Campground Views Podcast Episode 2: Seahaven Marine RV Park Sneads Ferry NC

Hosted by Mark Koep the Campground Views podcast brings camping to you with stories, destinations, people and adventures about the outdoors and travel.

Episode 2 fills in the blowout story from Mark’s very first RV trip and then takes you on a journey to Sneads Ferry North Carolina and Seahaven Marine RV Park. (https://www.seahavenmarinervpark.com/) Owned by the Irina and Kal the park sites on the banks of the New River with access to the Inter-coastal Waterway and the Atlantic Ocean. It is on the backside of popular Topsail Island and is the closest RV park to Marine Base Camp Lejeune.

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Transcript

Speaker 1:
Hello and welcome. My name is Mark Koep and this is episode two of the campground views podcast. So campgroundviews.com was founded by my wife and I as we started traveling in our RV and we discovered just how hard it was to find a campground or RV park. Our entire purpose is to make camping amazing. We believe you do that by getting the right camper in the right campground, in the right equipment at the right time. If you do those four things, you can create these amazing experiences for campers, whether it’s an intent or an RV. So my wife and I, as I noted previously in episode one, we’re full time, our viewers and we were doing it for almost 11 years. Now what that means is basically our condo, our apartment moves every few weeks to few months and we have these amazing locations that we live in. I work a full time career just virtually and we enjoy life and we’ve been enjoying this for 10 years now, going on 11 years.

Speaker 1:
And I, I shared within that story our, our kind of beginning journey where we took off and we had this blowout and so I had some questions from, some folks asked me about that blow out, want to learn a little bit more and it’s, it’s kind of a, an interesting story if you’ve ever camped RV to really gone on any adventure, you know that once you go out on that adventure, it’s one thing to say you’re going to do it. It’s another thing when you get out on that adventure and you actually start having the adventure. In our case, we left Southern California, we had sold everything we own. We’d moved out of our apartment and we’re in this RV and as our very first trip or first day, we’re about 150 miles in and we’re traveling up us three 95 along the Eastern Sierra. You can see the East new Sierra in a photo behind me or so.

Speaker 1:
We’re cruising up along that mountain range there and I’m driving 55 over in the slow lane, which 55 is the speed limit for towing in California, some 55 in the slowly and this big ring pulls up next to me and the guy kind of starts pacing us and I glanced over and I could see that he was kind of waving or whatever. So we waved back. He assumed he really liked the RV. He waved some more, we waved back some more and then he finally went on. Well about 10 miles later I glanced into my rear view mirror and I see smoke and rubber flying up from the trailers. Oh my God. We got a flat tire. So I pulled over and apparently he wasn’t waving cause he liked the rig. The guy was actually trying to warn us that we had a flat tire and we’re about to have a blow.

Speaker 1:
Well I didn’t pay it so we got to blow out 150 miles into the trip or we were at that point we were about 20 miles South of lone pine, California. So I had a spare on the rig, but I didn’t have a Jack to Jack up the rig to put the spare tire on. So ended up having to call a towing company and it’s a towing company out of lone pine. I don’t want to disparage them too much because you’ll, you’ll learn a little bit more about what they left us with after this. So this tow company has a big orange trucks are out of lone pine. The guy came out, he jacked up the trailer, put the new tire on and I wanted to get a new tire because my assumption was is that there must be something wrong with this RV. It was a used RV is about three years old and we knew it had always sat on the same tire.

Speaker 1:
So this was a sign. Obviously the tires are bad, we should, we should get some new ones. So he said, well we got a tire shop in lone pine and go ahead and pull up there and we’ll get through a set of new tires for your rate. Sounds great. So we cruised on the up the road and got five new tires. Now you’re probably saying five new tires. That probably wasn’t cheap. No, it was about 150 bucks a tire. So you’re looking at about $750. Day one, 150 miles in this is getting kind of crazy, right? So anyways, the guys that are working the shop, they do all this extra work and in fact we take the truck and we drive over to subway in town. We buy a bunch of sandwiches for everybody, bring it back. So you know, we’re just, we’re on our adventure, right?

