The truth about tailgating: It’s a picnic in a parking lot. But when we talk tailgating for college football games, we mean a very special kind of picnic. We mean family and friends and football and food, and back-to-school season for those of us who aren’t going back to school anymore. We mean school spirit and a sense of being on the edge of something. Our team might win today. Maybe not. But whatever the outcome, we’ll be among friends. On game-day Saturdays, where the real world ends and the parking lot begins, we’ll find stories and snacks, mascots and marching bands, and memories of life in a college town. Summer’s ending, but now we’ve got fall.
Food and football give us a reason to gather. But the essence of tailgating is something deeper.
Taylor Mathis, food photographer and the blogger behind Taylor Takes a Taste, attended 35 football tailgates in 16 states between 2010 and 2012, including nine games in North Carolina. With his newfound knowledge, he wrote the (cook)book on tailgating in the South.
The only way we could get this motley crew of birds, beasts, and men to pose together was to illustrate them. But the rivalries between these Division I good luck charms are good-natured — we think.
Whether their team is winning or losing, marching bands at historically black colleges keep the fans on their feet.
More than points on a map, college towns are safe havens for intellectual curiosity. They’re the treasured places where we pause to think, grow, and learn.
Just because a city has a university doesn’t mean it’s a college town. A college town is different. The relationship is closer. This fall, see if you can spot the intersection between campus and community in these college towns — three that have long defined the term in North Carolina, and three you might not expect.
North Carolina is known for many things, but nothing more important this week than the qualities of endurance, resilience, and hope.
By day, this adventure park in the Triad is a fall festival to die for. By night, the undead come alive for Halloween tricks. Welcome to one man’s vision of year-round merrymaking.
North Carolina’s border dances across the mountains as it traces four different states. Life here can be more remote, but good neighbors are never far away.
The Blue Ridge Parkway stands out among America’s national parks: Unfurling across six Appalachian mountain chains, it connects dozens of rural communities and binds together generations of families through shared memories.
