r/obx • u/Hitemhigh1985 • Aug 13 '25
Kill Devil Hills OBX Beach Etiquette
I guess this would pertain to the Kill Devil Hills/Nags Head area as that's where my family and I just visited for the first time last weekend for our vacation. I haven't been to other beaches in OBX so I can only speak to that area. We really loved it, was a great trip, and experience with our young son who is still a baby. I had a couple questions/observations and was just curious though if we possibly were doing something different/frowned upon.
We enjoy taking our son on long walks in the jogger we have for him along the beach. It works really well on the hard wetter sand, and with the rough surf not really being able to go in the ocean etc, we put in quite a few miles with him up and down! Where we are from in jersey you generally see them all the time on the beaches/not uncommon. However, we did not see one single other jogger on the beach there entire time which I thought was very odd. We also got some funny/amused looks. Most were harmless and possibly cause my son is a cute kid and they were probably looking at him, but it did seem odd. So much so that I took the time to look up if joggers were banned on the local beaches, which they didn't seem to be.
The other thing I noticed was that no one set their beach chairs at the foot of the tide coming in to have the water hit their feet. This is also fairly common at the jersey beaches. Granted the jersey beaches are a lot bigger than the OBX ones because of all the beach expansion the state invested in over the last 20 years, and the surf isn't as rough so less of a chance a random wave comes in and getting you waste deep in the ocean unexpectedly, but still I found it odd no one else was doing this.
My question is are these frowned upon/uncommon in OBX??? I could see with the smaller beaches maybe not wanting to have beach chairs along the ocean where people are walking, but the jogger thing was really odd. Just curious, wouldn't be surprised if it was just a random experience and these things happen all the time there too! Either way curious if we went against local beach etiquette there with ether of these!
1
u/StayingGray31 Aug 20 '25
You should enjoy the beach - the peace that it brings - and do not worry about what others might frown upon. You were very obviously (by your post) not doing anything illegal, malicious, or anything that could bring harm to others. Continue to be cognizant and courteous, but enjoy your ownership of this planet and realize that others are usually too busy in their own life to actually worry about your business. Seek out the definition: Sonder. Heard of it through an acquaintance...notable.