A North Carolina mountain town was highlighted as a top 2026 getaway, offering a blend of Revolutionary War history, mountain scenery and a growing food and hotel scene.
Boone has grown from a small Appalachian settlement into a year-round tourism draw, according to Southern Living.
What to do in Boone NC
Outdoor enthusiasts can hike sections of the Appalachian Trail, take in panoramic views along the Blue Ridge Parkway or summit MacRae Peak at Grandfather Mountain. In the winter months, nearby ski areas, including Appalachian Ski Mountain, Beech Mountain Resort and Sugar Mountain Resort, offer slopes for beginners and experienced skiers alike.
History-focused travelers can explore 18th-century life at the Hickory Ridge History Museum or attend the seasonal outdoor drama “Horn in the West,” which depicts Revolutionary-era events in the region. A self-guided historic walking tour of downtown also allows visitors to explore at their own pace.
Beyond history and outdoor recreation, Southern Living noted Boone’s walkable downtown, particularly the King Street corridor, for its mix of antique stores, thrift shops, independent bookstores and local boutiques. The High Country region, including nearby Blowing Rock and Banner Elk, offers additional attractions, shops and restaurants within a short drive.
The publication also pointed out recent upgrades to the town’s lodging options, including boutique hotels and renovated motor lodges, as well as a diverse culinary scene featuring bakeries, Southern breakfast spots, sushi, craft breweries and wine bars.
“For those making travel a priority, or simply looking for a getaway, now is the perfect time to put Boone, North Carolina, on your radar to visit in 2026,” Southern Living says.
Other top NC travel destinations
Last year, Oak Island, Hatteras Island, Topsail Beach, Ocracoke, Duck, Beaufort, Emerald Isle, Nags Head and Wrightsville Beach were on Southern Living’s list of 50 best beach towns in the South, The Charlotte Observer reported.
North Carolina swept up several Southern Living’s 2025 South’s Best Awards, including:
You can find the full list of the best beach towns in the South online at southernliving.com.
Questions about life in North Carolina? Or have a tip or story idea you’d like to share? The service journalism teams at The News & Observer and The Charlotte Observer want to hear from you.
Evan Moore is a service journalism reporter for the Charlotte Observer. He grew up in Denver, North Carolina, where he previously worked as a reporter for the Denver Citizen, and is a UNC Charlotte graduate.
Part of the Virginia Creeper Trail that remains closed a year after Hurricane Helene. (Photo by Shannon Heckt/Virginia Mercury)
As the first fall leaves drifted to the ground in Damascus Town Park on a recent warm September day, Mayor Katie Lamb spoke to an audience just off the Virginia Creeper Trail trailhead. One year ago, Laurel Creek began to rise and quickly flooded downtown — washing away homes and battering businesses.
“Helene came in with a vengeance, and she may have damaged and destroyed our structures, but she did not shatter our Appalachian mountain virtues or our love for our town,” Lamb said.
Picture of Damascus, VA during flooding from Hurricane Helene. (Photo courtesy the City of Damascus)
Reportedly, 140 structures in Damascus were damaged or destroyed – bringing an estimated $12 million in damages to residential properties, businesses and public facilities. The state endured an estimated $4 billion in damage and hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of debris were strewn across the region. Three people in Virginia died as a result of the storm, as well as over 250 people in other states.
In Damascus, home to 747 residents, the floodwaters washed out bridges and trestles, sending debris slamming into each bridge until it gave way and the surging currents flowed down to the next. The Laurel Creek water gauge read 18 feet before it was washed away.
As the mayor spoke 12 months after the devastating storm, crews could be heard jackhammering away the former bridge on Orchard Hill Road. The washed out bridge still rests on the banks, evidence of the sheer force of the flood waters that came through.
Portion of the Virginia Creeper Trail that remains closed due to damage one year after Hurricane Helene. (Photo by Shannon Heckt/Virginia Mercury)
While people were rushing to save their homes and lives, the livelihood of many in the region was being washed away farther east.
Multiple popular hiking and biking trails, such as the Appalachian Trail, converge near Damascus. Many of the town businesses are catered to visitors who wish to bike the 34-mile gravel trail that stretches from Abingdon to White Top along old train routes. The most popular portion is from White Top to Damascus, as it is mostly downhill and shaded in trees. Helene’s flooding almost wiped that portion off the map completely.
