Results tagged “North Carolina” from Intelligent Travel Blog

If you're in or around Banner Elk, North Carolina, nestled in the mountains near the Pisgah National Forest, about two hours northeast of Asheville, you just must go to the 32nd annual Woolly Worm Festival this Saturday and Sunday.

More than 23,000 people are expected to attend the festival, to shop the 140 food and craft vendors, whirl about on rides, and dance to local music. There's a five-mile "woad wace" and a one-mile fun run. The true star of the festival, of course, is its namesake, the woolly worm. Called the woolly worm in North Carolina and the woolly bear elsewhere in the U.S., the woolly worm isn't a worm but the caterpillar of the Isabella tiger moth.

Local farmers have relied on woolly worms as "weather prophets" for generations, interpreting their 13 brown and black segments to predict the severity of the 13 weeks of winter. Local folklore holds that the darker brown or black the segment, the more severe the weather that week. Though not necessarily scientific, some say the woolly worms are about 85 percent accurate.

At the festival, kids, young and old, "race" woolly worms up three-foot pieces of nylon. The winner of the weekend's heats is used to prognosticate the coming winner and the caterpillar's handler goes home happy with $1,000. One of the event's founders, Jim Morton, hopes the Woolly Worm Festival will one day rival that of my home state of Pennsylvania's Punxsutawney Phil.

Tell IT about some funky fall festivals you enjoy.

It worked for the Wright brothers, but what can wind do for beer? Sam Boykin shares the secret of the country's first wind-powered brewpub.

It was the Outer Banks' strong and steady winds that attracted Orville and Wilbur Wright to North Carolina's Kill Devil Hills. And while the Outer Banks Brewing Station may never measure up to the Wright brothers' landmark first flight, it too is using the wind to make history. When owners Aubrey Davis and Eric Reece erected a turbine above their laid-back little brewpub on Earth Day 2008, it became the first wind-powered brewery in the nation. And for folks traveling to the Outer Banks, a picturesque, 200-mile stretch of barrier islands along the East Coast, it's definitely worth a visit.

Davis and Reece first dreamed up the idea of starting a brewpub while volunteering for the Peace Corps in Thailand. Aubrey had spent many summers at his grandparents' place on the Outer Banks, and felt it was an ideal place to launch the business.

The pair, along with award-winning master brewer Scott Meyer, came up with a business plan for an environmentally-friendly restaurant that celebrated the uniqueness of the Outer Banks and its history. They eventually convinced nearly 30 friends and family members to invest in their dream, and in 2001 opened the Outer Banks Brewing Station in a two-story, 7,700-square-foot building inspired by turn-of-the-century lifesaving stations. Some of the custom design details include a boat-shaped bar and two pathways, made from local recycled bricks, which lead from the bar to the brewpub's big bay windows.