Gas Prices Dent NC Tourism

Bloomberg reported last week that according to MasterCard, demand for gasoline has fallen 2.7% from the same time last year as consumers cut back on vacation plans. The Greater Triad Area Business Journal also reports that vacation house rentals along the NC coast are down 5-8% from last year, with more available houses staying empty. There are no current reports on the number of visitors to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Blue Ridge Parkway, but those figures are expected to be down significantly this season as well.

The Raleigh News & Observer reports that North Carolina’s tourism office is responding by putting more money and effort into getting in-state residents to stay closer to home this year for their vacations, and that other states are doing the same thing.

Luckily, North Carolina is so rich in natural beauty and fun family events as well as attractions, that North Carolinians can always find fun things to do on their vacations without having to drive far at all. Even better, a good many of the summer festivals, rural attractions and outdoor opportunities cost them little to nothing!

So no matter where in North Carolina you live, there are things to do, places to go and fun to be had within 100 miles of your residence. You can take the family camping on any of our beautiful lakes, at our many state parks, or even in the nation’s most popular national park. You can go boating at the coast, tour some lighthouses, do some surf-fishing and collect seashells from our beaches. You can tour organic farms and orchards, attend a small town festival, enjoy great music of all varieties, and learn new things about our state without going far from home.

So, all you proud North Carolinians… discover something wonderful about your own region this summer, and don’t worry that it’ll cost you an arm and a leg. We never have to go far from home to have a wonderful time with our friends and families, to learn and experience new people and new vistas and new things. Don’t give up your necessary vacation this year just because gas prices are high. Just don’t drive so far! In North Carolina, you don’t have to!

A North Carolina 4th of July

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!

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On Memorial Day: NC’s Rich Military History

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.
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Spring LEAF Festival May 9-11

Biannual Black Mountain Tradition

It’s not too late to get your tickets for the 2008 spring Lake Eden Arts Festival, at beautiful Lake Eden in Black Mountain. Word has it that vehicle camping permits are all sold out, but there are still tent permits available as well as weekend and day tickets for those who don’t mind staying at one of the many great hotels and motels in the Black Mountain and Asheville environs.

LEAF holds its festivals every spring and fall (this year the autumn festival will be October 17-19) to showcase the LEAF in Schools and Streets arts mentoring projects for youth, its LEAF International music collaborations from Panama, Guatemala, Rwanda, Bequia and Mexico, and dozens of great, culturally significant musical groups, individuals and artists from everywhere.

This year there will be more than 40 Healing Arts Workshops during the day, featuring Yoga and Tai Chi, Folk Art, Juried Handicrafts, a national $1,000 Poetry SLAM, a children’s village with clowns, jugglers, puppeteers, games, stories and art projects. There are joyful parades, jam sessions, circus arts and zipline fun out over the lake.
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When Your Frisbee Dog Gets Old…

Disc Golf Takes Off in NC!

We once got to take care of a wonderful old Border Collie after his kids went off to college and he got arthritis. He’d been “The World’s Best Frisbee Dog” in his day, and still made a valiant effort to chase down the stray discs our grandchildren would toss in the yard. Unfortunately, our property is seriously up-and-down, and poor old Angus had almost as much trouble with his eyesight as he had with his joints, once rolling halfway down the hill before we could rescue him.

So we quickly learned not to let him outside when playing the first 9 holes of our newly-installed disc golf course, complete with metal poles, bicycle wheels and swing chains as ‘holes’. Now we’ve 20 holes along with plans for another nine on the flatland at the top of the driveway. Hold an informal tourney every January called the “Kudzu Open,” and have a big basket full of pro discs - Archangels and Orcs, putters and drivers, most bright enough in color to be readily found even if they go off the side of the fairway and end up 200 feet down the mountain in a pile of leaves.

The garden sits squarely in the fairway of the 2nd and 4th holes, lose a stroke if you land on anything growing (compost pile doesn’t count). Still have 4 broken windows in the library from when my nephew’s shot went wild and managed to break every single one of the panes one right after the other (he got extra credit). Still, it’s fine exercise, it’s fresh air, and it’s something to do with a disc if your frisbee dog can’t jump anymore.

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Good Even, M’Lords and Ladies!

It began innocently enough. The French ambassador Vicompte Bertrand Fenelon de Saint Julen had arrived at the Lord Mayor’s manor just ahead of the Spanish ambassador, Count Bernadino de Mendoza. A day ahead of Good Queen Bess’ scheduled arrival. The two had been shown their lavish quarters, and having unloaded personal possessions, strode together along the South Wing’s stained glass lined hall seeking the privy. They were not friends, exactly, but they both took their positions with utmost seriousness. Thus what they overheard in the privy - a conversation abruptly cut short when their presence was noted - set them upon a quest to discover the plot and earn the favor of the Queen…

The 14th Annual North Carolina Renaissance Faire begins this year with a tale of intrigue among the nobles on the very eve of the Queen’s spring visit. The Faire runs for three weekends - March 29th and 30th, April 5th and 6th, and April 12th and 13th at the North Carolina Fair Grounds in Raleigh. The weekend of April 5-6 will host Tartan Day celebrations, so wear your clan’s tartan and join in the highland games!

Enjoying the Duke University Medieval and Renaissance Studies Department’s involvement and support, the North Carolina Faire is one of the premier Ren-Faires in the nation, as well as one of the earliest. So dig out those Elizabethan costumes, that treasured sword as well as all the crown jewels, and make plans to attend the North Carolina Renaissance Faire this year!

14th Annual North Carolina Renaissance Faire

Top 25 Reasons to Visit NC - 3

Part 3: Reasons 11 - 15

Moving toward the east, there are more great reasons to consider North Carolina’s abundant offerings for family fun when planning getaways and vacations.

11. Mountains to Sea Trail

From the very top of Clingman’s Dome near the Tennessee border to the sand dunes at Jockey’s Ridge State Park on the strand of the Outer Banks, North Carolina’s 925-mile long Mountains-to-Sea Trail offers an adventurous way to explore the state’s natural treasures and human wonders. This is an adventure a visitor can embrace in small chunks or in an extended all at once while experiencing the best of NC’s towns and cities, rural agritourism initiatives and natural preserves.

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Top 25 Reasons to Visit NC - 2

Part 2: Reasons 6 - 10

6. Ski Resorts and Summer Fun

North Carolina’s western mountains are home to a number of world-class ski resorts, most of whom offer summer fun as well. The chalets and cabins are as comfortable in summer as in winter, with easy access to Western North Carolina’s favorite recreational areas.


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Top 25 Reasons to Visit NC

There are literally hundreds of great places to go and things to do in beautiful North Carolina, but for this series I’m just going to highlight 25 of the best reasons to visit. Starting in the lush mountains of the west and meandering through the state toward the storied Outer Banks, this quick tour of our state offers something for everyone!

Part 1: Reasons 1 - 5

1. Great Smoky Mountains National Park

The most visited of America’s National Parks, the Great Smoky Mountains hosts more than 9 million people a year on its Blue Ridge Parkway and in its forests, creeks, coves and hollows along 900 miles of trails. Straddling the Tennessee-North Carolina boarder, the park is home to one of the most diverse ecosystems on the planet. The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is now an International Biosphere Reserve and World Heritage site.


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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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