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.

12. Waldensian Valdese

The rich history of the Waldensian sect is preserved in beautiful Valdese, NC in the foothills between Morganton and Hickory. With a world famous winery, a summer festival and outdoor drama, the finest Bocce Ball clay court anywhere and one of the best regional musical venues anywhere, Valdese is a fun and educational stop along the way for anyone wanting to experience some of the best of North Carolina’s homespun heritage.

13. NC’s Arts and Agriculture Trails

In a unique alliance between the North Carolina Arts Council and the NC Cooperative Extension Service, a total of 16 different, well-planned “Arts and Agriculture Trails” have been mapped out for a project called Homegrown Handmade. These trails meander through foothills, across the piedmont and around the coastal regions, allowing visitors to visit wineries, organic farms and dairies, art studios and sidewalk cafes in charming little towns.

14. Cosmopolitan Charlotte and the Sporting Life

From bustling Lake Norman and its posh golf courses and sailboat regattas through the home of NASCAR in “Race City USA” Mooresville, tothe Bank of America Stadium uptown to see NC’s Panthers play professional football, the Charlotte area boasts some of the finest sports tourism opportunities available anywhere. And while you’re there, do check out the busy Charlotte nightlife at famous regional brewhouses and musical venues offering a variety of musicians and styles.

15. Pinehurst – Home of American Golf

Farther to the east between Charlotte and Fayetteville in the rolling Sandhill region, Pinehurst offers golfers the largest collection of Donald Ross golf courses anywhere, and enjoys the distinction of being the “Home of American Golf.” In addition to 10 of the top 20 NC golf courses, the area’s resorts also offer world class tennis courts, spa facilities, exquisite dining and luxurious accommodations. While golf is a regular way of life here, there are also arts, history, botanical gardens, festivals and unique shopping on the smorgasbord of offerings.

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

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.


7. Mayberry, RFD

Just off the beautiful Blue Ridge Parkway, right in the heart of the Yadkin Valley wine region, off the beautiful Blue Ridge Parkway lies the little city of Mount Airy – birthplace of Andy Griffith and bearing a strong resemblance to Griffith’s fictional Mayberry. There is a “Mayberry Days” festival, a quaint downtown with great antique shops and galleries, and traditional bluegrass music at venues in and outside of town.


8. Wine Country

North Carolina’s wineries offer some tours and tastings most times of year. Home to the nation’s first cultivated wine grape, NC still ranks 12th in the nation for wine production. It seems like wherever you are in the mountains, foothills or piedmont, there’s a winery close by that your family will not want to miss.


9. Fine Furniture Capital of the U.S.

Hickory’s famous furniture markets showcase the fine wordworking craftsmanship of furniture manufacturers who have been turning out some of the world’s finest furnishings for generations. With names like Drexel, Thomasville, Ethan Allen, Lane, Broyhill and more, decorators and collectors will find a variety of styles from antique reproductions to the most modern designs available in Hickory.


10. Traditional Music Trail

Old time bluegrass music, Irish reels, gospel singing and traditional blues all have their homes in the countryside, hills and hollows of North Carolina. the Blue Ridge Music Trails organization offers a searchable database of traditional music and dance for music-lovers who visit the state.


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

Proudly presented first is the January schedule of events for our wonderful, world-class North Carolina symphony, based in Raleigh.

• Jan. 10, 2008 – Moore County Series: Berlioz, Liszt and Tchaikovsky at the Pinecrest High School Auditorium in Southern Pines. Andrew von Oeyen on piano with Emmanuel Villaume as guest conductor.

• January 11-12, 2008 – Duke Medicine Classical Raleigh Series: Berlioz, Liszt and Tchaikovsky at the Meymandi Concert Hall, Raleigh. Pianist Andrew von Oeyen with Emmanuel Villaume guest conducting.

• January 18-20, 2008 – Fidelity Investments Pops Series: A Tribute to Nat King Cole and Paul Robeson at the Meymandi Concert Hall. Jubilant Sykes, baritone with William Henry Curry conducting.

• January 24, 2008 – Duke Medicine Classical chapel Hill Series: Rameau and Rachmaninoff at Memorial Hall, Chapel Hill. Featuring Yevgeny Sudbin on piano with music director Grant Llewellyn conducting.

Check the NC Symphony Website for further schedules, ticket information and directions to all the venues.

