Organizers with the Mountain State Fair sponsored by Ingles Markets are busy preparing to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the fair with the new entertainment and an expanded Got to Be NC Pavilion featuring 22 new outdoor vendors. 

Smokies Life, a nonprofit partner to Great Smoky Mountains National Park, announces Jacqueline Harp as its new chief executive officer. After a national search, Harp was selected and approved by the board of directors and will begin as CEO on Sept. 11, 2024.

Buncombe County’s first state park, near the eastern gateway to Haywood County, remains on track for a 2025 opening after the final in-person public input session for master planning concluded at Upper Hominy Fire and Rescue Department on Aug. 1.  

Most folks who get into fly fishing do it despite the fish, which seldom cooperate and sometimes get in the way of an otherwise perfectly enjoyable morning standing out in the creek. 

For years, the old Francis Farm landfill was just that — a leaky, gassy problem that did little but sap resources from the county charged with maintaining it in perpetuity.

Western North Carolina is a hiker’s paradise.

With so much land protected by national and state forests and parks, those who live in the Western North Carolina area have endless hiking opportunities.

Lake Junaluska’s yearly plant sale is May 4.

For sale will be a few thousand plants, including an assortment of annuals, perennials, herbs and vegetables, and several varieties of native plants from the Corneille Bryan Native Garden, said Melissa Tinsley, Lake Junaluska director of grounds.

When I first arrived in Western North Carolina just after New Year’s Day, 2014, I wasn’t planning to stay. 

March brings unstable weather in the mountains, but it can also ushers in occasional springlike conditions. A pair of events at the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest will give folks an opportunity to enjoy the outdoors. 

Many folks seem out of alignment these days, and I’ve been thinking about why that may be. The uncertainty and unpredictability of the pandemic affected us deeply and highlighted the fragility of not only our day-to-day routines and comforts but of life in general.