Up & Coming Weekly

FEB. 24 - MARCH 2, 2010 UCW 5 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM I have lived in North Carolina almost all my life, and am completely satisfi ed with that life experience. Please don't misunderstand, though. I love to travel, both domestically and internationally. I treasure my experiences in other parts of the world and the mementos which take me back to those faraway places. I keep a running mental list of places I want to go when time and resources allow, and someday I hope to drive across our great country. Flying is certainly convenient, but I want to have the sense of how big and diverse our nation really is. The same can be said for North Carolina. While most of my time is spent either here at home or in Raleigh, our state is big and it is diverse. There are so many places I want to visit right here. Ours is not the same state it was when I was growing up — a state of many small towns and much open space and farmland. Even Raleigh and Charlotte were not cities in the sense of what we consider cities today. Life was slower and, in many ways, quite provincial. North Carolina today has major and cosmopolitan cities, including our own, that have become destinations in their own right. Think not only Charlotte and the Triangle but the arts communities of Asheville and the fi lm- industry sophistication of Wilmington. We also have wonderful small, almost undiscovered spots across our state, places within driving distance that do not cost an arm and a leg once you are there. A recent weekend jaunt to the Outer Banks was a terrifi c antidote to the doldrums of winter. It was cold, yes, but the beach was beautiful and the sunsets breathtaking. They last an astonishing 10 minutes or so, and the colors are unlike anywhere else. Two of our travelers found a baby seal marooned alone on the beach and tried to rescue him. He was having none of that, however, and we hope our call to North Carolina Wildlife offi cials saved the little creature. We also communed with guinea hens, chickens and a goat near the Bodie Island lighthouse and saw the Whalehead Club, where American industrialists and the likes of President Dwight Eisenhower, fl ew in to go duck hunting in those pristine marshes. Along the way we also dropped in on Pettigrew State Park, home of Phelps Lake, an almost 17,000 acre lake pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Also there is Somerset Place, a plantation dating from the late 18th century whose records are so meticulous thousands of people can trace their ancestry back to this rural corner of North Carolina. Our State, the magazine, is a wealth of information about North Carolina and regularly includes articles about our area, a recent one telling the rest of the state about a local jewel, the Cape Fear Botanical Garden. Its January edition featured 12 North Carolina trips one might take, one a month for 2010. Two that interest me particularly are the opening of the new portion of the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh in April and Tryon Palace for the 4th of July. The new all glass museum will feature the work of French sculptor, August Rodin, a collection given to our state on the condition that we build a suitable home for it, and have we ever! One of my earliest memories is traveling to Raleigh as a young child with my mother and grandmother to visit our nation's fi rst state funded museum of art in Raleigh. I was struck by an English portrait of a woman in a white satin dress with swirling skirts, a painting still owned by the museum and still wowing school children. The world-class building that will open in April is an extension of our state's long commitment not only to education but to the arts in a state once thought of as "a valley of humility between two mountains of conceit" — Virginia and South Carolina! No need to go to Philadelphia. Tryon Palace in New Bern will be the place to be on July 4th to celebrate New Bern's 300th anniversary in Revolutionary style with music, colonial games, drums and fi fes and musket-fi ring demonstrations. Also on my list of North Carolina destinations is the emerging wine-making industry, especially in the Yadkin Valley, where several friends have a made a weekend of touring and wine tastings and a number of mountain lodges where you can hike to your heart's content or your muscles' limits or perhaps read a book and enjoy the scenery. One of these days, I want to take in one of the fi lm festivals that have sprung up in our state and I might even try white-water rafting along one of our rivers, an excitement of which I have fond memories from years ago along the French Broad. My point in all this is that while many of us dream of exotic trips we may never take, there are endless opportunities almost under our noses. There really is nothing like calling North Carolina home. MARGARET DICKSON, Contributing Writer COMMENTS? 484-6200 ext. 222 or editor@upandcomingweekly.com. Calling North Carolina Home by MARGARET DICKSON THIS WEEK WITH MARGARET THIS WEEK WITH MARGARET

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