A Short Week
4 days · ~430 miles · from Richmond
Plantation row and the first peninsula, then across the Albemarle sounds to the barrier islands — colonial capitals, wild beaches, two free ferries and the backwater towns time forgot.
This trip chains: VA 5 & the Colonial Parkway · Outer Banks & the Sound Country
Starting in Richmond, this 4-day itinerary connects VA 5 & the Colonial Parkway and Outer Banks & the Sound Country. It suits travellers interested in parks, coast, mountains & water; barbecue, boudin, oysters & tamales; battlefields, the movement & the past. The day-by-day bases let you split roughly 430 miles into a sequence of visits rather than trying to cover every linked route end to end. Use the daily highlights to decide which places deserve your longest stops.
Budget an average of about 108 miles per day across the whole trip, or roughly 2.4–3.6 hours behind the wheel at an assumed 30–45 mph back-roads pace. This is a planning estimate, not a measured time for each leg: transfer days can be longer and rest days shorter. Add meal stops, tours, ferries, traffic and hikes separately; use each day's navigation link for current driving estimates.
Use these day-end areas to plan lodging; the map pins are orientation points, not hotel recommendations. The final day can be your departure day.
Choose your dates around the experiences below rather than assuming one season fits the entire trip. These notes come from the linked route guides; check current forecasts and official schedules.
Down VA 5 past the James River plantations — Shirley, Berkeley, Sherwood Forest — to Williamsburg by afternoon. Walk Colonial Williamsburg's Duke of Gloucester Street, then a tavern supper by candlelight.
A 1613 land grant still farmed by the same family eleven generations on, billed as the oldest family business in North America; the flying staircase has no visible support and no equal.
Claims America's first official Thanksgiving (1619), grew two Harrison presidents, and heard Taps first: the call was composed here during the army's 1862 encampment.
John Tyler's home, said to be the longest frame house in America, and still owned by Tylers; the grounds walk past a president's actual privacy.
The real 1607 site: the fort's rediscovered footprint, active digs, and the archaearium's recovered settlers, told bones-first.
The Parkway tunnels directly beneath the restored capital; surface for Duke of Gloucester Street or save the full immersion for its own day.
Navigate day 1 in Google Maps ↗ · via Shirley, Berkeley, Sherwood Forest, Historic Jamestowne, Colonial Williamsburg edge
The Colonial Parkway to Yorktown's battlefield, then south across the line to the Albemarle. Edenton by evening: the 1767 courthouse, the waterfront cottages, the prettiest small town in North Carolina and few people to share it.
The 1767 courthouse green running down to the sound — and the 1774 Edenton Tea Party, 51 women in organized political resistance, among America's first. Harriet Jacobs hid seven years in an attic here before her escape; her memoir told the world.
The oldest continually operating man-made canal in America (opened 1805), surveyed by George Washington. The swamp's deeper history: maroon communities of escaped slaves who built free lives in its fastness.
Colonial Spanish mustangs — shipwreck descendants — roaming the 4x4 beaches past the pavement's end. Fifty feet minimum; they enforce it better than the ordinance does.
Navigate day 2 in Google Maps ↗ · via Dismal Swamp Canal, Corolla's Wild Horses (spur)
US 64 through the inner-banks backwaters to Roanoke Island: the Lost Colony site and Elizabethan Gardens, then over the causeway to the beach. Climb Jockey's Ridge dunes at sunset; oysters and hushpuppies after.
The 1767 courthouse green running down to the sound — and the 1774 Edenton Tea Party, 51 women in organized political resistance, among America's first. Harriet Jacobs hid seven years in an attic here before her escape; her memoir told the world.
The East Coast's tallest natural dune system — hang gliders by day, soundside sunsets that empty the beach by evening. The dune ate a mini-golf course in the '70s; it occasionally returns pieces.
Roanoke, 1587: Virginia Dare's birthplace, then 115 people gone, one carved word — CROATOAN. The waterside drama has run since 1937 (Andy Griffith spent five seasons in tights here). The 400-year-old Mother Vine scuppernong still fruits nearby.
December 17, 1903: twelve seconds, 120 feet. The four flight markers pace out the distances in the sand — shorter than a 747's wingspan, which is the whole point.
Navigate day 3 in Google Maps ↗ · via Fort Raleigh & The Lost Colony, Wright Brothers Memorial (spur)
NC 12 down the thread of sand: Bodie and Hatteras lighthouses, the free Ocracoke ferry, the wild empty seashore. From Cedar Island the long ferry to the mainland, then in to New Bern — Tryon Palace and the birthplace of Pepsi to finish.
Free ferry in; pirate history everywhere. Blackbeard fought his last at Teach's Hole (November 22, 1718 — head to a bowsprit). Islanders still carry the 'hoi toider' brogue; the British Cemetery holds four sailors from the 1942 U-boat war, forever England.
Caleb Bradham's corner pharmacy still pours 'Brad's Drink' — invented 1893, renamed Pepsi-Cola in 1898 — at the original counter. Tryon Palace's gardens and the 1710 Swiss-founded streets round out the oldest-feeling town in the state.
The 1874 station of the surfmen who rowed into burning seas — the 1918 Mirlo rescue is the service's great epic. Summer beach-apparatus drills still fire the breeches buoy.
America's tallest brick lighthouse (198 ft), famously moved 2,900 feet inland in 1999 ahead of the eating sea. Offshore: Diamond Shoals, the 'Graveyard of the Atlantic' — 600-plus wrecks and counting.
Two and a quarter hours across open sound — gulls drafting the stern, cars dozing, the best cheap boat ride in America. Reserve ahead; the schedule is the itinerary.
Navigate day 4 in Google Maps ↗ · via Chicamacomico Life-Saving Station, Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, Ocracoke, The Cedar Island Ferry, Core Sound Museum (spur), Beaufort & the Queen Anne's Revenge, Sanitary Fish Market
Tidewater & the Outer Banks is a 4-day trip of about 430 miles.
It starts in Richmond.
It chains VA 5 & the Colonial Parkway and Outer Banks & the Sound Country.
Day 1: near Williamsburg, VA; Day 2: near Edenton, NC; Day 3: near Nags Head, NC; Day 4: Nags Head → New Bern via Hatteras.