The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration [NOAA] reported this week that it will lead a research expedition through July 26 to study the wrecks of three German U-boats sunk in 1942 off the North Carolina coast during the infamous Battle of the Atlantic. The battle was not just the longest engagement in the ‘Great War’, it was also the most important.

North Carolina’s rich military history includes this great battle for control of the Atlantic shipping lanes linking Great Britain, the United States and Canada, which allowed the Allies to take the ground and air war to Europe and the heartland of Germany itself.

The NOAA expedition is part of a larger, multi-year project to survey a number of historically significant shipwrecks during WW-II, including British naval vessels and merchant marine ships. Partners in the expedition will be the Minerals Management Service, the National Park Service, the State of North Carolina, East Carolina University and the University of North Carolina Coastal Studies Institute.

It’s too late to get in on this expedition, though phase 2 is scheduled for the summer of 2009 and will investigate the many Allied wrecks in the “Graveyard of the Atlantic” off the Outer Banks. But you needn’t wait that long, as Wreck Diving is already a regular big business on North Carolina’s coast!

If you’re certified to dive to 150 feet, you can sign on to Wreck Diving Magazine’s Outing in September, and still manage to work in some visits to North Carolina’s storied coastal lighthouses, beautiful beaches, Cape Fear area nightlife, and other coastal wonders.

Make your reservations quick, as this dive project is bound to fill up fast. You can call Wreck Diving Magazine at (864) 244-9861 or email heidi[at]wreckdivingmag[dot]com.

Links:

Wreck Diving Magazine: NC
Surveying German Subs Sunk Off North Carolina
Battle of the Atlantic

If your family is wondering where to go and what to do to celebrate Independence Day this year, consider some of the great events North Carolina has on offer, from the mountains to the piedmont to the coast, and everywhere in between!

For instance, Fort Bragg near Fayetteville is hosting Operation Celebrate Freedom VI on the Main Post Parade Field on base. Wynonna Judd and Dakota Rain, the Golden Knights Parachute Team and other musical guests will entertain the crowd. There will be plenty of food and drinks, and camping is allowed. The fireworks are spectacular every year at this event, almost as great as I remember on the Potomac in DC in my youth! The event is free and open to the public, the contact number is 910-396-9126.

If you’re on the coast near Southport/Oak Island in the Cape Fear area you’ll want to make plans to spend the day and evening in Southport, where there will be a car show on Bay Street in front of the Garrison House and all-day arts and crafts shows at Franklin Square Park and in the Franklin Square Gallery. Concessions, water stations and comfort stations will be along Howe Street, and on the Waterfront Stage there will be all-day stage entertainment even as the Decorated Boat Flotilla sails past the Southport Waterfront. Stay on your blanket for the wonderful fireworks at 9 pm!

Out west in Asheville there will be events free to the public all day for the Ingles 4th of July Celebration, starting at 1 pm at Pack Square and along the length of College Street downtown. The Sons of the American Revolution will offer a patriotic tribute, there will be music from some of Asheville’s hottest bands, free craft projects and family games for everyone. There will be food vendors and rides for the kiddies, and the fireworks begin at 10 pm.

In the Charlotte area your family can celebrate twice! First, NASCAR’s home at Lowe’s Motor Speedway is hosting a fireworks extravaganza & CRASHcars Trailer Race Destruction derby on Tuesday, July 1st on the quarter-mile oval for just $7 adult, $3 for children 6-12, under six free. Now, THAT is some good ol’ North Carolina summertime fun at the racetrack!

On the 4th proper, North Carolina’s Carowinds Theme and Water Park offers its Night of Fire Spectacular. Boasting more than 1,000 fireworks shells to fire off, ticket-buyers can opt for the All-You-Can-Eat Picnic too.

In Raleigh there will be things going all day, including free events on the State Capital grounds and the NC State Fairgrounds. Music at the Koka Booth Amphitheater, and the many offerings of First Fridays downtown.

So for visitors and residents alike, there are some great 4th of July events on the calendar. Come on in, set a spell, take your shoes off! There is something wonderful going on near your favorite spot in North Carolina!

On both sides of the state the last weekend in July offers some great events that are family-friendly and musically rich. Out west, Asheville’s Bele Chere celebrates its 30th year this July, when the festival kicks off on Friday, July 25 and runs through Sunday, July 27. So far the lineup of musical entertainment includes Travis Tritt, The Wailers, The Grascals, Cowboy Mouth, Doyle Lawson, Edwin McCain and more, all seven stages will be offering constant music and fun. The Purina Ultimate Air Dogs will be there, as will the many great artists and craftsmen of Western North Carolina with their wares.

The South’s Largest Street Festival is free and offers a large children’s area, shuttles from area parking lots, plenty of food and drinks.