Virginia Creeper Trail sign leading into Damascus on the portion that was not destroyed by Hurricane Helene. (Photo by Shannon Heckt/Virginia Mercury)
“We lost so much the day that the trail flooded. October’s always the busiest month, and that’s how we get through the winter by having a huge October,” said Michael Wright, owner of Adventure Damascus Bicycles and another business.
Developers are currently bidding on rebuilding the 17-mile portion of the trail that was most frequented by bikers of all ages. There is a tentative timeline of it reopening by October 2026. The project is estimated to cost $200-300 million.
Seated in the office of one of his stores, Wright said business is down about 75% for his bicycle rental and shuttle storefront. His employees took calls in the background, explaining to customers that the popular part of the trail is going to be closed for at least another year. Hundreds of bikes are lined up in the back of the building, waiting to be taken out.
Wright’s other business, which outfits Appalachian Trail hikers, is down about 30% this year despite the trail being fully open. About 400 miles of the trail was closed across multiple states immediately after the storm.
Bikes lined up in Adventure Damascus Bicycles. (Photo by Shannon Heckt/Virginia Mercury)
He had never seen flooding like that in all his years living in the area. In all his years living in the area, Wright said he’s never seen flooding like Helene’s. His bicycle rental store along Laurel Creek had multiple inches of water in it. He had to lay off most of his employees in the wake of the storm, but has been able to hire back some of them, mostly part-time workers.
“So, you know, everything’s just gone, in an instant. We didn’t know what to do, where to go, but we just started cleaning up,” Wright said.
Two homes just across the trail that runs alongside his store were washed away in the flood and have already been replaced. When Wright posted on Facebook that the bike shop doors were open again months after the flood, a couple that had been coming to Damascus for years drove all the way from Alabama to give them business and support them through tough times.
“I’ve been doing this for almost 30 years, but over the years, people come to town and they love coming to town. I love the place so much,” Wright said. “I didn’t realize as many people had the same feeling that I did. But it makes perfect sense. That’s why they keep coming back.”
The town has been working hard to leverage other activities and the second half of the Creeper Trail to show visitors that they are still open for business.
“We’re nervous about this winter for sure. We have a lot of hope now that the trail will be open next year,” Wright said.
Down the main drag of town, Blue Blaze is another bike rental shop that has had to adjust to operating with only a portion of the Creeper Trail open. Owner Rich DeArmond, at his front desk that still bears the water marks of Helene’s flooding, explained that he has invested in more e-bikes to help people bike the Damascus to Abingdon portion of the trail, which is not as downhill and more of a challenge for some riders. He describes this shift as a new beginning.
Rick DeArmond, owner of Blue Blaze, in Damascus, Va., talks about Hurricane Helene impacts with a visible water line on his front desk. (Photo by Shannon Heckt/Virginia Mercury)
The town parks and recreation department has been emphasizing other draws to town such as trout fishing, hiking trails, and the overall peacefulness of the small community nestled in the middle of the mountains. Most of the businesses that were flooded are back open and looking for visitors to come in the door.
“We could either sit around and be sad, or we could do something about it, and so we decided to do everything we could to bring Damascus back,” Julie Kroll, the town recreation director, said.
Right next to where the bridge over Laurel Creek was washed out, Jennifer Walker had owned a rental home for six years. At the time of the storm she had tenants staying there who, fortunately, evacuated in time as the water quickly rose and eventually destroyed the house.
Walker and her family live just across the North Carolina border, a state that was lashed most severely by Helene. Their home was hit with a powerful mudslide that knocked part of the house off the foundation and ripped portions off to be carried away. They did not live in a floodplain and did not have flood insurance so they’ve had to rely on a small award from FEMA and slowly put what they can back into its reconstruction.
“In the back of our heads, we’re like, this is horrible, but we have our Damascus house. So we have a place to go … we went up to the top of our mountain, tried 81 times to make a phone call, and I got one call through to my mom. And at the same time, a video came through from the renters, and they said, ‘we’re sorry, it’s bad’,” Walker said.
While the home that held many memories of wintering in Damascus for them, Walker is eager for her new venture to come to life. In the spirit of the Creeper Trail, she has purchased two train cabooses that will be made into a hotel. She hopes it will be a fun experience for people who come through to ride the trail that passes right next to the property.
“You know, it’s just one of those things where you’re like, I’m glad that this town has bounced back. It’s cool. I mean, it’s just, and I’m not saying that because I have a place here, but it is a really special little town,” Walker said.
