Island Attitude When I stand on the sand and look to the sea it puts my life into perspective. So what if the dishes aren’t washed or that last pile of paperwork has not been completed? My life is good and all is right with me today. If once you have slept on an island You'll never be quite the same; You may look as you looked the day before And go by the same old name, You may bustle about in street...

It’s one for the money, two for the show three to get ready and go cat go, but don’t you step on my Sand Dunes. (You didn’t see that one coming did you?) I borrowed the lyrics from Elvis “The King” Presley to make an important point. Seriously Folks, locals and visitors alike. Mother Nature and sometimes mankind place the sand dunes there as our first line of defense. They are...

WATHA – Just north of Burgaw is a best kept secret that Luke Dooley wants to shout from the cabin-tops. It’s Camp Kirkwood, managed by the Wilmington Family YMCA and nurtured by the Friends of Camp Kirkwood. The camp is 200 acres including an 8-acre lake. Dooley is the new Associate Executive Director at Camp Kirkwood. The UNC-Wilmington graduate served at a YMCA camp in Alabama and 10 years at Camp Hanes...

ArtBeat of Burgaw is offering six weeks of classes for children and young adults. The classes vary from week to week and include painting, theater, drawing, stitlting (yes, walking on stilts!), horses, pottery, and writing. For more information click here. Visit their website at www.artbeatofburgaw.com.

Just when you thought it was safe to break out the shorts and T-shirts Mother Nature sends a parting gift – a shot of freezing temps. Not only is that bad news for the plants that we all put out but also for any turtles heading back toward the coast after a long winter at sea. It doesn’t take much for one of the little guys to hit a patch of cold air or water and become stunned. North Carolina had...

SURF CITY – The Surf City Ocean Pier may be one of the most photographed attractions in Pender County. Photos of the pier in the morning light and artsy shots from underneath make the pier appear as a cathedral. The pier strikes a pose for visual media and is a social media darling with more than 25,990 Facebook friends. Fans look forward to the pier’s weather reports, photos, and fishing reports. “The...

OK, OK, OK, Soooooo. . . . . . . You’ve got a real estate related question about vacation rentals. You can ask but I won’t answer until you listen to a story. Ready? It goes something like this: A really old man was sitting on a dock fishing. Nothing was biting but he continued to sit and patiently waited for the fish to bite. All of a sudden a frog jumps up on the dock beside the man. The frog says...

Experience Pender County’s Great Outdoors Pender County is an outdoor-lover’s paradise. With beaches, the Intracoastal Waterway, the Northeast Cape Fear River, the Black River, and a multitude of streams and creeks, we have boating, fishing, kayaking, canoeing, paddle boarding and jet skis adventures. With the Holly Shelter Game Lands, we have hunting and hiking. Go shelling on our beaches, walk a trail,...

Not every college student heads to Florida or Cancun (or wherever they go these days) for their spring break. For the fourth year we welcomed a group of “Terps” from the University of Maryland’s “Alternative Break” program. These eleven students (plus their Associate Director, Boots Quimby) are from the Integrated Life Sciences Honor College at the university. Their name for their annual...

Here's this week's tourism update from Pender County Tourism. Click here. If you wish to subscribe to the e-newsletter email tproctor@pendercountync.gov.

Pender County Tourism attended the annual state conference on tourism, Visit NC 365. Click here for this week's tourism update from the conference.

Read this week's Pender County Tourism Update to stay in tune with all that's happening. Click here to read the March 7 edition. If you wish to add your email address to this free update, email tproctor@pendercountync.gov.

Penderlea Homestead Museum, located at 284 Garden Rd., is open every Saturday. The museum is a perfectly preserved Penderlea home built in the 1930s. While Penderlea is historic, so is its church, Potts Memorial Presbyterian Church. Penderlea was the first New Deal farming community authorized by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Proposed by Hugh MacRae, Penderlea was designed to give unemployed and tenant farmers...

The Holly Shelter Game Land Shooting Range is well underway. According to a report for the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, the pistol and rifle range shelter is framed. Shingles have been installed on the rifle range shelter. The pistol shelter roofing is approximately 40 percent complete. Benches have been constructed in the pistol range. Benches in the rifle shelter are underway. A liner for the...