For more populist fare on the NC coast, check out the Down East FolkArts Society series, featuring award winning guitarist, singer, songwriter and storyteller Little Toby Walker and his eclectic mix of traditional and contemporary blues, folk, ragtime and country music. Performances are scheduled for January 11 at the Trent River Coffee Company in New Bern, and January 12 at Clawson’s in Beaufort. Click on the link for ticket and contact information.

Farther west in beautiful Charlotte there are some great musical events scheduled. Chris Brown & Bow Wow will be performing at Cricket Arena on January 19, and Matchbox Twenty will be there on January 29. For some blue collar hilarity, get your tickets now for Ron White at Ovens Auditorium in charlotte on February 15. Tickets may be purchased for all these events (and more!) through Charlotte Ticket Brokers.

Barry Manilow will be appearing at the RBC Center end state in Raleigh on January 20, and I know there are fans who won’t want to miss that! Anita Baker will be at RBC on January 27. Tickets for RBC events are available through TicketWood.

Even farther to the mountainous west, Asheville’s Grove Park Inn will be hosting the “All That Jazz” weekend on January 25-27. Jazz artists include the reunion of Joe Sample & The Crusaders plus Manhattan Transfer, jazz guitarists Bucky and John Pizzarelli with the John Pizzarelli Quartet. Also appearing will be guitarist Vince Lewis, trombonist Rick Simerly, saxophonists Todd Wright and Phil Thomson, vocalist Maddy Winer, and many other regional jazz musicians. This is one jazz festival you won’t want to miss, so get your weekend packages from the Inn right away!

For those with children to entertain, Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus will be in Charlotte on February 2 and 3, moving on to Raleigh on February 9 and 10.

Links:

North Carolina symphony

Down East FolkArts Society

Charlotte Ticket Brokers

TicketWood

Grove Park Inn

In the Raleigh area you could get tickets for the North Carolina Symphony New Year’s Eve Extravaganza Package. To include a pre-concert cocktail party at 5 o.m. at the Sheraton Capital Center in downtown Raleigh, the 7:30 p.m. concert, and a post concert dinner and dancing fest back at the Sheraton offering a four-course dinner and big band music from Leon Jordan’s Continentals. There will of course be plenty of champagne at midnight too.

Music Director Grant Llewellyn hosts special guests mezzo-soprano Paula Murrihy and the Red Clay ramblers’ mix of Irish and French folk tunes, classical favorites and bluegrass-rock fusions.

If you’re in the Raleigh area and you’d like to make other plans, check out the offerings at The Twisted Fork, or at Michael Dean’s, Bogart’s, Hi5, or the Red Room. In Fayetteville check out the planned festivities at the Mash House Restaurant & Brewery. Make your reservations now!

ClubZone offers a rundown of New Year’s events in Charlotte, for which you can pre-purchase tickets on line so they’ll be ready to give for Christmas gifts.

You could make plans to be in Mt. Olive for the Annual New Year’s Pickle Drop, or in Clay’s Corner (Possum Capitol of the World) for the midnight Lowering of the Possum. There’s a fairly complete list of events all over North Carolina at the Carolina Connoisseur website.

North Carolina’s ski resorts are planning some fun New Year’s festivities as well. Appalachian Ski Mountain near Blowing Rock offers fireworks, a torchlight parade, night skiing until 11:30 p.m., moonlight ice skating until midnight, and breakfast in the restaurant from 9 p.m. to midnight.

Sugar Mountain Ski Resort near Banner Elk plans a Mountain Style celebration to which the public is invited free of charge. There will be a torchlight parade and fireworks at midnight. Reservations will be required for indoor festivities, so call quick!

Links:

North Carolina Symphony

ClubZone: Charlotte

Mt. Olive Pickle Drop

Lowering of the Possum

Carolina Connoisseur

Appalachian Ski Mountain

Sugar Mountain Ski Resort

In the mountain hollows and valleys, along piedmont country roads the traditional music lover can find a variety of music styles performed just about any weekend by old-timers and new-timers along the Music Trail. From ever-popular bluegrass banjo-pickin’ and grinnin’ to fierce fiddling the devil himself can’t catch, from gospel singing to the good ol’ belly-up blues, traditional music in North Carolina still being traditional just about everywhere you look.

There are many outdoor festivals all summer and through the fall, but the music doesn’t stop when the weather gets cold. The Blue Ridge Music Trails website offers a searchable database of events from the southern mountain counties of North Carolina all the way up the blue ridge through Virginia identified by folklife fieldworkers in the region.