Speaker 1:
And we want to make sure everybody’s doing a good job on a rate. They put these new tires on our rig and we go on our Merry way. So that night we overnighted near a Walker, Bridgeport area. And then eventually we made our way up to Carson city and as I pulled into Carson city, I decided that we needed to get a tire checked out cause I didn’t know anything about tires. And we pulled into this tire shop in Carson city, Nevada. And the guy comes out and he, you know, the tire guy, how they always come out to check out your tire. They just said, Hey, I got these new tires. I don’t want to just have you guys check them out, make sure the air is good and everything else comes out. And he crouches down and he looks at the tire and then he stands up and he says, sorry, we can’t touch those tires.

Speaker 1:
Why there, why can’t you touch the tires? I don’t understand. He said, well, those tires are 13 years old. We can’t touch. And the only thing we can do is take the air out of them and put new tires on. But they’re way past their date. And I said, date tires have dates. And that started a journey of education in regard to tires and everything else. So five new tires later said another $750. That was weak. That was all within week one. We have five new tires. So now I think we’re good. We got these new trailer tires on and we continue on from there. We drove over to the redwoods and we get to the redwoods, and as we’re driving up the coast highway, they’re really windy part. I get a car that pulls up and Hawks me and passes me and I’m like, Oh great.

Speaker 1:
Now I’m really paranoid. So I pull over and lo and behold, we’ve got another flat tire. We hit a nail and got a flat tire. Now we got some RV tires. Needless to say, after this was all done, I ended up buying the strongest tires you could possibly have and we never had a tire problem after that. That was our very first RV adventure. That was 10 years ago, and we’re still RV now. So my goal is to help you try to avoid those, that chaos or if you have that chaos, be able to get through it and make it part of your story of RB and to help you along that journey. In three we talked to Arina and cow from sea Haven Marine RV park in Sneads ferry, North Carolina. Probably never heard of it, but now we’re going to take you to it so you can discover it and go enjoy it for yourself.

Speaker 1:
Okay. Hey there everybody. It’s Mark cap with campground views.com. Thank you for joining us today on this episode of great places to go on camp. I don’t have a really good name yet, so I’ve got to come up with that. Basically we want to share with you amazing spots to go. And today I have a very unique and amazing spot to go. I’ve personally been here, we’ve actually produced videos and we’ll see that. And if you’re watching this on YouTube, you’ll see some of those videos of this amazing location. And I’ve got two of the friendliest people you’ll ever callin arena would be, they are the owners of sea Haven, Marine RV parking, Sneads ferry, North Carolina. It’s a town you probably never even heard of. And we’re about to learn about this amazing place. So thank you for joining me today. I arena and cow.

Speaker 2:
It’s our great pleasure. Thank you Mark.

Speaker 1:
So give us a little bit of the background of this, of this park. I mean, so how originally bought the park for his father to operate. And you’ve owned this park now for what, 25 or 26 years?

Speaker 3:
25 years. We’re celebrating 25 year anniversary this year

Speaker 2:
At quarter of a century of outdoor hospitality. And, and when calc purchased, the first piece of land, people did not do as a lot of RV in them. So it was all very novel and Cal was the pioneer in this part of the world.

Speaker 1:
And Sneads ferry, it’s a unique location. So I’m going to pull up Google maps here so people can kind of see where it’s at. And anybody who’s ever been in the Marines, they’re going to see that icon there and it’s going to bring chills to their back because they know exactly where it’s at. But most other, everybody else won’t know where it needs various. So give us an idea of where Snead’s ferry is and what’s close by.

Speaker 3:
So snakes ferry is nestled between camp plusN , which is the largest Marine base in the United States and Topsail Island. So it’s a great, great. And also we’re, we’re about 40 minutes North of Wilmington, North Carolina and about 25 minutes away from tax and bill North Carolina. So that’s, yeah, that gives her a kitchen

Speaker 2:
And when they knew it either. So which leads to the Atlantic ocean. So we only had 2.4 miles away from their planted ocean and all the fun fishing.

Speaker 1:
Yeah. And we have your website up here and it’s going through some of the photos and people can see this is your your, your freshwater inlet where boats can come in and dock. You have your own Marina and slip spaces there at your park. So people have access not only to the new river, but they have access to the intercoastal and out to the Atlantic ocean, correct?

Speaker 2:
That is right.

Speaker 3:
Correct. It’s a salt water basin. It’s practice water. So it’s a mixture of the new river, freshwater and saltwater tidal water coming in.

