Punxsutawney PA has a groundhog. Banner Elk NC has woolly worms. Both are tasked with predicting the winter weather. And both have a fun festival surrounding their predictions. Every third weekend in October, more than 20,000 people descend upon Banner Elk to watch the woolly worms race their way to the top of a 3 foot rope for a chance to be named the official winter weather forecaster of the year. Woolly worms have 13 segments and winter has 13 weeks. What better way to predict each week’s weather than by the color of the winning worm’s segments? A black …

On Friday and Saturday nights from the end of September through Halloween, Tweetsie Railroad transforms itself into a “spooktactular” destination. With haunted houses, freaky forests, and a ghost train ride, Tweetsie invites older kids (ages 8 and up) to join them for a frightfully good time. During the day, the park is open with all of its regular Wild West adventures and rides, but when the sun goes down the creepy creatures come out. Tickets for the night-time festivities are sold separately ($52 ages 13+, $35 kids 3-12, kids under 3 free). Your pre-purchased ticket allows you entry to the …

We spent a beautiful fall weekend in the mountains with friends and our featured activity was zip lining. My oldest son and I had been zip lining in the NC Mountains before at Hawksnest and found the experience slightly underwhelming. I was anxious to see if Sky Valley Zip Tours in Blowing Rock would be a more exciting adventure. The quick answer is yes! It was great – much more scenic and exciting than Hawksnest. The zip lines were longer and faster, the scenery more dramatic, and the guides fantastic. Throw in two bonus adventures along the course and this …

North Carolina has three main ski resorts: Appalachian Ski Mountain, Beech Mountain, and Sugar Mountain. Having visited both App and Beech in 2021, we were ready to check Sugar Mountain off our list in 2022. We went to Sugar Mountain as a day trip in early January, looking for a warm-up before our big trip to Keystone, CO in February. My husband and I own ski gear now but we still had to rent for the kids. We rented their equipment at an Alpine Ski Center at the base of the mountain and made it to the mountain a little …

We have done quite a bit of hiking around North Carolina and hands down my favorite place to go is Dupont State Park. I don’t know of anywhere else in the state that you can do a 3 mile hike and see 3 different waterfalls. So when my sister and her family decided to stop in Asheville on the way back to NJ from Hilton Head, I knew exactly the hike to take them on. I have done this hike twice before and both times parked at High Falls parking area and did the loop from there that included High …

Charlotte does not have a zoo of its own but there are two great zoos within a day trip’s driving distance. About an hour and a half south, Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia SC is a great, walkable, super family-friendly option. Or roughly an hour and a half northeast, the North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro is a more spread-out zoo with larger animal habitats. Both offer slightly different experiences but great family fun. Looking to spend some quality one-on-one time with my youngest, we decided to go to the North Carolina Zoo. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, admissions were limited and …

Due to a big project at my work, I’ve had to put in some crazy hours over the past year. So even though covid-19 means we are all home almost all of the time, I haven’t been able to spend as much quality time with my family as I would like to. I decided to take each of the kids on a one-on-one adventure together. My oldest picked ziplining and after researching a few options in the mountains, I decided on Hawksnest. Both of my boys spend at least one week every summer at camp at the Whitewater Center, so …

Last winter we did a long ski weekend with friends in Winterplace, West Virginia. We wanted to do another ski weekend this year with the same friends, and our priority was to find a ski-in/ski-out rental. We liked Winterplace and did have a ski-in/ski-out condo there but it was so tiny that we just couldn’t stay there again with 8 people. We quickly found that there are not a lot of ski-in/ski-out places in NC. The mountains in NC just aren’t that big so there really aren’t a lot of places to put slope-side houses. We opened our search up to …