The Dog-Friendly Beach Destination NC Didn’t Tell You About 🌊

If you’ve tried to plan a beach vacation with your dog on the North Carolina coast, you already know the frustration. Wrightsville Beach bans dogs from the beach entirely from April through September. Carolina Beach and Kure Beach restrict them to early morning and evening hours in summer. Topsail Island is different — all three towns on the island allow dogs on the beach year-round, during the day, all summer long. Keep your dog leashed, clean up after them, and you’re good.

Here’s everything you need to know before you go.

📋 Beach Rules by Town

Rules vary slightly depending on which part of the island you’re on:

Topsail Beach (south end)

• Leash required May 15 – September 30
• The CBRS conservation area at the south tip has extended leash rules: April 1 – September 30 (clearly marked)
• Voice control is NOT accepted as a substitute for a leash
• Pick up after your pup on all public property

Surf City (middle)

• Leash required year-round, max 20 feet
• 🎉 Complimentary waste bags provided at beach accesses

North Topsail Beach (north end)

• Leash required year-round, max 25 feet (retractable leashes are fine)
• $100 fine for leash violations — they do enforce it

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🐕 Best Dog Walks on the Island

All of Topsail’s beaches are great for dogs, but a few spots stand out:

Skip Main Roads – The main commercial stretch has sidewalks but it’s busy and the pavement gets scorching in summer. Not the move with a dog.

The beach itself – Topsail is a long, narrow barrier island and the beach runs the entire length of it. Walking up and down the shoreline with your dog is one of the great simple pleasures here — wide, uncrowded stretches in most spots, and dogs are in heaven.

Serenity Point – The best dog walk on the island. Use the beach accesses in the Serenity Point neighborhood to walk your dog around the southern tip — sound beach to ocean beach — in a roughly two-mile loop. Uncrowded even in peak summer, gorgeous sunsets on the sound side, and dogs absolutely love it. There’s a town-run paid parking lot here if you’re coming from elsewhere on the island.

Soundside neighborhoods – For everyday morning or evening walks, find a quiet soundside neighborhood near your rental and walk the streets. They’re shaded in spots, low-traffic, and often have water views. Way better than the main drag.

🍽️ Dog-Friendly Restaurants

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You’ll be pleasantly surprised — Topsail has a lot of outdoor dining options that welcome dogs, more than most beach towns its size. Here are a few favorites to get you started:

• Beach Shop & Grill (Topsail Beach) – One of the best restaurants on the island, with great outdoor seating and a truly dog-friendly setup. Worth a reservation even if you don’t have a dog.
• Larry’s Deli-Que (Topsail Beach) – Casual outdoor seating, smoked meats, sandwiches, and live music. Perfect lunch stop.
• White Crab Coffee & Books (Topsail Beach) – Grab your morning coffee here before a beach walk. Dog-friendly and one of the island’s newest local gems.
• Shaka Taco (Surf City) – Local favorite with outdoor seating, dogs welcome.
• Daddy Mac’s (Surf City) – Another solid Surf City option for outdoor dining with your pup.
• UnWined (Surf City) – Live music on the deck and dogs are welcome. A great evening spot. 🎶
• Surf City Line (Surf City/North Topsail Beach border) – Dogs welcome on the outdoor deck.

As always, call ahead to confirm — pet policies can change.

🏠 Finding a Dog-Friendly Rental

Dog-friendly rentals are common on Topsail, especially with private owner-managed properties, but read the fine print before you book. Look for:

• ✅ Weight limits and breed restrictions (check before booking)
• ✅ Outdoor shower or hose (a must after beach days)
• ✅ Easy beach access

Pack these — most rentals don’t provide them:

Your dog’s bed or blanket so they’re comfortable somewhere new

Waste bags

A dog towel for post-beach cleanup

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☀️ Hot Weather Tips

Summer on Topsail is hot, and dogs feel it more than we do:

• Check the sand before you walk. If you can’t hold your hand on it comfortably for a few seconds, it’s too hot for paws. Early morning and evening are the sweet spots for beach time in July and August.
• Furry dogs especially — limit time in direct sun and watch for signs of overheating. The beach is exciting and dogs will push past their limit if you let them.
• Bring water and a collapsible bowl. Dogs playing in sand and surf dehydrate faster than you’d expect.
• Watch for turtle nests. Topsail Beach is sea turtle nesting habitat. Keep dogs away from marked nests and out of dune vegetation, especially at the south end.

