Summer Birding in the Blue Ridge

• May 04th, 2010

• Author:

  leahgrove

With its temperate valleys, chilly mountain peaks, thick woodlands, open meadows, and grassy balds, the High Country is a birder’s paradise.

They come to us with names that sing across our tongues like the lovely colors of their wings – scarlet tanager, indigo bunting, belted kingfisher, cerulean warblers, and northern flicker. They are the birds of the North Carolina High Country – the year-round residents, the seasonal migrants, the sparsely spotted interlopers that have been driven here by odd weather and confusion. Click here to learn more.

From Cradles to Caskets

• February 09th, 2010

• Author:

  leahgrove

The Mast General Store in Valle Crucis, North Carolina, was once the Wal-Mart of yesteryear. When it opened in the late 19^th century, then as the Taylor Store, it proclaimed to carry everything from cradles to caskets. And it did. Like all country stores, it offered farm equipment, clothes, dry goods, seed, food items – anything one could possibly want to get along in the mountains of western North Carolina at the turn of the century. Click here to learn more.