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Where wellness and nature meet. Connecting the outdoors with health, fitness, spirituality, and human potential.

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STEWARDSHIP

Car-Free and Carefree: A Visit to Bald Head Island

No cars, no cares?

5 min readSep 25, 2024

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Old Baldy Lighthouse, a stone lighthouse on Bald Head Island dating to 1817, stands against a blue sky with wisps of clouds in the background and trees, shrubs, and a grassy field in the foreground.
Photo by David Broad on Wikimedia Commons

Note: We visited Bald Head just a few days before Potential Tropical Cyclone Number Eight made landfall. The island received approximately 20 inches of rain between September 15–16, 2024, and many of the places we visited were flooded. The Village of Bald Head Island has declared a State of Emergency.

“No Cars, No Cares.”

This phrase is one of the first things visitors see on the official website of Bald Head Island, a barrier island on the southeastern coast of North Carolina. While on a recent vacation to Oak Island, my husband and I visited Bald Head and experienced what it means to live almost as close to car-free as it’s possible to do today.

In harmony with nature

The Village of Bald Head Island describes its philosophy as working with nature rather than against it.

Bald Head Island is a unique barrier island community where we strive to live in harmony with nature. This fragile barrier island contains four ecosystems comprised of beachfront, dune ridge, maritime forest, and the marsh. As a community, we strive to live in harmony with each other and our island visitors, respecting the land and our way of life.

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The New Outdoors
The New Outdoors

Published in The New Outdoors

Where wellness and nature meet. Connecting the outdoors with health, fitness, spirituality, and human potential.

Samantha Carson
Samantha Carson

Written by Samantha Carson

Environment. Tech. Systems. Consumer advocacy. Life to work balance. Anti-productivity culture. Impact the world by caring for your own little part of it.

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