I'm a husband, father of one, granddad of 2 (soon to be 3) and a former newspaper journalist, and our little family always has put travel high on our priority list. Mostly it was to relax and to learn. We love visiting historic places, and when our daughter was young, we'd drive to New Bern for the day to tour Tryon Palace or to Greensboro to enjoy the Guilford Courthouse battle re-enactment or carve out several hours during a week at the coast to wander Fort Macon.
Sure, we've enjoyed Cape Canaveral and Chicago and Williamsburg, Va. But my wife and I really enjoy traveling the Carolinas. My wife is a North Carolina native, but I grew up in Philadelphia. Our beach was the "shore" at Atlantic City or Cape May, which are fine. But they're not North Carolina.
Emerald Isle enchanted me from the first time I saw its sea. We honeymooned on the Outer Banks. Our mothers both climbed to the top of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse alongside our teenage daughter during an extended family trip several years ago. One of my favorite memories is several days with my college-aged daughter in Hilton Head. We ate the best Greek food in the world at the Greek Festival in Charleston. My wife and I spent a night in a castle in the North Carolina mountains, and experienced total darkness in the heart of Linville Caverns.
We made a decision as a young couple to set aside money each year to travel, and it was one of the best decisions we ever made.
We tend to take short trips, and we're frugal travelers -- mainly because we traveled on a journalist's pay. So that will be the focus of my blog. It will be about travel, traveling in and around the Carolinas, and traveling so as not to break your bank.
I hope you visit Nearly There often. Please send comments and suggestions for posts.
And I hope Nearly There energizes you to get there often...wherever "there" is for you and yours.
Here's a photo from a trip we took to the N.C. coast around New Year's 2009.
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