The styles of music and dance came to the region along with the settlers moving west to the mountains and beyond via the great Valley Road. It began with the Germans, followed by English, Scotch-Irish, French, Irish, and Welsh settlers and African American slaves. The fiddles came from Europe in the late 18th century, the banjos came from west Africa. The eclectic mix of people spawned a multicultural breed of musicians not shy of borrowing tunes and styles, and by the Civil War the musicians were learning from the rest of the south and sometimes from northern musicians too.

In the late 1800s large scale mining and logging of the mountains brought more African Americans into the region along with newer versions of their musical styles and expanded instrument preferences. By the time the sound recording industry was born in the 1920s and ’30s, Blue Ridge music was introduced to a national audience. It proved very popular all over the country in rural enclaves with a fondness for the string band, “old-time” music sound.

Western North Carolina’s Blue Ridge counties are alive today with Bluegrass bands old and young, singers of the older Anglo-Irish ballads, and historic forms of gospel singing music still survive. There is a vigorous trade in handmade musical instruments as well, including fiddles, banjos, guitars, mandolins and dulcimers.

You can check out the map and contact list at the Blue Ridge Music organization website to plan your weekend outings, or just check in at the local Chambers of Commerce in towns and cities in the area you wish to visit. Most are familiar with their local mountain music venues, and might even know right off the top of their heads who’s playing where on Friday and Saturday night, or singing on Sunday!

At many local venues, such as the Mountain Music Nights in the town of Old Fort, you can sit or dance inside or linger unobtrusively in the downtown building’s forecourt to catch some of the on-the-spot jam sessions that go on as old friends and new friends play a sort of “Pick-Up Bluegrass” sport forming bands right there before taking over the stage. There’s coffee and sodas for a quarter, fresh homemade pies and cakes just fifty cents a slice, and admission is free for all!

If you love old-time music, can’t be sad at the sound of a banjo, long to hear some good ol’ Irish reels and kick up your heels, make some plans to check out the venues along the Blue Ridge Music Trail. You might get hooked on the music, start coming back on a regular basis for more!

Links:

Blue Ridge Music Trails

The Music Trail

UNC Press: Blue Ridge Music Trails

Mountain Music in Old Fort

The autumn Lake Eden Arts Festival at Camp Rockmont in Black Mountain is scheduled for October 19, 20 and 21 at the very height of fall leaf-looker season in the mountains. Marking its 25th festival, the lineup this year is spectacular.

LEAF has become a regular WNC institution with two festivals a year, spring and fall. There are numerous artists displaying their work, plenty of fun activities for children and adults, lots of live music day and night, and many gifted performers. The LEAF sponsors offer programs internationally and in inner cities here in the U.S. that match children with instruments and residency mentors, bringing some of the best from Guatamala, Rwanda, Panama and elsewhere to show off their talents during the festivals.

The setting is beautiful Lake Eden surrounded by mountains, and families can purchase day-tickets, weekend tickets and the “weekend-plus” passes that cover 3.5 days and 3 nights of overnight camping at any of several fine lakeside camping areas.

Headliners on the main stage this year include Tony Trischka’s Double Banjo Bluegrass Spectacular; the legendary Doc Watson with his grandson and David Holt in their Hills of Home tribute; The Wilders honky tonk fiddle tunes; Fishbone’s mix of funk, ska, reggae and punk; and locals David Lamont, Eliza Lynn, Big Medicine and many more.

There’s the Jabali African Acrobats of Kenya, Mizero Children’s Troupe of Rwanda, John Doyle and Liz Carroll traditional Irish duo, and a big Contra & Square Dance with George Marshall and Beth Molaro. The Paperhand Puppet Intervention will be there again this fall with their giant parade puppets. The world-class Poetry Slam tent will be busy throughout the festival, offering a thousand dollar grand prize this year for the best slammers.

The Kid’s Creativity Zone offers stiltwalkers, juggling, balloon-twisting, storytelling, puppets, sing-alongs and other fun activities. The food comes in both serious pig-picking BBQ and other meat-eating delights as well as vegetarian and vegan offerings, with plenty of cool water, apple cider and cold beer.

This is one family-oriented festival that should definitely be experienced at least once in a lifetime. Of course, once you’ve attended you might be hooked, planning your whole year around the spring and fall festivals! Leafy fall fashions are encouraged for all, bring a sweater for very cool evenings, and buy your tickets early!

Link:

Lake Eden Arts Festival