By Dr. Chuck Kelley
Having grown up in Hawaii and spent most of my adult life here, I am well aware of the many advantages of living in these beautiful islands. But a couple of weeks ago, while on family vacation in North Carolina, I came to appreciate something else about Hawaii – what it really means to be a year-round resort with no real “off season.”
Our son Robby is currently studying environmental sciences at Duke University and has been spending this semester at the Duke University Marine Laboratory in Beaufort, N.C. We had heard that this was a wonderful vacation area, with many of the same activities we enjoy in Hawaii: shopping, dining, boating, surfing, kayaking, sport fishing, and even scuba diving. Although the city is on the East Coast, the ocean current brings up warm water from the Caribbean, and the beaches are beautiful. A “surf culture” similar to that of Haleiwa on Oahu’s North Shore has developed all along North Carolina’s Outer Banks – the necklace of long, low, narrow sand islands jutting into the Atlantic that form the state’s first line of defense against the hurricanes and gales that regularly batter the coast. Eager to see the area, we took a family vacation to Beaufort and the nearby resort towns, so we could experience the area first-hand.
The Beaufort, North Carolina, waterfront closed down for the winter season
Arriving on the North Carolina coast, we found beautiful beach resorts with all the amenities and types of activities we’d hoped for. But we happened to arrive on one of the last weekends of the fall season. Winter was approaching fast, and the town was all but closing down! The few shops that were still open for one final weekend were trying to clear out their last inventory before shuttering their doors. Most of the tourist activities were gone – the beach concessions were closed, the sport fishing boats had been dry-docked, the hotels had laid off their employees and were closing down, even most of the restaurants were closing. In fact, the only place we found to have our family Thanksgiving dinner was an establishment called Howard’s Pub!
The empty Beaufort main street in the middle of the day during the off-season.
Despite the emptying of the towns, we had a wonderful family vacation. I came away with a new appreciation for just how lucky we are in Hawaii to have year-round business. Sure, we have a few comparatively slow months, but it is a far cry from the challenges that seasonal resorts face. Can you imagine how different life would be in Hawaii if our hotels, restaurants, and attractions shut down and laid off their employees from November to March? Can you imagine how much work it would be to start up the business again at the beginning of the next season?
We are just so lucky that our wonderful climate allows us to stay open and provide work opportunities all year long. Lucky we live Hawaii!
