Explorer's Guide North Carolina's Outer Banks & Crystal Coast: A Great Destination (Explorer's Great Destinations)

Explorer's Guide North Carolina's Outer Banks & Crystal Coast: A Great Destination (Explorer's Great Destinations) Review

"Consistently rated the best guides to the regions covered...Readable, tasteful, appealingly designed. Strong on dining, lodging, and history."—National Geographic Traveler

Explorer's Guide North Carolina's Outer Banks & Crystal Coast covers the coast from Virginia to Hammocks Beach State Park. Includes Manteo, Kitty Hawk and Kill Devil Hills, Nags Head, Hatteras Island, Ocracoke, Beaufort, Morehead City, Atlantic Beach, Emerald Isle and Swansboro.

Distinctive for their accuracy, simplicity, and conversational tone, the diverse travel guides in our Great Destinations series meet the conflicting demands of the modern traveler. They're packed full of up-to-date information to help plan the perfect gateway. And they're compact and light enough to come along for the ride. A tool you'll turn to before, during, and after your trip, these guides include these helpful features: chapters on lodging, dining, transportation, history, shopping, recreation and more; a section packed with practical information, such as lists of banks, hospitals, post offices, laundromats, numbers for police, fire, and rescue, and other relevant information; and maps of regions and locales.

Paddling Eastern North Carolina

Paddling Eastern North Carolina Review

"Paddling Eastern North Carolina" is an expanded and updated second edition guidebook to canoeing and kayaking rivers, creeks, and swamps of eastern North Carolina. From exciting whitewater of the Piedmont foothills to quiet blackwater of the Coastal Plain, the guidebook includes over 3,200 miles of paddling trips on 97 streams. The trips are selected from over three-quarters of North Carolina from the Yadkin-Pee Dee Basin to the coast: Some of these streams are covered by a guidebook for the first time. Each trip includes detailed descriptions, maps, distance, difficulty, width, and gauge information. Also included is information about River Rating Systems, Paddling Safety, Paddlers Rights, Paddling Courtesy, River Camping, River Gauges, Water Quality, River Selection, and Clubs and Organizations.

A Walking Tour of Charlotte, North Carolina (Look Up, America!)

A Walking Tour of Charlotte, North Carolina (Look Up, America!) Review

There is no better way to see America than on foot. And there is no better way to appreciate what you are looking at than with a walking tour. Whether you are preparing for a road trip or just out to look at your own town in a new way, a downloadable walking tour is ready to explore when you are.

Each walking tour describes historical and architectural landmarks and provides pictures to help out when those pesky street addresses are missing. Every tour also includes a quick primer on identifying architectural styles seen on American streets.

Charlotte was founded in the mid-1700s by Scotch-Irish and Germans traveling down from Pennsylvania. The town and the county were named for Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, the wife of King George III of England. Fertile lands drew the early settlers and the nation's first gold rush - really more of a flurry - took place in the early 1800s after Conrad Reed found a 17-pound rock on his family farm in nearby Cabarrus County that he used as doorstop which turned out to be nearly solid gold. The United States opened the Charlotte Mint in 1837 as the area led the nation in gold production until the great strikes in California in 1848.

Still the population scarcely scraped above 2,000 at the outbreak of the Civil War. After the war the area slowly transitioned from agrarian to manufacturing. The population topped 10,000 for the first time in 1890 as textile manufacturers primed the economy for explosion. By 1930 Charlotte passed Winston-Salem as the largest city in North Carolina and never looked back. Today the population is 750,000. In the process the city seamlessly segued from manufacturing center to financial center and in 2011 only New york City is a bigger banking city.

When a city explodes as quickly as Charlotte there is not much time to argue about preservation and we will only encounter a handful of buildings on our tour that don't have a modern pedigree. As a counterbalance to the shiny high-rises we will also visit the residential Fourth Ward, mere blocks from the center of downtown, where prosperous merchants and businessmen and doctors built picturesque Victorian houses in the last decades of the 1800s. When this area was ravaged by neglect and abandonment in the 1970s what was left was not bulldozed away but rescued and restored.

Our walking tour will be a mix of commerce and residential, old and new and we will begin in a public greenspace that has survived since Charlotte's earliest days...

Explorer's Guide Myrtle Beach & South Carolina's Grand Strand: A Great Destination: Includes Wilmington and the North Carolina Low Country (Explorer's Great Destinations)

Explorer's Guide Myrtle Beach & South Carolina's Grand Strand: A Great Destination: Includes Wilmington and the North Carolina Low Country (Explorer's Great Destinations) Review

"Consistently rated the best guides to the regions covered...Readable, tasteful, appealingly designed. Strong on dining, lodging, and history."—National Geographic Traveler

This new guide covers both Myrtle Beach and its neighbors over the North Carolina border, including the fascinating seaports of Wilmington and Southport, a compact area that takes under three hours to drive from end to end but offers a wealth of different vacation options and activities.

Distinctive for their accuracy, simplicity, and conversational tone, the diverse travel guides in our Explorer's Great Destinations series meet the conflicting demands of the modern traveler. They're packed full of up-to-date information to help plan the perfect getaway. And they're compact and light enough to come along for the ride. A tool you'll turn to before, during, and after your trip, these guides include chapters on lodging, dining, transportation, history, shopping, recreation, and more; a section packed with practical information, such as lists of banks, hospitals, post offices, laundromats, numbers for police, fire, and rescue, and other relevant information; maps of regions and locales, and more. 100 full-color photographs and maps throughout

Welcome to Shangri-La, North Carolina

Welcome to Shangri-La, North Carolina Review

Shangri-La is a perfect taste of paradise...if paradise includes a chemical plant, polluted beaches, and a used car salesman who wants "no money down" as long as clients are willing to loan him their soul for a few days.

This short story collection is from award-winning Carolina writer, Dawn DeAnna Wilson. One of the short stories in the collection, "The Shangri-La Chamber of Commerce Welcomes You," was a semi-finalist for the Doris Betts Fiction Prize.

Wild North Carolina: Discovering the Wonders of Our State's Natural Communities

Wild North Carolina: Discovering the Wonders of Our State's Natural Communities Review

Celebrating the beauty, diversity, and significance of the state's natural landscapes, Wild North Carolina provides an engaging, beautifully illustrated introduction to North Carolina's interconnected webs of plant and animal life. From dunes and marshes to high mountain crags, through forests, swamps, savannas, ponds, pocosins, and flatrocks, David Blevins and Michael Schafale reveal in words and photographs natural patterns of the landscape that will help readers see familiar places in a new way and new places with a sense of familiarity.
Wild North Carolina introduces the full range of the state's diverse natural communities, each brought to life with compelling accounts of their significance and meaning, arresting photographs featuring broad vistas and close-ups, and details on where to go to experience them first hand. Blevins and Schafale provide nature enthusiasts of all levels with the insights they need to value the state's natural diversity, highlighting the reasons plants and animals are found where they are, as well as the challenges of conserving these special places.

North Carolina Off the Beaten Path, 9th: A Guide to Unique Places (Off the Beaten Path Series)

North Carolina Off the Beaten Path, 9th: A Guide to Unique Places (Off the Beaten Path Series) Review

Discover the beauty and secrets hidden in North Carolina with this easy-to-use book.  The local author is your guide to the unknown treasures and unusual finds, aided by six maps and twelve black-and-white illustrations.