Pet-Friendly Ocracoke Island

 Some of the fun Don and I had on our recent honeymoon centered on how pet-friendly Ocracoke Island was. He and I both love animals, or "critters," as Don calls them. Ocracoke was a pet-friendly vacation place. Our motel, the Bluff Shoals Motel, did not allow pets, so we were surprised at the number of families vacationing there that had their dogs with them. The island is home to many feral cats and kittens, or Ocracats as a local rescue calls them. Residents have an active program that cares for them. The program includes a TNR program for the adult cats and an adoption program for the adoptable kittens.

A surprise to us was Ocracoke's Island Ponies. Our first hint that they were there came from the name of our favorite restaurant for breakfast, the Pony Island Restaurant. We had heard of the famed wild ponies of Chincoteague Island in Virginia as well as ponies at Corolla and at Shackleford Banks in North Carolina, but we had no clue that Ocracoke laid claim to some of these majestic animals that are possibly descended from Spanish mustangs. The Ocracoke horses no longer roam the island, however, but stay penned by the National Park Service, both to keep them out of the nearby highway and to keep them from overgrazing the vegetation of the island's fragile ecosystem. We took several pictures of these horses as they were feeding.

Honeymoon on Ocracoke Island

Don and I spent our honeymoon on rustic Ocracoke Island, North Carolina. To get there, we traveled down North Carolina's Outer Banks until we got as far south as we could drive. Then we took a ferry from Hatteras to Ocracoke Island. The ride takes about 40 minutes. Once we reached land, a 13-mile drive south from the ferry took us to the village of Ocracoke itself. It is a peaceful little fishing village with only about 800 year-round residents. Its popular with sport fisherman because it is relatively close to the Gulf Stream.

Until recent decades, Ocracoke was so remote and cut off from the mainland that it developed its own dialect or brogue. "High tide" is pronounced "hoi toide," for example. Other examples can be heard on Youtube.


In its early days, Ocracoke was a haven to the likes of Blackbeard the Pirate. Until shortly before the Civil War it was a port of crucial importance to North Carolina. In more recent years tourism has become the center of its economy. Here Don and I are posing in front of Ocracoke Lighthouse. Click here for other pictures from this part of our trip.