Below is a gallery of snaps I took at the media preview for the “Art in Bloom 2026” exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of Art.
Exhibit from Art in Bloom 2026
I’ve put the Gallery on a different page than my main article, for release after the show is over, so I don’t spoil it for people going to the exhibit.
“Art in Bloom” is an annual fundraiser at the North Carolina Museum of Art, taking place March 18-22, 2026.
Beautiful florals at Art in Bloom
More than 50 floral designers from across North Carolina and beyond will interpret artwork and objects in the NCMA’s People’s Collection during this five-day festival of florals.
This year’s theme, “Written in the Stars”, is reflected in 14 gallery installations inspired by the zodiac’s astrological signs and their various meanings.
I was lucky enough to be invited to a media “sneak preview” of the exhibit before it opened. And I have to say, if you can find a way to get there – do it!!
Opening remarks at the Art in Bloom media preview.
As the NCMA’s largest annual fundraiser, Art in Bloom supports the museum’s public programming, annual exhibitions and the NCMA Foundation, Inc.
(PNC Bank returns as the founding presenting sponsor of Art in Bloom.)
The five-day event also includes floral workshops, lectures and programs as well as special extended hours and expanded food options.
The North Carolina Museum of Art’s collection spans more than 5,000 years, from antiquity to the present, making the institution one of the premier art museums in the South.
The NCMA collection provides educational, aesthetic, intellectual and cultural experiences for the citizens of North Carolina and beyond.
The museum is located at 2110 Blue Ridge Rd. in Raleigh and is home to the People’s Collection.
Last minute touches before the show!
Just a word about parking at the NCMA during Art in Bloom – even if you’re just there to go to the park – it will be terrible!
If you can park at a nearby location, and walk in, it will be much better for you ! 🙂
About the NCMA Art Park
The 164-acre Museum Park showcases the connection between art and nature through site-specific works of environmental art.
Whirligig sculpture and remaining smokestack in NCMA Art Park
The museum park offers changing special exhibitions, classes, lectures, family activities, films and concerts.
Myrtle Beach, South Carolina is a favorite Summer family vacation spot!
Located in the center of the 60-mile long stretch of beach known as “The Grand Strand”, it’s one of the major tourist destinations in the entire country, attracting over 20M visitors each year.
Myrtle Beach Spring Break
Spring Break reveler at Myrtle Beach 🙂
Myrtle Beach is also a notorious Spring Break destination, but it’s not what you think!
The Spring Break crowd in Myrtle typically has adult supervision and isn’t the crazy College break scene like you get in Fort Lauderdale.
So Myrtle Beach is a good choice for both adult travelers and families with school-aged children on Easter break.
Winter at the Beach
I usually go to Myrtle in the off-season, because it’s both less crowded and less expensive then.
North Myrtle Beach in February.
And I like the beach in the Winter, because you can walk by the water for miles without suffering heat stroke 😉
That said, more things are open in the Summer season, when more people are around.
Read on to learn about fun activities I’ve found in every season – including the beach – that work for adult travelers and families, too.
Apple Hill Farm is very close to Grandfather Mountain and other areas of North Carolina and Virginia that were hardest hit by Hurricane Helene.
Grandfather Mountain State Park, along with many other NC State Parks are closed. That said, many of the surrounding communities are open for business and could really use your Fall vacation dollars to help rebuild! So please check with Apple Hill Farm directly.
Go to my Hurricane Helene page to get the latest updates on the latest area Park, Trail and road repairs.
Smoky Mountains get their name from the mist that settles in the valleys.
I found Apple Hill Farm – a working Alpaca textile farm – when I was hiking out in the Grandfather Mountain area few weeks ago.
I was looking for an activity to take a break from hiking (uphill!) in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains, but was still outdoors.
Apple Hill Farm was the perfect find! It’s a working textile farm on the site of an old apple orchard that offers farm tours, and even has a fiber gift shop on site.
Alpaca graze at Apple Hill Farm.
The farm was started in 2002 by a single Mom (and cancer survivor) with just 2 pregnant female alpacas and one young male.
Today Apple Hill Farm is home to 9 kinds of animals: alpacas, llamas, angora goats, zebu cattle, horses, pigs, donkeys, chickens, and livestock guardian dogs.
The farm site includes 15 fields, 4 barns, and a farm store on 43 acres of land.
They’re still a working textile farm, and lucky for us, they now also give visitors educational tours of the farm all year round.
Read on to learn about my tour, and how you can visit too.
I’ve been exploring and hiking on trails in North Carolina for more than 20 years, but one thing I’ve neglected – partly because they don’t have many long hiking trails – are the State Natural Areas.
Though not great for hiking North Carolina State Natural Areasare good for exploring nature and different habitats in a fairly small space.
This kind of place can be an exciting outdoor adventure for small children, like your kids or grandkids.
Mitchell Mill State Natural Area in Northern Wake County is one such very unique spot to explore.
The 93-acre site is a Registered Heritage Area, and sits atop one of the largest granite domes on the east coast, called the Rolesville Batholith.
Plant life from lichens to full grown trees sit atop the Rolesville Batholith.
Mitchell Mill State Natural area protects this Paleozoic-era granite, and also houses a fragile and rare ecosystem, including native plant communities that can only grow in such a “granitic flatrock” environment.
Read more to learn how you can visit and explore this unique State Natural Area!
The Mountains to Sea Trail (MST) runs through or very near areas of North Carolina that were hardest hit by Hurricane Helene.