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Topsail Island is about as dog-friendly as a North Carolina beach destination gets — which is saying something on a coast where most beaches ban dogs outright during peak season. The island is a real place that people live in and love, and that extends to how dogs are treated here. Bring yours. Just bring the leash. 🐶🌊

The Hidden Gem of Topsail Island

If you’ve spent time on Topsail Island, you may have heard people mention “Serenity Point” — or simply “The Point.” You might have even stood at the southern tip of the island and looked out at the place where the Atlantic Ocean meets Banks Channel, feeling that particular kind of stillness that earns a place its name. But there’s a lot more to this stretch of North Carolina coastline than meets the eye, and for many it remains one of those places you feel lucky to discover.

Here’s what you need to know.

What is Serenity Point?

Serenity Point sits at the very southern tip of Topsail Island, a 26-mile-long barrier island off the coast of North Carolina, between Wilmington and the Crystal Coast. The name comes from a small neighborhood of townhomes built on the southern end of the island in the late 1980s and early 1990s — but locals and visitors long ago started using it to refer to the wild, undeveloped land that extends beyond those homes to the very end of the island.

For decades, that wild land was one of the last things on the North Carolina coast you could count on looking exactly the way it always had. No development, no structures — just expansive dunes, maritime shrub forest, estuarine wetlands, open beach, and a remarkable variety of wildlife. The property stretches from the Atlantic Ocean all the way to Banks Channel on the sound side, and over the years — through the natural processes of coastal accretion — it grew to encompass roughly 150 acres.

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The Fight To Keep It That Way

The fact that The Point remains wild today is not an accident. It’s the result of two decades of community effort, a grassroots conservation campaign, and a fundraising push that drew support from nearly 800 donors and multiple state and federal agencies.

The land had been owned since the 1960s by three families — the McCullens, McLeods, and Oppegaards — who largely let the public use it recreationally while the island grew around it. The town of Topsail Beach, recognizing both the ecological value of the land and the fragility of the island’s south end, zoned the property as a C4 conservation zone in the early 1980s. For a while, that seemed like enough.

In 2005, the property hit the market for the first time, and the community mobilized. A local resident named Maggie Chesnutt — who lived in the Serenity Point townhomes — organized her neighbors, produced t-shirts and petitions, and presented at town meetings. The effort attracted national attention, including a Wall Street Journal piece on the battle. A nonprofit called Conserve The Point was formed. The town tried to purchase the land outright, but with an annual budget of $1.7 million, it simply couldn’t. The Great Recession eventually pulled the property off the market in 2008 — but the grassroots infrastructure remained, quietly waiting.

In 2022, the property was relisted at $8 million. A prospective buyer applied to rezone part of the 150-acre site to build a private family compound: multiple 5,000-square-foot homes, a swimming pool, a private marina, and boardwalks to the beach. Conserve The Point relaunched almost overnight — this time via social media — and hundreds of residents and thousands of visitors submitted public commentary opposing the rezoning. In late 2023, the buyers withdrew their application.

What happened next was remarkable. The NC Coastal Land Trust signed a purchase contract with the owners in early 2024 and launched the “Save the South End” fundraising campaign, targeting nearly $8 million. The community met the goal. Nearly 800 donors contributed $1.5 million in private donations. The rest came from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, the NC Land and Water Fund, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service. In April 2025, the Land Trust officially closed on the purchase at a final price of $7.5 million. The mayor of Topsail Beach called it simply: “This beautiful and beloved section of Topsail is now protected forever.”

The property — now called the South Topsail Preserve — will eventually transfer to the NC Division of Coastal Management as part of the state’s coastal preserve system.

