We start at the coast (sea level) with a guided paddle trip at Hammocks Beach State Park and wind up in the high country — the highest country, in fact — with a program atop the highest point on the East Coast, 6,684-foot Mount Mitchell.
Coast
One of our favorite paddles is the marshland around Hammocks Beach State Park near Swansboro. It’s a vast, yet somewhat protected sea of sea and cordgrass, a marshy maze that frequently ends with turns down dead-end channels. Which is part of what makes paddling here fun.read more
Temperatures in the upper 60s, sunny skies, summer vacation season in full bloom. All the makings for a miserable day atop Mount Mitchell in the summertime-popular Mount Mitchell State Park. Miserable, that is, if you stuck around the snack bar, the gift shop, the newly yellow-brick-trailed path to the mountaintop observation deck and the parking lot, where an endless stream of silence-piercing motorcycles slowly, loudly lit. read more
Last week, according to SkiSoutheast.com, between 18 and 22 inches of snow fell in North Carolina’s high country, more snow is falling (Ski Beech reported 9 inches of new snow overnight), and snow is expected to fall throughout the week. That’s good news for the state’s downhill ski industry, although cold temperatures alone is enough to make ski areas and their sophisticated snowmaking operations happy. The true benefactors of this ongoing dump of Mother Nature’s own?read more
