Southern Byways

Train rides just may be one of the best ways to experience the mountains, especially if you want to see as much as you can in a short amount of time.
In Georgia, hop aboard for a trip on the Blue Ridge Scenic Railroad . Departing from Blue Ridge, this three- and-a-half hour ride includes a layover stop in McCaysville, Ga., that provides enough time to explore the town as well as nearby Copperhill, Tenn.
The Great Smoky Mountain Railroad in Dillsboro and Bryson City offers a number of trips throughout the year, many are scenic, such as Fontana Trestle and Nantahala …read more

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If you are headed to North Carolina for your holidays, you might want to keep your eyes open for Brown Mountain. It’s not all that spectacular, but something strange is going on there and no one knows why! Even the government has gotten involved and they can’t figure it out either!

Apparently lights have been appearing for years and years and you don’t even have to wait for a particular date. If you are looking, chances are, they will not disappoint. They happen on just about any night of the year.

 
So what are these lights?? Lots of people have come up …read more

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I can remember getting ready to go back to school and how exciting it was to stock up on a new wardrobe. Unfortunately, in those days, we weren’t treated to sales tax holidays, so we really missed out. But you can take full advantage of the offerings. I was amazed to see just how many items were on the list!
“G.S. 105-164.13C provides an exemption for certain items of tangible personal property sold between 12:01 A.M. on the first Friday in August and 11:59 P.M. the following Sunday. For 2007, the dates are Friday, August 3rd through Sunday, …read more

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I don’t know about you, but a lot of amusement park rides… quite frankly, scare me. Granted, most of the time, the rides are well serviced and nothing goes wrong, but then you read about rides when things DO GO WRONG. All I can say is that I hope that this horrible accident will bring about the necessary changes. These things just shouldn’t happen!
Here’s what took place.
“ Six Flags and another company shut down eight more thrill rides Friday around the country, including a ride at a North Carolina amusement park, after a teenage girl had her …read more

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“The nation’s best place to get a tan and enjoy the ocean’s waves in 2007 is North Carolina’s Ocracoke Island, a place so remote that even people in the offices of “Dr. Beach” _ Florida International University professor Stephen Leatherman — didn’t know where to find it on the map.
“It’s not the end of the world, but you can see it from here,” Leatherman said from Ocracoke, the first beach not in Florida or Hawaii to earn the top spot in his annual ranking of the nation’s top 10 spots on the shore.”
So what …read more

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The North Carolina Maritime Museum on Roanoke Island is one of three regional sites of the state’s maritime museum. There are also facilities in Beaufort and in the Town of Southport. The Roanoke Island facility was added to the system in 1998, twenty-five years after the founding of the museum in Beaufort.The mission is to preserve the maritime history and culture of Roanoke Island and the surrounding region in northeastern North Carolina for the public by collecting, exhibiting, and interpreting the material culture and history of its people.
North Carolina Maritime Museum on Roanoke …read more

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“In North Carolina, global warming isn’t a future worry. It’s already lapping ashore.
Nags Head Mayor Renee Cahoon sees all the proof of climate change she needs at the end of Old Oregon Inlet Road. The street once led to rows of oceanfront houses. Now it ends suddenly in bulldozed piles of sand.
Some beach erosion occurs naturally, and development near the ocean tends to make it worse. But some scientists think erosion has grown more pronounced in recent years as the sea level has risen and storms increased. On some days, stretches of Nags Head have no dry beach, and visitors …read more

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 ”This red-brick, 5,349-square-foot house inside the Ballantyne Country Club is filled with interior Corinthian columns and has a view of the course’s fairway and lake. Hardwood and tile floors run through its five bedrooms and three bathrooms.”
If you are a golfer, you would love this, but what grabbed my attention is the view of the lake!! I’ve always wanted to live on a lake… And what would it cost you??
A cool million!

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“RIEGELWOOD, N.C. – Survivors picked through the rubble of their flattened homes Friday after a tornado killed eight people in this riverside town, the area hardest hit by a devastating storm system that later swept through the Northeast.
Gov. Mike Easley toured the devastated area as disaster assessment teams surveyed what was left of a mobile home park and several brick homes that were flattened by the storm.
More than half of the 20 people injured when the tornado struck Riegelwood remained hospitalized Friday, including four children Easley said were in “very, very critical condition.”
Having experienced two tornados over the past …read more

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In North Carolina, elephants may not be used to plow cotton fields.
You have to wonder how these laws ever came to be. The stories behind the laws are probably funnier than the laws themselves! And there are a lot!
Wacky Laws, Weird Decisions, and Strange Statutes
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