Things to Do in Boone

The guides who founded Better Tours of Asheville draw on experience leading excursions in far-flung locations in Puerto Rico, France, and Italy. Now, they accompany groups past the basilica and other historical buildings in the town, delivering stories developed through constant research and an ability to smell fossils. The guides divulge colorful tidbits of local history during pub crawls through storied taverns with group drink specials and allude to haunting tragedies along ghost tours that occasionally yield eerie photos of orbs, wisps, and buildings an inch from where they normally are.

Moving Sidewalk Tours' knowledgeable staff turns Asheville's streets into a mobile adventure as they take small groups of Segway riders on scenic tours. Before each departure, guides train each participant on how to operate, steer, and merge consciousness with their second-generation Segway i2. They then lead groups through downtown Asheville, coasting across some of the area's current hot spots as well as historic sites. Moving Sidewalk's staff keeps Segway riders safe and comfortable throughout journeys with helmets and complementary bottles of water. They can also sell customers commemorative T-shirts or a Segway machine to give to their car as a pet.

Display cases filled with diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and emeralds are a treat for the eyes at any jeweler's, but at Colburn Earth Science Museum, they dazzle visitors intellectually as well. More than 1,000 cuts from around the world make up the museum's extensive gemstone collection, which guests learn about via a gem-mine replica featuring a faux dynamite charge and gem pockets. The museum's additional exhibits showcase mineral specimens from the museum's collection of more than 4,500, as well as fossil specimens including teeth from a wooly mammoth complete with calcified floss.

Guests can take a more hands-on approach to scientific discovery during the museum's school programs and spring-break camps, which focus on subjects such as fossils, gravity, and space rocks. Voyage deeper into the galaxy during Spaced-Out Saturdays, when a digital spaceship whisks passengers on journeys throughout the solar system. After expeditions, stop by the Museum Gift Shop to pick up your own minerals or crystal-filled, 44-million-year-old geodes that museum staff can crack in half for you during your visit.

Since 1976, area merchants and knowledgeable experts from around the country have gathered to swap ideas, inspiration, and advice at the Western North Carolina Home Show. Throughout the Asheville Civic Center, hundreds of local businesses and experts set up booths where they explain the nuts and bolts of their industry, whether landscaping, interior decoration, window installation, or furniture crafting. Meanwhile, speakers present seminars on a wide variety of topics throughout the weekend-long extravaganza, from hyperpractical subjects, such as setting a budget, to more abstract topics, such as the definition and history of green building. Visitors to the show depart with rekindled enthusiasm for projects, as well as an arsenal of facts that give them an edge when vetting contractors or performing standup at interior-design conferences.