The Falls Lake section of the MST is open, along with many other NC State Parks and trails in the Eastern part of the State. That said, Parks and the MST on the Western side of the State have been damaged and may be inaccessible.
Go to my Hurricane Helene page to get the latest updates on the latest area Park, Trail and road repairs before you travel.
Smoky Mountains get their name from the mist that settles in the valleys.
The Mountains-to-Sea-Trail (MST) is a simple hiking trail that spans almost 1200 miles across North Carolina, from the Great Smoky Mountains in the West to the Outer Banks on the East Coast.
Even though I’ve known about the MST for a good while, I didn’t really start hiking it on purpose until this past year.
MST Day Hike #22 in Winter.
Lately more and more people have been moving to my local area, and the easy-to-get-to hiking trails have become really crowded – especially on the weekends.
So I’ve had to look a little bit farther away for new trails – and that’s how I started paying more attention to the MST.
As of January 2019, 669 miles of the trail were completed, and even more have been done since then.
The MST across North Carolina.
That’s just over half of the planned MST miles that are now completed in multiple segments across the state!
With temporary routes (for the unfinished parts of the MST) on backroads and bicycle paths, hikers can now follow the MST all the way across North Carolina.
One of the longest finished segments goes ~60 miles along the Southern shore of Falls Lake, just to the North of Raleigh near Wake Forest.
View of Falls Lake from the trail.
Even 60 miles (out of 1200) is an epic hike to most of us – but never fear!
You can hike smaller sections of the MST to make it an overnight backpacking trip, a day trip, or even just a few hours on the trail.
Today, I’ll tell you about the MST, and how you can hike my favorite local MST section (so far): MST Day Hike #22 at Rolling View in Falls Lake Recreation Area.
Winterpast Farm in Wake Forest is not your regular alfalpha and soybeans kind of farm.
And though this 10-acre family farm near Falls Lake has previously been a tobacco farm, a Christmas tree farm, and a horse farm, in it’s current incarnation Winterpast is a working animal sanctuary.
“Bedhead” the guinea pig enjoys some attention.
Winterpast provides a home for goats, sheep, emu, two mini donkeys, several types of ducklings, peacocks, a goose, pigs, lots of bunnies, hedgehogs, guinea pigs and many varieties of chickens.
And – luckily for us – Winterpast is now a place where families, students, scouts, and pretty much anyone can go to pet and play with all of the animals.
If you get really attached, you can rent a pet to take home for a week… or maybe keep fur-ever 🙂
Except maybe for the hedgehogs, because they’re hardly ever home. The hedgehogs are really popular…
These days, masks are required to visit – and never fear! There is a hand-washing facility with soap and bleach wipes available for your safety.
Sheep hanging out at Winterpast Farm.
Anyway, if you want to visit the rest of the critters, all you have to do is look up the open hours for the week and text Farmer Mary to schedule a visit!
The Zombie Tunnel Hike is a route that goes from Umstead State Park, and all the way through Carl Alwin Schenk Memorial Forest to the Lenovo arena – with the help of the Richland Creek Trail and Capital Area Greenways.
I’ve been leading this hike for years, and people really enjoy it.
This is the actual tunnel we go through on this hike….
At over 12 miles, it’s a good long hike. It’s pretty flat, but has a lot of different features – like Zombie tunnels!
Okay, there may not *actually* be any Zombies, but it sure looks like there could be….and one time I did find a mutant fish in there 🙂
I don’t host this hike very often because conditions need to be just right or the route is impassable, and I hate to disappoint anyone.
Just in time for Halloween, I hiked the route again AND (for a spook-tacular add-on) took a Ghost Walk in Raleigh the next day!!
According to legend, Brigadoon only appears for one day every 300 years.
(I’ll tell you all about the Ghost walk and how you can take one too, but first – the hike!)
Depending on recent weather conditions or new construction, parts of the trail have been known to disappear like Brigadoon at sunrise.
So earlier this year, before I posted the hike for others to join me, I decided to take a look and see if the route was still there – and still the same.
Good news! The route was still there – and still mostly the same. In fact some parts had actually been improved!
The other tunnel is just for water.
Now I’ll tell you about the trail so you can try this somewhat spooky hike for yourself… perhaps followed by an equally spooky Ghost Walk!
Historic Yates Mill County Park is not on my usual round of go-to parks.
View of Yates Mill from the rocks.
This is mainly because it’s a longer drive for me than either Umstead State Park or Bond Park, both of those parks have longer trails – and these days I’m usually looking more for a place to have a serious hike than to entertain kids.
Raven Rock State Park is another great place to take younger kids, but it’s an hours drive away….
But a couple of weeks ago, I had an hour to spend and didn’t want to get too sweaty.
So I dropped by Historic Yates Mill County Park to take an active break.
I’d visited Yates Mill once before, in the winter, but this visit I got to see what it was like in the summertime.
I wasn’t disappointed.
There’s a pond, a few shorter – mostly shady – flat hiking trails, and fishing (with a permit).
Plus, it’s got a historic working water-driven grist mill. So there’s that 🙂
Based on what I found, if you’ve got grade school or younger kids, or even Middle-schoolers who (unlike mine) DON’T refer to hikes as “forced marches”, Historic Yates Mill County Park could be a wonderful hang-out for your family!
We have miles and miles of local greenways available near where I live in North Carolina.
Greenways are a great off-road resource for healthy outdoor family activities like bike rides, hikes and walks.
This is especially important these days, when most State Parks and National Parks have been closed or partially closed since some recent devastating hurricanes, flooding, and ice storms – and we don’t know when we’ll be allowed to fully use them again.