What’s There Now (And Why It’s Worth Your Time)

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The preserve is open to the public. There’s a small paid parking lot managed by the town of Topsail Beach, and from there you can walk the beach, watch for nesting loggerhead sea turtles and shorebirds, and experience what increasingly few stretches of barrier island coastline look like when left alone. The property hosts Wilson’s plovers, willets, and more than 30 priority bird species. A rare coastal plant called seabeach amaranth grows on the open beach. In 2025, Audubon North Carolina helped establish the island’s first protected nesting area for Piping Plovers. The volunteer South Topsail Stewards now serve as ambassadors for the preserve, offering educational beach walks.

It’s not a curated nature center. It’s just the land, the birds, and the water — which is exactly why people keep coming back.

The Walk You Won’t Forget

One of the best-kept secrets on the south end of the island isn’t The Point itself — it’s a walk you can do right from the Serenity Point neighborhood.

The neighborhood has beach accesses on both the sound side and the ocean side. Start at one, hit the beach, and walk around the southern tip of the island to the other — a roughly two-mile loop that’s unlike any beach walk I’ve come across. At one end you’re on the Banks Channel beach, watching pelicans skim the sound and the sun starting its descent toward the mainland. At the other, you’re on a wide, uncrowded Atlantic Ocean beach with waves rolling in. The two feel like completely different worlds, and you get both in a single walk. When you reach “The Point,” you’ll feel like you are at the center of the universe.

The sound-side beach faces west, which means the sunsets can be genuinely spectacular — unobstructed, over the water, the kind that make people stop mid-sentence. And because this is the very southern tip of the island, the beaches are uncrowded even in summer. The entire area is dog-friendly, so four-legged visitors are welcome along for the walk.

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The Town Next Door

The Point sits just minutes from the small town of Topsail Beach, which rewards the kind of slow, wandering visit that beach vacations are made for.

The Beach Shop & Grill is the dining anchor of the south end — a higher-end restaurant with a relaxed island feel and a menu that makes it worth a reservation. White Crab Coffee & Books is a newer addition that locals have quickly claimed as a favorite: coffee, books, and a quiet start to a beach morning. For ice cream, you have two solid options — Four Cousins and Scoops Micro Creamery — both worth the stop. The Gift Basket has been a Topsail institution for years, the kind of gift shop that feels genuinely local rather than tourist-trap. And if you have kids (or are simply nostalgic), the town also has an old-school roller rink and a mini golf and arcade spot that round out an evening.

A few miles north, Surf City offers a broader range of restaurants, the surf shop scene, and the main bridge connection to the mainland. Between the two, the south end of Topsail Island offers a full week’s worth of days that can be as active or as lazy as you want.

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A place worth knowing, Serenity Point is not flashy. There’s no boardwalk, no attractions, no development pitch. What it has is something increasingly rare on the North Carolina coast: undisturbed land, wide beaches, a community that fought hard to keep it that way, and the particular kind of quiet that comes from a place that has been, against considerable odds, left alone.

It’s worth knowing about. And now you do.

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Want to explore more of Topsail Island’s south end? Check out our guide to Exploring Topsail Island’s South End for local eats, family activities, and hidden gems.

Hidden Gems, Local Eats & Family Fun 🌊

If you’ve visited Topsail Island before, you probably know about Surf City’s wide beaches and laid-back charm. But the south end of the island is where the locals really shine, with quaint shops, fresh seafood, and fun family-friendly spots tucked into every corner. Whether you’re here for a relaxing getaway or a full-family adventure, our guide will help you discover the best of the southern Topsail Island town of Topsail Beach.

Local Eats & Coffee Spots ☕

Start your day right with a cup of coffee or a hearty breakfast:

• White Crab Coffee & Books – A new favorite, where you can sip coffee, browse books, and enjoy a quiet island morning.
• Larry’s Deli Que – Perfect for sandwiches, smoked meats, breakfast favorites, and sweet treats — live music, too!
• Goodwin’s Market – Limited market where you can pick up grocery essentials.
• Scoops Micro Creamery & Four Cousins Ice Cream – Sweet stops for handmade ice cream; Four Cousins is conveniently attached to Larry’s.

