ALL Local Guides around the world are welcome to participate in the #StateChallenge!!! Everyone is invited to participate, whether they have visited the state themselves, or are daydreaming about what the featured state has to offer. Each challenge will have an Articles Submissions Recap and a State Trivia Meetup (with questions sourced from the submitted articles). Details of the challenge are here. If you write an article, make sure to link to it in the comments so we can include it in our recap!
I am incredibly excited to co-host my home state of North Carolina! I have lived in the state my entire life, growing up in Spruce Pine, NC in the mountains and now living in the Piedmont region in Winston-Salem, NC! North Carolina has so much to offer! Mountains, forests, beaches, lighthouses, the first flight took place here, we have America’s Largest Home in the Biltmore House in Asheville, NC. We grow the second-most Christmas trees and sweet potatoes in the Nation as well as second-most hogs and pigs. We also are the birthplace of Pepsi Cola!
Articles must be published by midnight Pacific Standard Time on 8/21/2020
500 words or less
Link your article in the comments
Meetup on the 8/22/2020
Attend the Meetup
Challenge: NORTH CAROLINA
What have you 
seen, 
done, 
eaten or 
experienced in North Carolina? What do you want to 
see, 
do, 
eat or 
experience in North Carolina?
Fun facts about North Carolina to get you started: 
- North Carolina is called the Tar Heel State
- North Carolina got the nickname the Tar Heel State because workers here used to sell tar, pitch, and turpentine from the state’s longleaf pine trees to be used in wooden ships. Legend has it that some British soldiers were slowed down when they stepped in sticky North Carolina tar during the Revolutionary War.1. North Carolina is made up of 3 distinct regions with very different landscapes
- The Appalachian Mountains
, the largest mountain range in the eastern United States, cover North Carolina’s western region. Some peaks are more than a mile above sea level. - In the center of North Carolina, you will find the Piedmont region . High and flat—like a mountain with its top chopped off—this plateau sits between the mountain and coastal plain regions. In this region, rivers flow through waterfalls and over rapids.
- The eastern region is called the coastal plain
, and its mostly-flat land leads to the Atlantic Ocean. Beaches, swamps, the Outer Banks, sandy beaches, and lighthouses make up this region.1. Forests 
cover nearly 60 percent of North Carolina, making timber a very important natural resource that helped North Carolina become one of the largest producers of furniture in the country.
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The pirate Blackbeard called North Carolina home and spent time ransacking ships off the coast in the early 1700s.
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Brother inventors Wilbur and Orville Wright completed the first successful airplane flight in the dunes of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903. (That’s why the state’s license plates and quarters read “First in Flight”.)
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Asheville, North Carolina, is a craft beer lovers dream. The city boasts the largest number of breweries per capita of any city in the United States, including Wicked Weed Brewing, Green Man Brewery, and Highland Brewing Company.
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Founded in 1798, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill is the nation’s oldest public university.
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Thanks to its rich land and mild climate, North Carolina produces more sweet potatoes
than any other state in the nation. -
North Carolina is one of the United States’ largest produces of Christmas trees
. The state produces between 15 and 20 percent of the nation’s real Christmas trees, including the popular North Carolina Fraser fir. -
In 1937, a man named Vernon Rudolph established the small, Winston-Salem (Connect Moderator Jordan Burleson’s current residence) based business that would eventually balloon into one of the world’s biggest pastry behemoths: Krispy Kreme doughnuts.
I love my home state of North Carolina! I have so much to share and talk about so please join me at this meetup so we can talk and ask me questions!
This post is part of the #StateChallenge organized by @Kwiksatik and @Denise_Barlock. If you want to find out more, check out the post here, and you can also find other submissions by searching the #StateChallenge hashtag.