My family and I are going to Ocracoke Island, NC for a wedding in mid-October. Anyone familiar with the island and can give me any advice on what to see or do, what will be closed since I think we are off-season, anything I should know that might not be on the tourism sites?
Jockey’s Ridge State Park. It’s amazing.
Graveyard of the Atlantic
Corolla Wild Horse tour was fun, though a little short on horses. 
With all due respect to PunditLisa, those areas are about 100 miles north of Ocracoke. With that. . .
I’ve been there in October, and I don’t recall anything being seasonally closed yet. November might be a different story. It’s small–everything’s in walking distance (15 minutes or so). One convenience store, and one general store. A number of restaurants.
Not really that much, but. . .
There’s the British Cemetery, where the bodies of some British sailors washed up from a torpedoed merchant ship in WW II.
If you want to do something off the beaten path, and you have the time, take a boat ride out to Portsmouth Island. There’s a family at the marina that has beend ferrying tourists there for years. Just remember–you’ll need to pack everything you’ll need for the trip, food, water, toilet paper, and most important Deep Woods OFF!.
There is a horse pen about halfway up the island (about 15 miles total length)–and that’s about it once you leave the village until you reach the ferry station at the other end.
Speaking of ferries. . . You didn’t indicate whether you’d get there by driving down from Nags Head, or directly by ferry from the mainland. If you are ferrying from the mainland, allow plenty of time, as those coastal roads are twisting, winding affairs with really low speed limits.
But, that’s it. You can pretty much take in the whole village in an afternoon. There’s a little lighthouse, but it’s not open to the public. The Cape Hatteras Lighthouse is about an hour north,and it was open the last time I was there. It’s kinda need when you get to the top, you can still see the footprint of where moved it to higher ground.
We were there in March a couple of years ago. Howard’s Pub was fun. I think there’s supposed to be some wild ponies on the north end but we didn’t see any. Maybe check into a charter boat for fishing?
They’re just about 80 miles north but Kitty Hawk is worth a visit, as is Fort Roanoke/Roanoke Island.
Hm, sorry about that. I could have sworn I saw Ocracoke signs when we stayed in Kitty Hawk.
You probably did. They should have said-----
Ocracoke is an island, about 92 miles as the crow flies, South.
But…it’s about an 80 mile drive South to Hatteras. That’ll take you about and hour and a half. Maybe even two hours.
You’re now at Hatteras, and you have to catch a car Ferry to Ocracoke. They do run frequently, but every hour, on the hour. They’re free and take about 40 minutes to cross. So, you’re gonna be another hour minimum for the last leg. That makes your trip about three hours, assuming you time your trip well.
If you like seafood, and you are not from a seafood area in real life, you just died and went to heaven.
Eat your heart out on crabcakes, made out of real blue crab, not the cheap imitation from Thailand.
Enjoy the fresh catch of the day. It was all caught that morning. Locally.
Hurricanes are usually over by October.
Hope you come back and tell us how you’re accessing the island.
Temperatures in the daytime should be in the 70s. 60s at night. That’s just the average.
? Most of Hatteras is about an hour away from most of Nags Head unless you’re a seriously slow diver. But anyway the ferries are a good idea and really about it for Okracoke in Oct. It’s been some years but there was a really nice pub/inexpensive eats kinda place right on the water pretty close to the hotel, great place to watch the sunset.
Unless you plan to swim to Okracoke, or you have your own boat, or very small private plane, ferries are the only way to get there. January thru December.
I didn’t mean simply getting there, I meant as something else to do.
You cannot drive from Nags Head to Cape Hatteras in an hour. The maximum speed lilmit is 55, and 35 through Rodanthe, Waves,Salvo, Avon, Buxton, Frisco.
How can you travel 64 miles under those conditions in an hour?
Gee I don’t know, speed a little?
Actually that’s not really needed. I’ve done NH to the Hatteras light house in about 45 mins and barely sped at all.