And don’t forget our classic family favorites:

• The Beach Shop & Grill Restaurant – Higher-end dining with a perfect island vibe–they take reservations!
• The Gift Basket Shop – A nostalgic stop for gifts, souvenirs, and fun finds.

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Family Fun & Entertainment 🎢

The south end has plenty of activities beyond the sand:

• Pirate’s Cove – Retro mini-golf, arcade games, ice cream, and a DJ make this a must-visit for kids and adults alike.
• Topsail Beach Skating Rink – An old-school rollerskating favorite.
• Topsail Surf & Cycle – Rent bikes, kayaks, or paddleboards for exploring the island from the water.

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Outdoor Exploration 🌿

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• Serenity Point – Walk along the southern protected tip of the island. Paid parking lot available.
• South End Outfitters – Great selection of clothes, shoes, and gear..
• Topsail Beach Craft Market – Thursdays all summer, featuring local artisans and handmade goods.

Fresh Catch 🦀

For seafood lovers, Lewis Seafood Market is your go-to for the freshest fish and local catches. Pick up ingredients for a beachside picnic or a sunset dinner back at your rental.

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Insider Tips

• Learn more about Topsail Island during WW2 at the Missiles & More Museum.
• In adddition to the beach, Topsail Beach has a beautiful soundfront with access to the Intercoastal Waterway and nearby Lea Island. Tuck’s Water Shuttle can get you there!
• Make a game day of it: ice cream at Four Cousins, mini-golf at Pirate’s Cove, and a bike ride to Serenity Point.
• Enjoy the great views and photo ops, and check out what the fishermen are catching at the Jolly Roger Fishing Pier.

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Topsail Island’s south end is a blend of classic island charm and new local gems. From family-friendly activities to artisanal treats, you can easily fill a day, weekend (or longer) with memories, sun, and delicious food. Next time you stay on the island, step off the main beach path and explore this charming corner — your inner local will thank you.

Best Events, Fireworks & Family Fun

If you’re planning a beach escape for Independence Day, you’re in for a treat—Topsail Island is pure magic this time of year. Whether you’re staying steps from the ocean or tucked into a soundside retreat, the island comes alive with small-town charm, family-friendly events, and spectacular fireworks. From live music at Soundside Park to kids’ fishing tournaments and beach picnics, there’s something for everyone to enjoy. We’ve rounded up the best things to do for the 4th of July 2025, all close to our vacation homes, so you can focus on making memories.

🎉 1. Pre-Fireworks Fun at Soundside Park (Surf City)

When: July 3rd, 6–9:30 PM
Where: Soundside Park, 517 Roland Ave, Surf City
Kick off Independence Day celebrations early with a lively evening at Soundside Park. Live music—typically by bands like Jim Quick & Coastline—will keep the atmosphere energetic, while food trucks and vendor booths offer family-friendly fare. Kids can enjoy face painting, balloon twisting, bounce houses, and games starting around 6:00 PM. The night wraps up with a 9:00 PM fireworks display over the sound, illuminating the water and sky in a festive climax.

💡 Tips:

• Arrive by 6:00 PM to grab prime spots early—pack blankets or lawn chairs.
• Parking fills fast—consider walking or biking since Surf City offers paid beach parking only until 5 PM

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🏖️ 2. Beach Day & Picnic at Serenity Point

Looking for a quieter spot to enjoy a beach day or catch the sunset after the 4th of July festivities? Head to Serenity Point, located at the very southern tip of Topsail Island in Topsail Beach. This peaceful stretch of shoreline offers wide beaches, gentle waves, and panoramic views of both the ocean and the sound. It’s a local favorite for walking, shelling, paddleboarding, and relaxing away from the crowds.