Washington County residents were awarded $2.4 million in individual assistance from FEMA; $2.1 million of that was distributed in Damascus. The nonprofit Trails to Recovery has raised $1.7 million in private donations and aided in repairing 83 homes and doing complete rebuilds of eight houses for county residents since the storm.
In April, Gov. Glenn Youngkin accelerated unlocking funds from the $46,670,000 allocated to Virginia by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development through disaster recovery grants. A number of disaster loans were made available to southwest Virginians who were in need of assistance to build back their homes and businesses.
With the construction of the trail set to begin in the coming months, there are efforts to have workers stay in town and utilize local businesses for transportation to work sites. Wright said there is a possibility of his shuttle being used – which would help them survive the winter financially. The Old Mill Inn operators said they hope to have some workers stay there.
The shoreline outside the Old Mill Inn in Damascus, VA shows heavy erosion from Hurricane Helene flooding. (Photo by Shannon Heckt/Virginia Mercury)
Lamb became emotional during a tour of local businesses, explaining how hard they’ve worked to bounce back. She said they’ll never know the names of all the volunteers who flocked to the town to help people muck out their homes and rebuild structures. Damascus is hosting an event on Sept. 27, the day the waters rose, to show appreciation for those who helped them.
The town of Damascus has a population of less than 1,000. But during certain events that all revolve around the trails in the area, thousands of people gather there. When walking downtown now, it could be hard for out of towners to know what devastation was wrought there only a year ago. There are signs of it in the water lines on wood, the erosion of the water fronts, and the ongoing construction. But the spirit of Damascus has not diminished and residents are still welcoming visitors, whom they say are a lifeline of their community’s economy.
“We’re going to be better than we’ve ever been because we have each other, and we are damn strong,” Lamb said.
Damascus, VA leaders cut the ribbon for the new Creeper Trail trailhead a year after Hurricane Helene. (Photo by Shannon Heckt/Virginia Mercury)
Another report on the rebuilding of Southwest Virginia post-Helene will be published Tuesday, Sept. 23.
Parton said the $1 million will go to the Mountain Ways Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing immediate assistance to Hurricane Helene flood victims.
“These are special people here; they’re my people,” Parton said during an event announcing the donation at a Walmart in Newport, Tennessee. “I feel like all people are my people, but everyone here grew up in the mountains just like I did, so of course I have a close connection to them. I can’t stand to see anyone hurting, so I wanted to do what I could to help after these terrible floods.”
The country music icon was born in Locust Ridge, Tennessee to a poor family living deep in rural Appalachia — and Parton has often written about her childhood and the region in her songs, including hits such as “Smoky Mountain Memories” and “My Tennessee Mountain Home.”
She was joined by Walmart U.S. CEO John Furner, who said the company, including Sam’s Club and the Walmart Foundation, would donate a total of $10 million to hurricane relief efforts across the affected states. Parton’s associated businesses, including Dollywood Parks & Resorts and The Dollywood Foundation, also announced they would match Parton’s donation with another $1 million to the Mountain Ways Foundation.
At least 225 people have been confirmed dead after Helene swept through the Southeast, and officials say they expect the death toll to rise as recovery efforts continue. Satellite images showed large areas of North Carolina devastated by the storm. President Biden said Friday the work to rebuild the damage will cost “billions of dollars.”
Parton said she hopes her donations will inspire others to donate and assist in the massive recovery efforts.
“I hope we can all be a little bit of light in the world for our friends, our neighbors — even strangers — during this dark time they are experiencing.”
Cara Tabachnick is a news editor at CBSNews.com. Cara began her career on the crime beat at Newsday. She has written for Marie Claire, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. She reports on justice and human rights issues. Contact her at cara.tabachnick@cbsinteractive.com
Frozen human remains that were found in a cave on the Appalachian Trail nearly five decades ago have finally been identified as a Montgomery County man who had died from a drug overdose before a pair of hikers located his body, the Berks County Coroner’s Office said Tuesday.
Nicholas Paul Grubb, 27, had long been referred to as “Pinnacle Man” because his remains were found at a high point of the trail known as the Pinnacle in Albany Township, which is about 65 miles northwest of his hometown of Fort Washington. Grubb’s body was found in January 1977 during one of the coldest winters in Pennsylvania’s history, when temperatures had averaged in the single digits, authorities said.
