Radio Island Beach
Morehead City, NC
Radio Island Beach sits on the Bulkhead Channel between Morehead City and Beaufort, a sound-side beach instead of an oceanfront one, with water calm enough that it's become the default swimming spot for families with small kids. There's no surf here at all, just flat, shallow water and a long wooden boardwalk out to the sand.
Genuinely the calmest, safest swimming water on this stretch of coast for small kids, though the small lot means arriving early on a summer weekend really does matter.
How we score beachesCome here instead of the ocean beaches on a windy day. The channel stays glassy calm even when Atlantic Beach and Emerald Isle are getting whipped up.
Free parking just south of the Radio Island Marina, though the lot is small and fills fast on weekends.
A long wooden boardwalk, handicap accessible, leads from the lot to the sand.
The calm water here makes it swimmable earlier and later in the season than the exposed ocean beaches nearby, though it still sits inside the same June through November hurricane season as the rest of the Crystal Coast.
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