My family was desperately looking for a relaxing beach getaway with our 2 kids aged 6 and 8 years old. The wild horses was what drew us to this region of the OBX, but from our experience even a pasture full of wild horses grazing is not enough to get us to endure this awful trek! Stay away if you have children! Not family friendly!! Cars are speeding by you on both sides as you are lounging on the beach. It feels like your children are playing Frogger! Highly dangerous, not relaxing!
Despite what the property owner claims, you need to have a 4x4 4 Wheel Drive vehicle such as a Ford Pickup truck or a Jeep, you CANNOT traverse the 17 miles of sand and dunes it requires to get to this beach house. People were getting stuck in the sand all around us. It was like getting stuck in a snow storm and everyone was spinning out. We have an All-wheel drive AWD vehicle and we still got stuck. Kind strangers had to help dig us out and push our car. It was a tense, white knuckle drive. Not the relaxing scenic drive we were hoping for.
Despite what was communicated with us in our correspondence, it does NOT take 20 minutes to get to the nearest grocery store!
It’s actually an 1 hour to drive to the nearest grocery store!! Yes, 2 hour round trip for eggs and milk. When we were told the Tim Buck 2 shopping plaza was just 20-30 minutes away. The house is 17 miles off the main road, you are only permitted to drive 15mph, so yes it takes over 1 hour to drive the 4x4 section without traffic. And add some more minutes from the stretch on main road. Basic simple math. I wish I had known this, would never have booked if I had known this!
By the time we finally arrived, my kids were crying and exhausted and hungry! That’s when we discovered the AC was not working, for some reason it was always 10 degrees hotter inside the house than outside. On the 3rd day they finally came to fix it.
To make things worse, the Wi-Fi did not work! My husband and I could not work remotely like we had hoped and intended to. Slower than AOL dial up from the 1990s. Unless you are intentionally looking to disconnect and unplug during your vacation. I highly suggest booking on the main area of OBX with access to food, internet, and paved roads. It feels like The Moneypit of beach vacations, one calamity after the other! I will never book through VRBO again. Airbnb.com actually offers renters protection and recourse! Not the family vacation we were dreaming of!