North Carolina

The landmark exhibit includes an intact triceratops and the world’s only 100-percent-complete skeleton of a T. rex in one piece of rock.

From James Taylor to Eric Church, Carolina lingers in the hearts of its songwriting sons. This sentiment is shared by students and alumni of the oldest public university in the country, UNC-Chapel Hill, and by those who visit this town in the Piedmont of North Carolina.

Since Southbound debuted in 2013, our staff and contributors have logged thousands of miles, consumed millions of calories, and taken countless notes and photos to showcase the very best destinations around the region. Although every place we’ve covered is special, some left a particularly powerful impression. Here, we give you the best of the very best, our favorite spots in the South.

With ski slopes, stylish shops, and history walks, this four-season vacation town charms visitors at every turn.

I was nineteen the first time I ever drove over the drawbridge into Beaufort, North Carolina. Good Southern girl that I was, I had arrived for a debutante party. One look, and I was absolutely smitten.

A trio of barrier islands hugging North Carolina’s Atlantic coast, the Outer Banks was the setting of many historic firsts. Centrally located Roanoke Island was the site of England’s first settlement in the New...

In North Carolina, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians found a way to take care of their people: In 1997, they opened a casino on their lands. Now South Carolina’s Catawba tribe wants to do the same. But there is a problem.

The highest cocktail bar in Durham is on the sixth-story rooftop of the Durham Hotel, a white-and-gold midcentury building. Like a few other classic structures in downtown Durham, it was once a bank, but it now trades in a different kind of currency: cool.

Called the “King of Shrubs,” the rhododendron loves high altitudes; it’s the national flower of Nepal and a familiar sight in the Southern Appalachians, where blossoms of white, pink, red, and purple paint the tallest slopes in the eastern United States.

"On that night, under that starlit sky, the sound of the water lapping against the dock, I felt a prescient sense of peace."