I Left My Heart In Wilmington, North Carolina

My most popular post on my old blog was that of my One Tree Hill scene framing photos, and although I will probably write another post like that for this blog, I figured firstly I want to write about Wilmington itself, or as OTH fans call it, Tree Hill. I left my heart in Wilmington, I instantly fell in love with the place. My dad and I did a road trip around some of the southern states and for me Wilmington was non-negotiable, I sacrificed three other locations for my 40 hours in Tree Hill.

With having so little time in Wilmington to explore, we spent most of our time going around filming locations for One Tree Hill which was my main aim for my time there, it just saddens me a little that I didn’t have more time there to explore all the other places as well. Having said that we did get to spend the whole day and a morning there seeing as much as we could.

My favourite place we managed to go was a beach called Topsail Beach which is about an hours drive out of Wilmington - as you may have guessed this was a filming location, but the beach was gorgeous, we drove up there late afternoon so the sun was setting and the tide was coming in while we were there but we walked along and back in two different places of the beach (it’s a long beach) but it was just so peaceful and serene I could have sat there all evening.

Another beautiful beach was Wrightsville Beach just outside of Wilmington, so a lot closer than heading up to Topsail Beach, but for me, it’s not quite as pretty although you do have two pier’s (As seen in the Dawson’s Creek opening credits) one at either end of the beach, it has lovely white sands and somewhere I could have spent the day sunbathing and paddling. 

For lunch we stopped at Front Street Brewery, and I couldn’t tell you what I had because I just can’t for the life of me remember, but I do remember they make their own beer on site and I tried a raspberry beer, which was nice, maybe a little too strong for me but still awesome to try something local.

You can take a walk along the cape fear river and look over to Battleship Park (OTH fans will know it as the Rivercourt) or you can have something to eat in one of the many restaurants which line the River Walk.

There are many streets leading off S Front St which is where we walked down going in and out of the shops, looking at the places to eat and drink as well as keeping an eye out for any OTH locations I could take a sneaky photo of.

These are just a couple of the places you can visit in Wilmington, there is a much or as little there to see as you want, nice little town, eat by the river, filming locations for TV and Film, whatever your reason for being there it’s a beautiful place and I completely fell in love with it. I didn’t have nearly enough time there and I hope one day I’ll be able to go back and spend more time there exploring.

Have you ever been to Wilmington? Or North Carolina? Would love to hear your thoughts about it.

HAYLEY