Speaker 2:
And what can you fishing from here? And we have dolphins occasionally that swim up into the parks. So this is really fun to see.

Speaker 1:
Well, I was going to share that. So you know, my family, we actually stayed at your park this last a year ago in the spring as we were producing the videos to, to show off your park. And it was just an amazing location. My son got to go crabbing. You got, you know, you had the crab traps off the end of the dock and you got to go pick up some, what were they shrimper you know, I dunno. We w we had went out and had a whole bunch of fun catching fish and everything hanging out there as a blows.

Speaker 2:
Yes. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
So your location on Sneads ferry, you’re, you’re open for both short term guests, overnight guests, people looking to stay on a weekend or holiday. And you have waterfront sites that have used of the water. You’re also open for weekly and longer term depending upon the needs of the GIF come to the area, correct?

Speaker 2:
That is correct. So daily, weekly, monthly, annual contracts, say available. And we sell out in the summer, we smoke park only 67 logs and we have customers who have been coming for 18 years or may one. So it’s a very friendly community atmosphere. People are very kind and everybody just loves boating and fishing. And from here you can go boating and go up on your boat to several restaurants, which is also fun. And if you have a fishing kayak, you can go fishing around the corner. That’s one of the best secret locations we’re telling you about. What the best is the fish. And we have a couple of fishing charters that operates from our docs as well. So if the look of fun for the whole family.

Speaker 1:
Yeah, we’re looking at your video of the park that shows that often you do have what three commercial fishing boats that take off from your dock there. So folks can go on like a, a daily, you know, a daily trip out into the ocean and, and a cow, you’re sharing that this year has been interesting with the catch coming in. There’s been some pretty big fish coming out of the boats you’ve been sending out, correct?

Speaker 3:
Well, yeah. The boats that work out of our docks they do Gulf stream fishing. They fish for large grouper. We had a sail fish con last year, the end of the year. But in addition to that, and not so much the charters that are working at our docs, but some of the local boats been able to manage to, to catch some very large bluefin tuna in, believe it or not, 42 foot of water depth about three miles off shore.

Speaker 1:
And so when we talk about bluefin Tona, how, how big is a bluefin tuna? Is it like the size of a trout or is a little bit larger than that?

Speaker 3:
It’s the little larger. So the the, the ones that were caught this year were between 400 and 800 pounds each.

Speaker 4:
Wow.

Speaker 3:
Yeah. It’s thing, it’s very few places in the whole world. You can, you can go such a short distance and catch such a large fish.

Speaker 1:
So this destination you took have been working hard to make it even nicer than it’s always been. Obviously you’ve owned it a long time. It’s, it’s got a really down-home community feel. It’s a quiet little location. And there’s some secret spots around here. You mentioned the, the fish houses nearby and share, share with us arena. You’re a, you’re a huge advocate for this location. Tell us why people should come here.

Speaker 2:
Well, we, it seems we are over busy nowadays that everybody’s working so hard and we have too many responsibilities. So we tell people come and get UNBC at sea Haven Marine RV park. We have a meditation garden come and make a day. You come to the waterfront with, have amazing sunrises. And we had an artist a couple of years ago who came and she just couldn’t believe the natural views and serenity. The beach is only 12 minutes away, so you can swim, you can collect some shells, you can just walk and exercise. And people who come here, they tell us that they, after they spend one night, they become very peaceful and they regain their ina balance, which I think is very important nowadays. Nature is amazing. We have the turtle clinic where turtles a save them people can go and visit and see. We have one of the best aquariums.

Speaker 3:
There’s an aquarium that’s an hour North of us and another aquarium. These are all North Carolina state, just South of Wilmington, which is about another 50 minutes.

Speaker 2:
And you can hear the military helicopter

Speaker 4:
[Inaudible]

Speaker 1:
Yeah, I, Cal has got a funny line for that. He calls it the sounds of freedom. And you know, camp Lejune is the largest Marine base in the United States and they’re actually investing heavily within that Marine base. And sea Haven Marine RV park is the closest RV park to the Marine base. So it’s a, it’s a good location and if you’re ex-military or if you just like being around that type of, of, of environment, it’s not like they’re shooting guns or anything next door, but you get the occasional large chopper that flies by, which I know my son loved and personally I enjoyed it too.

