Museum of the Sea — Attraction in North Carolina

April 2025. Don't waste your time. Just enjoy the beach. Had a terrible visit to this Seashore including this exhibit. The NPS Rangers are not present or not helpful if you find one.  This must be the NPS training center or where they send the rejects. We arrived at the campground also in Hatteras SS to no one. No one could give us info about the Seashore. Go to Whalebone originally looking for Jr Ranger books and info. Nope. Maybe Brodie has books outside the lighthouse? Nope.(Fire so they can't put books outside) Drove all the way down to Museum of the Sea. What a disappointment! Books, sure if you can find the 1 lady(?) The communication at this NPS site is atrocious. Ongoing reno of the lighthouse and area has these folks completely forgetting they have visitors. We got to the VC and museum to find it all under construction. No clear direction where to go from the park lot. The volunteer inside the Park Store directed us to the museum to find a Ranger and programs. We got to the sad museum and disturbed the lone Ranger sitting behind the desk on their phone or reading. Seemed polite enough when greeted and put on the video for us. After a short time of completing the Jr Ranger programs in the small museum, we were told by the Ranger it was lunch time and we had to go. It is 1pm she will he back in the Park Store VC at 1:30. "Ok, can we get the stamp while we're here we say?" It's in the Park Store. So, we go and have lunch ourselves and go to the park store at 1:40. Alas, no Ranger to be found. The volunteer, notifies me they take lunch 1-2. The stamp for the lighthouse is in the Museum not in Park Store. 1:50 we are now back at the museum and other visitors are sitting outside waiting for the doors to open. No body in sight, no one seemed to able to put this info on the site. Of the 100+ NPS sites I have visited across some 40 states, this was the most disorganized at every station I went. I know someone is busy with the lighthouse reno and it's still...

• We visited on a Thursday in late December 2023 (after Christmas). • There is a relatively large parking lot and we were there before they opened at 9AM. There was only 1 other car there with us. We explored the outside of the lighthouse and the visitor center/park store. • The bathrooms are located outside the visitor center in adjacent building. These were opened before the store or Museum was open. We didn't see any bathrooms near the museum. • We went over to the Museum of the Sea after the Visitor Center. This is where the park ranger was at the time, and they had the junior ranger booklets here as well as the visitor center (same junior ranger booklet as the Bodie Light Station). It’s also where to turn everything in to get your badge (same badge as the Bodie Light Station). The NPS Cancellation Stamps are also located here as well as in the visitor center. They also have a cool wall of NPS Junior Ranger badges from NPS sites all over the country in one big display. I’ve only seen one other park do this and that was Big South Fork in TN. Very cool to see and sad I didn't get a picture of it. • We explored all of the exhibits in all the different rooms of the house. It was really cool and you could easily spend an hour in there. There were very few people in the museum when we arrived around 9:30AM but after about 30 mins or so it kind of got really crowded. There is a room immediately to the left when you entered that looked to be a kids activity area. The kids spent most of their time here sitting at the table working on the Junior Ranger book. • If we had more time we could’ve explored more of the trails here and it would be nice to climb up the lighthouse at some point but it was not available at the time of our visit. One of the displays talks about how they moved the lighthouse previously from its original location and that they were planning to...

Great museum with lots of cool artifacts and information. I really enjoyed the chronological timeline of moving the lighthouse from its original location to its new location since 1999. There are two levels (upstairs & downstairs) with plenty to see and lots of history to view and read about. Enjoy!

not pet friendly but there is a porch with seating so members of the family can take turns viewing the museum while someone stays with the dog outside on the porch Service dogs are welcome inside...