down bald head lighthouse
In a 40ft bus we converted, we were the first skoolies to take the ferries they told us. Our go to is Emerald Isle the last 13 years or so.

 

[JeeperAF]

Great advice all around, especially about airing down. My family and I were up at Corolla a few weeks ago with my stock Sahara Ecodiesel hauling a 2000 lb off-road mini camper. I got a little cocky and set my psi at 24 before heading on the beach. Everything went fine until two of the horse tour buses stopped in front of us in a high traffic area. We were forced to stop and inevitably got stuck.

After rocking back and forth a few times with no luck, I relented and aired the tires down to about 18. Once the traffic cleared, I was able to back up about 10 ft in 4LO to get out of the pit. Pushed it forward with no more issues.

I definitely learned my lesson the hard way. Air down and don’t stop (if you can). Had no other issues with the Jeep or camper after that.

Hope you had a nice vacation!

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