NC’s Great Summer Camps

…for Boys and Girls

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.
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Homegrown and Handmade

NC’s Arts and Agriculture Trails

There is much more to North Carolina’s agritourism movement than just what was reported in Green Dreams, Green Schemes. There is also an alliance between the North Carolina Arts Council and the NC Cooperative Extension service called HomegrownHandmade that has mapped out “Art Roads” and “Farm Trails” in the foothills, piedmont and coastal regions that allow visitors to travel along back roads, sample fresh goat cheese and scuppernong wines, visit artists’ studios and sidewalk cafes in charming little towns. Each trail is unique, so check the links below of some HomegrownHandmade trails (their titles sort of describe the gist of what’s to see and do), and then explore at the pace you like best!

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Down on the Farm: Green Dreams, Green Schemes

North Carolina visitors who harbor dreams of living ‘green’ have a host of great opportunities to indulge their interests while enjoying North Carolina’s stunning rural scenery, from mountains to sea. There is much to see, do, learn and enjoy on our active organic farms, many of which offer learning programs, hands-on work programs, pick-your-own fruit and produce opportunities, recreational facilities, lodging and home-grown, home-cooked meals your family will love!

North Carolina’s history as a tobacco growing state could have spelled disaster to farmers and farming communities as that crop has become untenable in the modern marketplace. Yet instead of giving up, the necessary change has engendered a strong commitment to innovative alternatives. Family farmers have invented new ways to keep their farmland productive while at the same time leading the movement toward sustainable practices, new income-producing crops, and clever private-business-government partnerships that add to NC’s important tourism industry.

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Valdese, NC: The Waldensian Stronghold

Way back in the middle ages - 1174 to be exact - a French businessman from Lyons caught the radical gist of Jesus’ teachings in the gospels and committed himself to a life of voluntary poverty and itinerant preaching. His name was Valdes. He renounced his previous business practices, threw all his money into the street, and started a soup kitchen during the famine of 1176. He traveled the countryside preaching the gospel of Jesus and eventually creating a rift with the dominant Catholic Church.

Valdes inspired other wandering preachers including Peter Waldo, who established the Poor Men of Lyons sect that preached apostolic poverty as the way to perfection. They traveled to Rome around 1177 and received the blessing of Pope Alexander III, who at the same time forbade their preaching without authorization from local clergy. The Waldensias (as they became known) of course disobeyed the papal edict, and were formally declared heretics by Pope Lucius III in 1184 and by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215.

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More Bear Stories: Facts and Tall Tales

Continuing with the theme of North Carolina’s Black Bear Population, it’s time for some tales tall and small about bears. Because these magnificent creatures are a considerable presence in much of North Carolina, there’s quite a few such tales. Seems like everyone you meet here has at least one tale to tell, whether in the rugged mountains or on the fertile piedmont, in the countryside, towns, cities and suburbs.

People who choose to live in the countryside are bound to encounter bears, and most are no worse for the experience. Yet as the countryside becomes ever more populated, the number of bear encounters in more urban settings rises as well. The last installment provided some good links to information about the habits and habitats of NC’s considerable bear population, good to keep in mind whether you’re living in North Carolina or just visiting.

Bears are smart critters. They can become expert at cracking “bearproof” latches on coolers, cars and trucks door handles, garbage bins and dumpster lids to avail themselves of food. They readily learn to beg, pretty much like dogs do. They can put up some impressively aggressive bluffing in order to gain access to golf carts, campsites and your dog’s food. They’ve been known to walk right into cabins, garages, pubs, restaurants and even resort hotels, making themselves right at home.

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Bear Stories: NC’s Black Bears

Black bears inhabit the North Carolina highlands, rather famously. Even though by census the state has fewer bears [11,000] than Pennsylvania [15,000] or Minnesota [30,000], frequent encounters with campers in the parks and forests are reported, and people who live in the mountains are often familiar with the bears for whom their trash, fruit trees and berry thickets have been claimed as territory.

The Washington Post reported on November 14th that researchers at the Smithsonian Institute in D.C. have used motion-sensitive cameras to photograph wildlife along a segment of the Appalachian Trail in Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia. The 1,900 pictures showed wild horses, domestic dogs, deer and bear cubs wandering the trail at night when no one was watching. This project didn’t include the North Carolina sections of the trail, but the researchers were surprised by the number of bears recorded nonetheless. I’d suspect that if they had put cameras along North Carolina sections, there would have been a lot more bear sightings.

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A Family-Oriented Gold Mine of Knowledge

Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill Area

Visitors to North Carolina’s capital city of Raleigh, or to the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill triangle have a number of excellent museums to explore. Whether your family’s interests tend toward great works of art, natural science, wildlife and ecology or history, the area has institutions that offer just what you want to see or know.

The North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh is free to the public and offers a unique view of the world through the lens of North Carolina’s diverse geography, geology, plants and animals. Beginning on October 27and running through March 2, 2008, the museum will be hosting an innovative dinosaur exhibit featuring a 60-food model of an apatosaurus, a full-sized T. Rex skeleton as well as a robotic version that boasts of being the most accurate three-dimensional representation of a dinosaur in motion ever created.

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