Down East, the Cape Fear Blues Festival is scheduled for the same weekend, hosted by the Cape Fear Blues Society. It begins with a Blues Cruise on a riverboat and ends with an all-day jam session you won’t want to miss. There’s a blues workshop on Saturday open to musicians and fans, a festival concert in the park, and live blues at The Rusty Nail late into the night. This festival is not free, but the events are reasonably priced and any true blues fan won’t want to miss it.

I’m a bit of a military history buff, got it from my father. Though he spent 27 years serving the country in the U.S. Navy and participated in both WW-II and Korea, he never wanted to talk much about his own experiences. He was big on Civil War history – we often spent our summer vacations touring battlefields from Gettysburg to Wilderness-Fredricksburg-Chancelorsville, Shiloh to Bull Run to Antietam, Fort Sumter to Vicksburg and lots of places in between. We’d stand on the hills where the generals plotted their strategies and ordered their troops, we’d walk the fieldstone walls that still bear the bullet and cannon scars, we traced the trenches and fortifications, imagined we could still feel the ghosts who snuck through the thick woods to flank the enemy by early morning, traced the names of the fallen in cemeteries formal and overgrown.

The other half of the summers we mostly spent touring Revolutionary sites. Valley Forge, Frontier, more Charleston and the banks of the Potomac that stayed war-torn year after year. People my generation and younger tend to think of America’s wars as blood shed on foreign soil, but our own ground has been amply watered with blood over the centuries. And of all the states of the now-50 whose stars grace our flag, North Carolina has the distinction of being “the most military-friendly state in America” (by declaration of Governor Mike Easley).

For visitors who enjoy military history as much as I do, North Carolina hosts bases and museums and battlefields and attractions that can fill weeks with knowledge and photo opportunities and memories and material covering the whole history of this nation and its military ventures that collectors, history buffs and diverse descendants of warriors will treasure.

The coastal town of Wilmington hosts the Battleship North Carolina anchored in the famous Cape Fear River as a World War 2 memorial. It hosts a museum for all ships to bear the name North Carolina, beginning with a wooden ship-of-the-line in the 1820s, a Confederate ironclad, the WW-I armored cruiser, a never-finished battleship for that same war, and the WW-II battleship visitors can tour. The ship was deployed to the Pacific theatre where it e arned 15 battle stars, and hosts collections of many artifacts, documents, photographs and works of art.

Also along Cape Fear is the colonial port town of Brunswick offers tours of archaeological excavations and a visitor’s center with AV presentations, exhibits and collections of artifacts from the Revolutionary era as well as Fort Anderson, a Civil War fortification preserved and open to the public. The town itself was razed by British troops in 1776 and never rebuilt. Fort Anderson was built atop the ruins.

Still in the Wilmington area, Civil War buffs will want to visit the Battle of Bentonville battlefield and Civil War store. Bentonville was fought on March 19, 20 and 21, 1865, the last full-scale action of the war in which the Confederates were able to mount a tactical offensive. It was the largest battle ever fought in North Carolina, and the only significant attempt to defeat the Union army of General William T. Sherman during its march through the Carolinas during the last spring of the conflict. The Park Service offers maps and information about the battles against Fort Fisher in New Hanover County between December of 1864 and February of 1865. Known as the “Gibraltar of the South,” Fort Fisher guarded Cape Fear and the city of Wilmington (the last major Confederate port). Preserved are some of the original ramparts and relics from the blockade runners that found refuge at the fort.

There are also the many active military bases in North Carolina, most of which offer visitor’s information and histories of the units, such as the 101st Airborne and Army Special Forces at Fort Bragg, the Marines from Camp Lejuene, and the ‘fly-guys’ at Pope AF Base that “put the Air into Airborne.” If you’re a military and military history buff, check out some of the military links offered below and start planning your grand tour today!

Links:

Links to NC Military History Sites
NC State Archives, Military Collection
North Carolina Military History Gallery, Raleigh

Many families who consider North Carolina to be the bet vacation spot in the nation will be thinking right about now, what plans can we make for the kids this summer? A fine answer to this question is to book those kids at one of NC’s great summer camps, to coincide with a full family vacation to any of NC’s wonderful summer festivals and events when the camp period is over!

There are literally hundreds of choices, and camps located in every region of the state offering a regular smorgasbord of activities and skills to learn and adventures to enjoy for kids of all abilities and ages. There are some good web sources listed below this post, where I’ll highlight a few of North Carolina’s best special-purpose camps.

