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This summer, travel along with WRAL News as we explore North Carolina's Nooks and Crannies. We'll be exploring some vacation and day trip spots in the Old North State that are less well-known or simply out of the way and usually out of mind.
Prairie Ridge Ecostation, part of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences offers visitors 45 acres of Piedmont prairie, forest, ponds, and stream near downtown Raleigh.
Explore the nooks and crannies of Transylvania County with a visit to Rainbow Falls.
Wake County's 200 miles of greenway and trails are a vibrant link to the outdoors.
Shallow, smooth water welcomes relaxation at Jockey's Ridge State Park.
Spend a night out under the stars and watch a good movie at the Eden Drive-In, one of the few drive-ins remaining in the country.
Need a way to bait your kids into a little summertime learning? Take them to the Outer Banks, and stop by the Wanchese Fishing Village.
Stacy Harris, a Rougemont resident, is building his own Nooks & Crannies location to remember his love of "Dukes of Hazzard."
The Triangle is full of new and shiny buildings, glass and steel and modern monsters that rise and sprawl around the area. That's not the case with a business in Guilford County. It's a simple place that welcomes visitors and is proud of their very old heritage.
Right smack dab in the middle of downtown Kinston, there is a little brick building that goes far too unnoticed. It's not the town library, but it holds volumes of stories that need to be told -- stories of Kinston's Fire Department.
Pinehurst is known for it's beautiful golf courses, but there is also a place where you can stroll within the landscape and never pay a greens fee.
The American Tobacco Trail is where a mighty railroad once ran, snaking its way through three counties. Now, it takes those looking for exercise and serene views on an adventure.
Jordan Lake was built to be a water supply for a fast-paced and growing area. It's also a place for camping, boating, swimming and picnicking. Bill Leslie shows off one of North Carolina's treasured Nooks and Crannies in Chatham County.
The old, cumbersome, swing bridge that charmed thousands of visitors for more than 50 years was taken out of service two years ago. This summer, it's back open -- to pedestrians.
The All-A-Flutter Butterfly Farm in High Point is a world of wings.
Chimney Rock towers 2,200 feet above valleys and nearly touches the sky.
Jones Lake State Park in Bladen County offers camping, hiking and fishing.
Running water, small-town charm and history welcome visitors to Montreat.
Raleigh has three dog parks, including one at Lake Wheeler.
Turtle Hole, part of the Eno River, sits smack dab in the middle of Durham, a place where Mother Nature doesn't seem to mind if you drop in unannounced.
Atop white walls of rock reaching 1,000 feet in the air, hikers often find that the narrow trail up Whiteside Mountain leads them to the edge of enlightenment.
Profound thoughts fly easily at Wiseman's View, 1,500 feet above the Linville Gorge in the North Carolina mountains.
The Marsh Creek Skate Park is located at 3016 New Hope Road in Raleigh and open until 9 p.m. daily.
The Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge is a place not many get to go after dark. But on Wednesday nights, refuge staff members take about 80 people into the woods to hear the Red Wolf howl.
Off the beaten trail in Franklin County is the 88-acre Dehart Botanical Gardens, where people can disappear into nature.
For a hundred years, travelers have passed over the Little River in Randolph County on a covered bridge. Today, the bridge draws families on vacation, enthusiastic builders and engaged couples taking photos.
Thousands of people drive over the Haw River on the U.S. Highway 15-501 bridge every day, and very few take the time to see what they're passing over.
The peaceful House in the Horseshoe, along the Deep River 10 miles north of Carthage, was once a raging battlefield during the Revolutionary War.
Harkers Island sits so far east in North Carolina, some locals say they get their TV shows two days late. But times are changing in this Outer Banks outpost, where history and traditions run deep.
A character in the Dr. Suess classic, The Lorax, declares that he "speaks for the trees, for the trees have no tongue." But in a Johnston County forest, the trees speak for themselves.
WRAL's summer travel series "Nooks and Crannies" takes you to special spots of North Carolina along with WRAL anchor Bill Leslie and photojournalist Richard Adkins.
Photographer Matt Robinson shared this photo collection of the Raleigh skyline.
As the sun sets on our summer series, Bill Leslie shares a little music.
Asheville's River Arts District is home to works by more than 130 artists displayed in studios, amid a collection of old warehouses, storefronts and alleys.
North Carolinians feeling the stress of daily life can find peace in a small cranny carved through sand, brush and marsh just south of Kure Beach.
Tour guide Mike Nicholson leads six tours of the four-wheel-drive area five days a week.
Merchants Millpond State Park features what caretakers say is one of North Carolina's rarest ecologies: a combination of coastal pond, southern swamp forest and upland forest environments that evolved around a mill pond created in the 1700s.
There's a train depot tucked away in the mountain town of Bryson City. The trains there don't go far, but they take tourists to a far off place.
On the narrowest stretch of the Outer Banks lies a peaceful, sound-side nook where, just across the highway, the Atlantic Ocean roars.
In the crannies of the North Carolina mountains, water flows and becomes a spectacular waterfall at High Falls on the Little River in DuPont State Forest.
A few blocks away from surfing, sand castle-building and suntanning on Nags Head Beach, visitors can find shade, solitude and silence in a maritime forest.
Hikers say that a certain peak in North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains is so fierce-looking that it's an appropriate place for the devil to hold court.
In Cary, there's a nature preserve that time forgot, where a tree species flourishes hundreds of miles from its normal habitat.
Few have seen North Carolina's most famous lighthouse like this: illuminated only by its own light and a full moon.
The Neuse River is featured in "North Carolina Nooks and Crannies," WRAL News' summer series profiling some of the state's the lesser-known vacation and day trip sites.
The first stop in WRAL's summer tour of North Carolina's Nooks and Crannies lies on the far eastern edge of the state map: Ocracoke Island.
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