Mount Airy, NC Outdoor Activities

Five generations of the Sells family have tilled the land, including Clodbuster Farms’ current owner, Zane Sells, who hopes to continue that tradition well into the future. The farm hosts a pick-your-own strawberry patch, seasonal produce, and greenhouse tomatoes. The farm’s store stocks everything from its own products to locally made jelly, pickles, and honey, in addition to feed for picky animals that also prefer locally sourced fodder. At the end of the year, the Sells family puts on a fall celebration, inviting guests to take a spin on the hayride, find their way through the corn maze, and tell spooky stories by the campfire. The crisp fall weather and the changing colors of the farm scenery make the perfect backdrop for guests to stock up on pumpkins, play a round of corn hole, and roast marshmallows for s’mores.

With snowy manes aflutter in the wind and tawny haunches trotting leisurely along paved streets, Bo and Doc—the horsepower behind Camel City Carriage Company—dutifully ferry passengers around Winston-Salem’s city center. Piloting Bo and Doc on public and private tours, sisters and company founders Toni Phillips and Gina McClamrock, along with their father, Ron, happily regale passengers with interesting and invented area history as well as recommend restaurants for post-ride feasting. The old-timey carriage’s striped cover shields riders from inclement weather, keeping precipitation and rainbows’ ends from infiltrating tours.

Dustin Keith, a former paratrooper, police officer, and learjet pilot, says that his favorite job has been owning and operating his boat-rental business with his wife, Andrea. Keith has loved water sports since he was young, and wanted to open the business to help families build their own memories on the water. The Keiths maintain a consistently updated inventory of luxury pontoon boats, kayaks, bowriders, and cabin cruisers, and the low deposits they require for rental are returned to customers the same day. Boat-club memberships give customers unlimited access to the boats without the expense of buying and storing them or setting up mermaid traps along the shore.

The Keiths donate a portion of the profits from boat rentals to Compassion International to support impoverished children in Asia and Africa, and hope to one day dedicate each boat to a child that its rental helps support.

Floating is the number-one activity at this small-town fitness center, which boasts three pools. A two-story water slide ushers guests into the leisure pool via three slick loops, and a zero-depth beach entry lets them ease into the water at their own pace without getting drenched. Guests can hone their butterfly strokes in four 20-yard lap lanes or existentially ponder the nature of water in the deep end, which is heated to 86 degrees. Visitors may also dive into an Olympic–size competition pool from 5-, 7.5- and 10-meter platforms, then speed through 9-foot lanes. Those with sore joints can ease into the therapy pool, which pampers sore joints with soothing 94-degree water.

Swimmer-specific fitness equipment fills a nearby cardio room, where Vasa trainers help guests to perfect front crawls and backstrokes with body-weight exercises. Treadmills, ellipticals, and recumbent bikes bolster cross-training regimens, along with Magnum strength trainers designed to tone the entire body. The facility also boasts a wet classroom that hosts scuba trainings, a kitchen, and shower-equipped locker rooms.

After graduating from college, two North Carolina natives started Charity Chase as an entertaining way to give back to their community. Envisioning an activity that would draw all sorts of people together, they put their energies into cultivating an abundant natural resource: mud. After testing their physical and mental fortitude at dirt-carved racecourses throughout the area, runners sprint across the finish line to find lively after parties. Crowds swap battle stories to the rousing tunes of live musicians, and costume contests grade the creative garb of contestants, spectators, and mud beasts disturbed from their subterranean homes by the ruckus. Benefiting groups include an assortment of charities and school organizations, depending on the event.