Teen Overnight Surf Camp in Wrightsville Beach. Money Magazine named the southern NC coast as one of the top vacation spots in North America. The week-long overnight camps offer instruction in the art of surfing the Outer Banks’ gentle waves, improving your surfing skills, and exploring different coastal ecosystems while you’re at it! Enrollees stay in air conditioned suites on the campus of UNC-Wilmington and the staff of professional instructors are well qualified to deal with both beginner and intermediate surfers. The $1495/week fee includes lodging on campus, meals, 24-hour adult supervision, shuttle transportation from Wilmington’s airport, equipment, instruction with a 3-1 camper to instructor ratio, daily transportation to the beaches, admission and private tour of the Fort Fisher Aquarium, surfboard factory tour and extras.

If your teen is thinking about a future in computer technology, consider iD Tech Camp, which will introduce him or her to campus life while enjoying one on one instruction in campus computer labs from instructors with a six to one student-instructor ratio. Camps are held Wake Forest University in the Winston-Salem area, and UNC-Chapel Hill in the Raleigh-Durham area. Overnight campers live in university dorms, study in the university’s computer labs and eat in the university dining halls. Instruction in designing computer games, producing digital movies, designing web pages and even programming and robotics is available to broaden your young ITer’s skills.

Talisman Programs offers a “wilderness experiential” exceptional program for exceptional children in coed residential summer programs geared toward campers age 7 to 17 struggling with ADD/ADHD, learning disabilities and Asperger’s Syndrome (high functioning autism). Enrollment is limited so that the staff to camper ratio can encourage meaningful bonds, and there is a high return rate as kids come back year after year to enjoy the adventures. There are programs specially designed for younger children and teens, and include wilderness and water skills, rock climbing and activities designed to encourage group interaction and leadership skills.

Check out the many offerings at these listing sites and see if you can coordinate your summer plans to offer your children a wonderful adventure before reuniting to take in one of the fine family festivals our state offers!

Links:

North Carolina Summer Camps for Boys and Girls
North Carolina Summer Camps: Black Mountain
Mountain Adventure Guides
Special Needs Summer Camps for Kids & Teens
Family Support Network Resource Guide Directory

16. Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill Cultural Feast

The cultural and educational offerings in the State Capital area will appeal to even the most sophisticated of visitors. Excellent history and natural science museums, the North Carolina Symphony, the North Carolina Museum of Art, Duke Gardens at Duke University and more great outings can keep interested visitors busy for weeks!


17. Cape Fear Coast

Historic Wilmington and the Cape Fear Coast islands of Carolina Beach, Kure Beach and Wrightsville Beach offers one of the state’s largest historic districts (230 blocks!), uncrowded beaches, natural preserves and a regular watersports paradise. Take a ride on a riverboat, enjoy some fine dining, go beachcombing at sunset, or just enjoy the fresh sea breeze in this relaxing vacation area!


18. Blackbeard’s Ghost

North Carolina boasts some of the most famous ghosts and hauntings anywhere, but the most famous of them all is the notorious pirate Blackbeard. The historic town of Beaufort on North Carolina’s Crystal Coast offers a Ghost Walk Tour that takes visitors deep into the oldest parts of town to see haunted cemeteries and the famous Hammock House where Blackbeard is reputed to have hanged one of his 14 wives. A hair-raising experience!


19. NC’s Outer Banks

America’s first English settlement, the site of the Wright Brothers’ historic flight at Kitty Hawk, the nation’s first designated National Seashore at Cape Hatteras, and the country’s first outdoor drama. North Carolina’s Outer Banks are a true national treasure. This 130-mile long string of sandy barrier islands host wildlife reserves, quiet beaches, the North Carolina Maritime Museum and an outdoor drama telling the story of the Lost Colony at Roanoke Island.


20 – 25. America’s Finest Lighthouses

Currituck Beach, Bodie Island, Cape Hatteras, Ocracoke Island, Cape Lookout, Oak Island… The most famous, the tallest, the oldest, the most battled-over… North Carolina’s wealth of wonderful lighthouses offer photo opportunities to visitors that are unmatched anywhere in the world! And for a freebie, there’s “Old Baldy” too.

Links with historical, technical and visitors’ information for all NC’s lighthouses can be found at Carolina Lights, so don’t forget to put some or all of these on your travel itinerary!

There you have it. 25 – or, 26 with Old Baldy – great reasons to visit North Carolina this year, covering enough ground to keep you coming back year after year!

Posts to This Series:
Part 1: Reasons 1 – 5
Part 2: Reasons 6 – 10
Part 3: Reasons 11 – 15
Part 4: Reasons 16 – 25

While in the coastal region, you may want to investigate some of the coastal legends that have accumulated over the centuries, from the storied Lost Colony through ghosts, pirates and even ghost ships, to a Dismal Swamp said to be home to a tragic Lady of the Lake.

To begin planning your trip to the beautiful and storied North Carolina coast, check out some of the offered information and links at CoastalGuide: New Bern.