North Carolina: It's special in springtime

Author: By Stephen Kurkjian, Globe Staff

Date: SUNDAY, April 7, 1996

Page: B1

Section: Travel

While New England weather still promised more than it delivered during the new season's arrival, by late February and early March the signs of winter's passing were firmly evident throughout North Carolina.

In the Outer Banks, cottage owners had already begun to spruce up their properties; around Charlotte's bustling streets, bank employees enjoyed the noontime sun in shirt sleeves and summer dresses, and along the Great Smoky Mountains' countryside, trees and shrubs were alive with new buds.

For those already thinking about next year, February and March are the months that travel agents customarily proclaim the wonders of tourist sites farther south, from the Caribbean beaches to Florida's multitude of attractions. North Carolina, meanwhile, offers a quieter but no less satisfying time.

The harbors are less crowded, and reservations for fishing charters to go searching for blues or something larger are easier to arrange; beachside hotels are offering rooms for $30 a night with continental breakfasts thrown in, and while many of the best restaurants aren't open in February, there are still any number of grilles and family-style places that are offering full menus.

The Outer Banks is a series of about 20 barrier islands that traverse the 300-mile length of North Carolina's Atlantic shore. Mingled among them is an eclectic mix of living styles from exclusive communities offering the most comfortable and expensive of accommodations to rows of funky cottages and guesthouses, constructed on foundations made of wooden stilts to protect them from the at-times moody ocean a few yards away.

There are also two national seashore preserves -- Cape Hatteras and Cape Lookout -- that offer a total of 90 miles of beach, dunes and scrub brush for exploring. The Cape Hatteras National Seashore is the most extensive stretch of undeveloped seashore on the Atlantic coast. Except for a few villages on the islands, the national recreation area includes Ocracoke and Hatteras islands, and part of Bodie Island. The islands are connected by a free bridge and free ferry.

Vast expanses of sand and water are the main attractions in this area of wild beauty. The fishing is exquisite, but for beachcombers little can match seeing the bottle-nosed dolphin diving in and out of the waves.

Farther north, around the middle of the state, the distance between the islands and mainland widens, and the ocean waters become rougher to navigate. But it has little effect on the fishing. Even on the days when the wind is howling its greatest, fishermen can be seen along the Outer Banks coasts, cocooned in down jackets, eyes looking straight forward for the multitude of fish that populate these waters.

As one guidebook states of the fishing here, something is always running off the North Carolina coast: channel bass in spring; Spanish mackerel, whiting and flounder in summer; small bluefish in fall. Popano, the perennial surf fish, shows up in spring and stays around until nearly winter. Spiny dogfish, a beach shark, prefer the winter, and sea trout can appear any time of year.

If you're looking for something more sedate than taking out a charter boat or casting from the shore, you can find peace and a plentiful supply of fish by dropping a line off one of the innumerable piers and jetties that sprinkle the Outer Banks. I was told that more than a quarter of all Atlantic Ocean piers are in North Carolina.

Certain piers are renowned for certain fish. ``The Hidden Carolinas: The Adventurer's Guide'' reports that on the Outer Banks, the Nags Head Pier draws bluefish and channel bass in spring and fall. On summer nights, sharkers head for Jennette's Pier in Nags Head, which is said to be one of the few piers that allows shark fishing. The Outer Banks Pier is a haven for king mackerel as well as flounder, kingfish and cobia.

On Hatteras Island, Avon Pier and the beaches on either side are famed for red drum. The remote beaches of Ocracoke Island offer good fishing for pompano, bluefish and sea mullet.

For the more energetic, the Outer Banks also has much to offer: its rolling waves for surfers, its persistent wind and summits of sand for hang gliders.

One of the largest hang-gliding schools in the world, Kitty Hawk Kites, promises to get you off the ground in three hours. The beginner's lesson includes at least five flights for $60. The afternoon we wandered by, a dozen retired military officers were testing their wills and skills and, although they were not reaching any great heights, were having an uproarious time as they mastered the same primary lessons of flight that Orville and Wilbur Wright did on these same dunes at the turn of the century.

The Wright brothers! Their name evokes as powerful a sense of accomplishment as can be found from American invention. And although they were born and did most of the work on their flying machines in Ohio, it is somehow fitting that their dreams would take flight right in the middle of a North Carolina county that also evokes the American pioneering spirit, Dare County, named after Virginia Dare, the first English child born in North America.

The monument to the Wright brothers sits majestically on a high grassy dune that was the site of their first flight in December 1903. The exhibition center presents a full-scale replica of the engine-powered glider that Orville and Wilbur piloted for four successful flights, and outside the center are replicas of the two wooden sheds that the Wrights lived and worked in during their stay that year on the Outer Banks.

While the Outer Banks are a favorite haven for vacationers from throughout the Middle Atlantic and South, Charlotte, North Carolina's largest city, also has its fair share of attractions, which would come as a surprise to some friends who hadn't been in the city in more than a decade.

I quote the e-mail message from one of them when she heard that I was driving to Charlotte to visit my daughter, a transplanted Bostonian now teaching fourth-graders in the public school system: ``When I was there between 1973-1978, Charlotte was a sleepy place with no restaurants, one museum, one movie theater, no NBA team, not much of a downtown. You couldn't buy liquor by the drink, and could only get 3.2 beer or a glass of wine with a meal. If you wanted a Bloody Mary, you either had to have it mixed with wine, or bring your own bottle of vodka in a brown bag (or join a private club that kept your booze on the premises). The biggest event when I was there was: ELVIS' DEATH!''

The city my daughter showed me has come a long way. With a metropolitan area population of more than a million, Charlotte has become the banking capital of the South, ``a financial powerhouse of national stature,'' as a recent article in National Geographic proclaimed. The city raised $30 million to expand its campus of the University of North Carolina, and it knew what it would take to attract big league sports to its borders: a 23,500-seat arena for its NBA team, the Hornets, and a soon-to-be completed stadium for its NFL franchise, the Panthers.

There is still only one major museum in the city, the Mint Museum of Art. But the growth of the Spirit Square Arts Center, which stages concerts, sponsors art exhibits and is host to performances by the Charlotte Symphony, Opera and Repertory Theater, should provide assurance that there is much to see while waiting for the NASCAR races at the Charlotte Motor Speedway to begin.

In both look and attitude, Charlotte has committed itself to the New South. Giant shopping centers have sprouted in many of the suburban neighborhoods, and feature sufficient trendy boutiques, sports bars and bookstores to satisfy the influx of yuppies who have flocked to the city for jobs in its banking sector.

Perhaps because it didn't have as great a stake in slavery (its farms were small, and there were only a few plantations) and was one of the last Southern states to have joined the Confederacy, North Carolina does appear to have gotten over the Civil War without the surly attitude found elsewhere. The only Confederacy memorial that I noticed in a tour of the downtown was a bronze marker near the city's busiest intersection, where four high-rise bank buildings now reach skyward. The marker proclaims the site to be where the Confederate Cabinet held its last meeting on April 24, 1865, to authorize the ending of the war.

For more information, call the North Carolina Travel & Tourism Division at (800) 847-4862.