📍 Serenity Point Parking Area
End of South Anderson Blvd., Topsail Beach, NC 28445
(Technically: 1000 block of South Anderson Blvd)

There’s a small paid parking lot at the entrance to Serenity Point, and it fills up quickly—especially in summer and on holidays like the 4th of July. We recommend arriving by 9 a.m. if you want a guaranteed spot. Payment is required via the ParkMobile app or at the onsite kiosk.

Pro tip: Even when the lot is full, some street parking is available nearby—just be sure to follow posted signs to avoid a ticket.

On your way onto the island, make a stop at the charming Salt Marsh Market for all your beach picnic essentials. From gourmet sandwiches and fresh salads to cold drinks, snacks, and homemade baked goods, they’ve got everything you need to fill your cooler. They also carry local goodies and gifts if you want to bring something back to your rental.

📍 Salt Marsh Market
100-A Charlie Medlin Dr, Surf City, NC 28445

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🚣 3. Explore the Water—Kayaks, SUPs & Shuttle Cruises

Celebrate the holiday by hitting the water! Rent a kayak or stand-up paddleboard from Paddle NC in Surf City—families rave about the wildlife and the easy access
Or opt for a scenic cruise on Tuck’s Water Shuttle to nearby Lea-Hutaff Island—ideal for beachcombing and birdwatching.

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🎣 4. Surf City Pier Kids’ Fishing Tournament

On July 3rd, join the free Kids Fishing Tournament at Surf City Pier. Catered to ages up to 16, with one rod per child. Adults must accompany kids under 10. Pre-registration is recommended.

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🧘‍♀️ 5. Sunrise Beach Yoga

Start your 4th of July with a grounding flow on the beach at Sunrise Beach Yoga. Held at Surf City Beach Access 5, located at 1610 N Shore Dr, Surf City, NC 28445, this class begins at 7:00 AM and runs until 7:50 AM.

The session starts with meditation and moves through a stretch-focused sequence to connect breath, body, and mind. It’s accessible for all levels, so whether you’re new to yoga or experienced, you’ll find it welcoming.

What to Bring:

• A towel, blanket, or yoga mat
• Comfortable attire
• A water bottle to stay hydrated

Cost:

The class operates on a pay-what-you-can basis, with a suggested donation of $10–$20. Payments can be made via cash, card (tap-to-pay), or Venmo @topsailislandyoga.

Parking:

Parking at the Broadway Street lot is free before 8 AM, making it convenient for early risers.

No reservation is needed—just show up ready to embrace the morning sun and start your holiday with tranquility.

🧨 6. Off-Island Fireworks: Holly Ridge & Sneads Ferry

If you want to extend the celebration, head to nearby Holly Ridge Municipal Park on July 4th, from about 2 PM onward. It features a smaller, equally festive fireworks display.

You can enjoy the Holly Ridge fireworks from certain spots on Topsail Island, though the view may be somewhat distant. If you’re positioned south of the Surf City Bridge on the sound side, facing west, you may get a glimpse of the Holly Ridge fireworks.

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🌅 7. Sunset Views & Soundside Park Strolls

One of the best ways to unwind post-fireworks is a stroll along the Surf City bridge pedestrian lane, taking in sunset views and the glowing embers of Independence Day. Locals recommend this as a peaceful way to end a spirited celebration .

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🐢 8. Bonus: Sea Turtle Center Visit

The Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rescue & Rehabilitation Center in Surf City is open through summer months. Though not 4th-of-July–specific, a visit fits perfectly into a holiday stay—and adds an educational twist for families. Get tickets ahead of time!

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🌟 Quick Itinerary for 4th of July Weekend:

July 3: Sunrise Beach Yoga in Surf City, Day at the Beach (hit up our favorite restaurants), Evening at Soundside Park—live music, kids’ activities, fireworks
July 4: Beach picnic + water fun + kids’ pier fishing + optional Holly Ridge fireworks

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Whether you’re soaking up live music, dining under the stars, casting a line off the pier, or watching fireworks light up the sky, Topsail Island offers a magical and memorable Independence Day weekend 🌊🎆.