On Tuesday, Berks County Coroner John Fielding III said the breakthrough in the cold case was achieved using an old fingerprint card that was recovered by an investigator earlier this month. The discovery enabled authorities to identify Grubb after past attempts to do so with DNA and other methods had failed.
The hikers found Grubb’s remains on Jan. 16, 1977. The next day, an autopsy was conducted at Reading Hospital and it was determined Grubb had died from an overdose of phenobarbital and pentobarbital, which are both barbiturate drugs. At the time, the medical examiner concluded that the cause of death was suicide. Grubb, whose body went unclaimed, was buried at Potter’s Field in Berks County.
At the time the remains were discovered, investigators said there were no signs of foul play. Grubb was described as a white male between 25 and 35 years old. He had a full beard and a scar in the shape of the letter “T” on the left side of his chin. He was found wearing Wrangler blue jeans and a buckskin jacket with tassels on the sleeves and torso. He also wore hiking boots and appeared to have gone to the trail prepared to handle the harsh elements.
Over the ensuing decades, the coroner’s office tried to determine Grubb’s identity using various technologies that had emerged with advances in forensics. Grubb’s body was exhumed from Potter’s Field in 2019 and bone samples were sent to labs on two separate occasions for DNA extraction. Efforts to match Grubb’s‘ DNA with records in a national database of unidentified remains did not yield results. Investigators also tried a method known as craniofacial reconstruction, which attempts to model faces using skeletal remains.
The case took a turn earlier this month when an FBI expert located an original, ink-and-paper fingerprint card that contained Grubb’s prints, the Reading Eagle reported. In years past, the coroner’s office had been relying on a copy of the card that was too deteriorated to make a definitive match. The original card was found in records that were not immediately accessible, Fielding said. Fingerprint technology has since advanced to use digital scanners.
Once the fingerprint card was located, Pinnacle Man’s prints were submitted to a national database on Aug. 12. A match with Grubb was made within an hour using another copy of his fingerprints that were on record from police in Colorado, where Grubb had once lived and had an interaction with law enforcement.
“For 47 years, this man remained unidentified,” Fielding said. “A nameless figure in a long-forgotten case. But today I’m honored to announce that through the unyielding determination of federal, state and local agencies, the Berks County Coroner’s Office has confirmed the identity of this individual.”
Investigators are now working to learn more about Grubb’s life in the years before his death. Authorities have made contact with his family and learned that he once served in the Pennsylvania National Guard in the early 1970s. The coroner’s office plans to transfer Grubb’s remains to his family to be buried at a place of their choosing.
Although Grubb’s cause of death was deemed to be suicide, investigators now hope to determine how the drugs got into his system before he died on the Appalachian Trail. The investigation will remain open until a final determination is made.
Travel app’s user data tells us where the world’s most popular hiking trails are.
Press Release –
updated: Nov 7, 2022
TORONTO, November 7, 2022 (Newswire.com)
– The travel app Visited by Arriving In High Heels Corporation has published a list of the top 10 most popular hiking trails in the world based on user data.
Visited, available on iOS or Android, is a travel app with over 1.5 million users who mark off places they’ve been around the world. The app allows users to see custom maps of where they’ve visited, find new travel destinations, set travel goals, browse top 10 lists, and get custom printed travel maps.
The top 10 most visited hiking trails in the world include:
Grand Canyon, United States is one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the world and offers breathtaking natural beauty with expansive trails through ancient red rock canyons in Arizona.
The Great Wall of China attracts tourists from around the world to the ancient wall that is almost 3,000 years old.
Cinque Terre, Italy charms hikers with seaside views, Italian villages, vineyards, and harbors.
Inca Trail, Peru leads visitors up the lush Andes Mountains to the Incan citadel of Machu Picchu.
Trek to Petra, Jordan is a desert hike leading to the famed archaeological site of Petra, a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Appalachian Trail, United States stretches along the East Coast of the U.S. from Maine to Georgia with trails through the scenic Appalachian Mountains.
Camino de Santiago, Spain is a network of picturesque pilgrimage routes stretching across Europe from Saint Jean Pied de Port, France, to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain.
The Narrows, United States offers majestic views hiking through Zion Canyon.
Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania is the highest mountain in Africa that features breathtaking natural views.
Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve, Costa Rica is a popular hike through lush landscapes of rainforests in Costa Rica.
To see the complete list of the most popular hiking trails and over 50 top ten lists of the most popular travel destinations in the world, download Visited on iOS or Android.
