Things To Do in North Carolina

Every so often, people should get in touch with nature to trade addresses and catch up on major life developments. Today's Groupon gives you access to the birds, the bees, and the boats. For $65, you get a weekend night's stay in a cottage at Lake Norman (a $136 tax-included value), about 18 miles north of Charlotte. For $40, you can stay in the same cottage on a weeknight (an $82 tax-included value).

Founded by sports enthusiast and former adolescent Rick Hart, Jump Start Sports works to enrich pupils' childhoods by developing useful life skills through athletics. Qualified counselors employ their wealth of experience working with children to help campers learn teamwork and fair play as well as the fundamentals of fielding baseballs, scoring soccer goals, or synchronizing pom-pom work. A course structure built around age-appropriate activities, group play, and free electives ensures that students never get bored, and an 8:1 pupil-teacher ratio enables one-on-one assistance to young champions as they practice the graceful art of pitching or the scheming intrigue of free-agent contract negotiation.

Concord Speedway hosts roaring engines and screaming fans on 70 acres of tracks and racing activities. The NASCAR Whelen All-American Series gives horseless carriages of all shapes and sizes the opportunity for high-speed cruising, with five races per night on the Speedway's half-mile track. Let cheeks flap in pulse-pounding sympathy during fast-and-furious fours, followed by a stock race as pure as the driven snow, except with tire marks. Voracious vintage sportsman roadsters eat up the track with Kimmel cars hot on their tails. The concluding late-model stock-car race parades the most cutting-edge innovations in speed, handling, and parade-float sling-shotting. Saturday, April 16 is SpringFest, featuring longer races and cash prizes for winners.

Entering their 85th season, the Harlem Globetrotters have entertained millions of parents, children, and general basketball admirers with a unique brand of athletic precision and showmanship. For their latest “4 Times the Fun” North American tour, the Globetrotters will add a new 4-point shot spots located 35 feet from the basket, which is 12 feet further than the official three-point line but several thousand miles closer than the prime meridian. See the arch-nemesis Generals try to keep up as the Harlem hardwood sorcerers evade gravity’s oppressive clutches and court clairvoyants distribute unassailable alley-oops. Youngsters can learn about the benefits of teamwork while laughing along with the jovial jocks as they perform classic routines of unconventional passing and sudden transmutations of water into confetti.

Established in 2000, Ken's Korny Corn Maze presents an autumn playground where families converge every year for full days of exercise, learning, and fun. As the centerpiece of the property, the 6-acre corn maze snakes visitors through 2.5 miles of trails that take months to design and construct. Burrowed into the stalks are rest areas that provide trekkers with benches and water coolers, and checkpoints track how long groups spend in the maze so they aren't slowed by having to drag cumbersome grandfather clocks behind them. Hasty escapes from the maze's twisting paths leave plenty of time to check out other family-friendly attractions, including an 8,000-square-foot rope maze, a mini-golf course, and hayrides.

The Greensboro Symphony’s mighty oak has grown from the most acornic of beginnings—its story started in the 1920s with a group of musicians at Woman's College. Over the years, the symphony has grown into a cultural cornerstone of the community, with community-outreach programs, youth-involvement events, a secret volcano headquarters, and an endowment fund.