Morganton, NC Outdoor Activities
Recommended Outdoor Activities by Groupon Customers
The idea for an annual barbecue expo began slow-cooking in 2010 at a family lunch. The Boyds thought about organizing a little barbecue competition and ended up luring 8,500 barbecue enthusiasts to their "small" cook-off and fundraiser. Now in its third year, the charitable event continues to develop flavor and raise money for local schools while packing bellies with some of the area's best barbecue recipes.
With napkins in hand, attendees can follow the smoky scents and sounds of sauce-splattered high-fives from the tents of a variety of vendors. Ten teams of grilling gurus face off in a whole-hog cook-off, with the winners earning a cash prize and a spot in the state championship later this year. A new Chick-fil-A sauce competition sifts through the day's top toppings until a winner is crowned. Between bites, guests can also savor the festival's many attractions, including a police dog demonstration, a petting zoo, and a BMX bike show, where riders wow onlookers by performing tricks and bunny-hopping over smokers.
Electro Bicycle Tours’s Kettler Twin electric bikes assist riders with a motor that provides extra power to match how hard they’re pedaling. Three “assist” settings allow riders to customize the added speed, from a minimal boost to a high setting that helps bikes easily mount Asheville’s hills and then laugh at them. Alternatively, riders can switch the assist off to pedal using their strength alone. Sightseers can rent the bikes to carve their own paths through the city or let someone else do the navigating on scenic tours of Asheville that include a stop at the Asheville Botanical Gardens. Electro Bicycle Tours also teams up with the Asheville Brewing Company to offer Bike and Brew capers about town.
Sprawled across 140 acres of mountainous backcountry, more than one mile of steel cable suspends from the trees, forming ten zipline tracks that glide throughout the canopy. On the ground below, a swinging bridge spans the mountainside, and a cliff jump offers an immediate path to the terrain below. To some, this sounds like the set of an action movie, but it’s actually the zipline course at Sky Valley Zip Tours, and it’s open to the public.
The guides at Sky Valley Zip Tours offer outdoor adventures that introduce guests to the thrill of ziplining while also learning about the local flora and fauna. They cap groups at 10 people, led by at least two guides who expertly navigate the tracks, which were professionally designed, constructed, and made safe by Challenge Design Innovations. Trips include all equipment, including helmets, harnesses, and translators to communicate with feral tightrope walkers.
A vast wooden bucket—printed with the words "world's largest gem mine bucket"—dominates Elijah Mountain Gem Mine's landscape. The immense receptacle, standing at 7 feet high and 8 feet wide, holds up to 30,000 pounds of dirt strewn with gems, jewels, and fossils. Families fill their buckets with the gem-studded dirt, strap on their prospector hats, and sift through the loot with the help of wooden flumes. The flumes, all-weather and wheelchair-accessible, wash away dirt to reveal fossils, quartz crystals, uncut emeralds, and other treasures to take home. Miners can opt for specialty buckets that contain higher concentrations of certain stones and fossils. A rock shop and 3,000-square-foot antique mall are stocked with sundries from the United States and Europe that, unlike precious stones or the White House's water slide, are displayed in plain sight.
Asheville changed drastically in the half-century following 1880. Railroad workers broke through the Appalachian Mountains' natural barrier and connected the city to the world, forever changing its culture and social zeitgeist. Though decades have passed, Brenda Seright Williams still feels the impact of this period, and the tour guide isn't content to let it fade into history. As it says on her website, she believes "the study of those who came before can inspire us to stretch our own limits."
Her Urban Trail walking tours not only explore the 19th century’s Gilded Age but also tiptoe through four other time periods, including the Frontier Period and the Age of String Cheese. Alternatively, Brenda shifts the spotlight to Asheville's pivotal female figures during the aptly named Herstory tours. However, neither of these excursions are cookie-cutter adventures. To weave her stories, Brenda has conducted more than 100 interviews and spent countless hours researching minute details and the correct pronunciation of the word "pioneer."
