Outer Banks Bike Week 1

What an awesome couple of days. OBBW runs from April 16th to April 24th 2011. This is the 9th annual bike week and I have been to every one of them. This event has all of the activities of the better known events like Daytona or Sturgis. Of course music and vendors play a huge part in this event and there was plenty of both.

I made two trips to Nags Head. My first run was Sunday April 17th. It was a beautiful day although a little chilly. I left home at 8:30 and I rode straight to the Outer Banks. I rode straight through town to the southern end of the resort strip to the Tanger outlet stores. This is a good place to turn around and head back North. This gave me a chance to check out the vendor sites and kinda get the lay of the land.

My first stop was Nags Head Harley Davidson. This is a clothing and accessories store and it is where this event began 9 years ago. They had a booth setup selling event T-Shirts, but not much else was going on and there were not a lot of bikes/bikers hanging around. That's because no one was "hanging around" anywhere. There was a steady flow of people in and out all week. After buying my event T-Shirt I continued heading north on 158 to the next group of vendors. Once again I learned that getting to an event when it is just getting started is not really a good idea. There were only two vendors set up and very few bikes. However, there were more vendors setting up.

I continued heading north and stopped at the Kitty Hawk Baptist church. This appears to be the best kept secret at OBBW.
They tell me they have been doing this for several years but I never stopped here before. They had free coffee and donuts on Sunday morning and a fried chicken with all of the fixins for lunch for only five dollars. There were vendors in the paring lot, and a steady flow of bikes in and out.

I continued north a short way and then headed south on route 12. There are more vendor locations on 12. While these are traditionally the better vendors, it just wasn't happening on Sunday. Once I got back to Nags Head HD I turned aound and headed North one more time out of town towards home.

I stopped at Outer Banks HD on 158. This is the new hub for this event and it was were all of the action was on Sunday. Vendors, music, food, bike show etc. They had it all going on there. They also had several group rides leaving from the dealership.


Ok, one more stop. On the way down to OBBW I saw signs for Barrys Walnut Island bike show. As I rode into Grandy NC I followed the signs and found a mini event happening. There was a bike show, vendors and a restaurant/bar that was hosting the whole event. I strolled around and took in the sites before heading home.

All in all it was a very good day. There wasn't as much going on as I expected but there was enough to keep you busy and it was very early in the event and as I found out later (see Outer Banks Bike Week 2) as the week went on the event grew.