Speaker 2:
Yes. And it’s very international also. So that’s what we like. It’s a small just village but it’s very cosmopolitan and people come from different cultures. They’re very open minded. They [inaudible] very proud of our American heritage but also very open to other cultures as well. And that makes it even more welcoming. And we should also mention the evolve restaurants scene. We have a lot of great chefs that move into our area. We have several restaurants here in [inaudible] area and surf city as well as Wilmington. And that’s very exciting. Gastro mom and join you for the food. Yes. Who would like to try a few find places? Yeah.

Speaker 1:
So there are a lot of restaurants nearby. In fact, we went to one of these restaurants when we, there wasn’t river view that we went, where do we eat at that one place that was just amazing.

Speaker 3:
Yeah. Riverview cafe and that’s right on the new river. It’s about two miles away from the RV park and they’ve been in business since 1948 or 47. The they serve beautiful a seafood. They’re a fresh locally caught flounder. It’s shrimp. So we’re, we’re quite proud of that restaurant. We go there often.

Speaker 1:
Yeah. Actually, I mean, all a test to it spoiled me rotten. It was great food. I don’t think anybody’s been able to beat it. So sea Haven, Marine RV park, it’s Sneads ferry. It’s a great location out of the way. You’ve probably never heard of Sneads ferry. And that’s why I love these interviews and I love our industry because it gets you the opportunity to stay in unique locations. There’s another little unique piece if you’re a history buff, especially if you like pirates and cow shares. A little story about this location, the new river, and a little bit of the pirate lore of this region?

Speaker 3:
Well, it’s, it’s, it’s said that black beard used to actually hang out at the new river here and there are, you know, those family members that, that bear his name. So there, there is some truth to it. But the, the stories go that he used to use the new river to hide his ship and then go out and ambush passing merchants ship out in the ocean. But if you, if you look at, if he spent any of time here then and, and his crew on land, you know, camping out, then you kinda think, well, where would they camp out? Well we’ve got one of the deepest holes. It’s only about a quarter of a mile away from the RV park. It’s about 40 feet deep and it’s been that deep for a long time. So it’s not difficult to fathom that, you know, black beard hung out right in this area and use that deep hole. [inaudible] Fish food, crabs and clams and everything for his crew, potentially hide the trash.

Speaker 1:
It would load the origin of the name of the plump sail Island.

Speaker 3:
Yeah. Topsail Island itself. It goes back to the pirates in that they used to try to hide behind the Island. It’s about a 26 mile long Island with inlets on both sides. And there were large trees on Topsail Island, different from all the other islands. For some reason trees just grew well. And when the authorities were cruising down the intercoastal or cruising down the ocean looking for pirates, they would, they would see only the tops of their sails over the trees. So that’s why the Island was named Topsail Island.

Speaker 1:
That’s a great story and this is a great place. We actually went and did a pirate thing there. I mean, just lots of fun in the overall region. So folks looking to come out to see Haven Marine RV park, you guys are open when you open year round. We open year round and the weather is actually great. They’re very

Speaker 2:
Mild winters and wonderful summers. And yes, we’re open for business all year round and then August we also have a stream festival which is Sneads ferry stream festival is going to Mark the 50 year anniversary this summer and we’re welcoming everybody to come and join us for that.

Speaker 1:
That’s a beautiful occasion. Sneads ferry, North Carolina Irene, I Cal vanc you for inviting us and sharing with us your destination and if you’re looking for a unique spot, add this location to your map. Thank you guys.

Speaker 2:
Thank you. We’ll be looking forward to receiving you advice here. You’ll love it.

Speaker 1:
Well I hope you enjoyed that interview of arena and Cal from sea Haven Marine RV park in Sneads ferry, North Carolina. If you’re going to be anywhere on the East coast and anywhere in that area added as a destination for you to stop over. Great couple amazing location, very unique spot to stay. So added to your destination. If you’re going to be out there and if you have other areas that you want to learn about or that you know about and you want to get on the show, reach out to us. Drop a comment below or contact us at campgroundviews.com email is mark@campgroundviews.com and love to hear from you. Now, if you’re liking these shows, if you’re liking these episodes, put a little thumbs up there and comment below. If you don’t like it, give us a thumbs up and tell me what we can do to make it better. My name is Mark Koep, our company is campgroundviews.com and for now we wish you safe and happy travels.

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