For nine decades, Our State has made its way into homes across North Carolina, the United States, and the world. To celebrate, every month this year, we’re paying tribute to the readers who inspire us, offering a taste of our earliest recipes, and revisiting old stories with new insights. Follow along to find out how our past has shaped our present.

Like a lot of folks, Pam Wood discovered Our State by reading someone else’s copy in her 20s. “I didn’t have any money, but I’d write down the places and take jour neys [in my head] with the stories,” she recalls. When Pam married her husband, Scott, in 1995, the couple turned those imagined journeys into realities. “I’d read the stories to him in the car while he drove, we’d put down favorites in an app, and off we’d go.”

Pam and Scott Wood loved traversing North Carolina and visiting sites like the Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kill Devil Hills. Photography courtesy of PAM WOOD

Pam rattles off memories as though she visited these destinations only yesterday: Jeep driving on Hatteras Island and in Uwharrie National Forest. Jockey’s Ridge and the hilarious photo of Scott posing beside Orville at the Wright Brothers National Memorial. Pilot Mountain, where the couple began portions of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail. (They completed about 30 miles.) The Beefmastor Inn in Wilson, which, just as depicted in the magazine, “is four walls and little else,” but became the Woods’ go-to restaurant for birthdays and anniversaries. Our State’s barbecue pamphlet was always in the glove compartment because, though partial to Parker’s, they wanted to try every joint. Pam still marvels at their trip to a since-vanished attraction called The Wildcat Express near Boone, where, at the end of a rough ride through hills and valleys in a two-ton truck, they had the best peach cobbler and fried chicken they’d ever eaten.

But for best-loved experiences, camping beat everything else. “I’ve been a tent-camper since I was born,” Pam says. And of the camping sites they frequented, Greystone RV Park near Pilot Mountain remained their favorite.

They’d also venture to Priddy’s General Store for slices of bologna and cheese and an RC Cola. “It always amazed us that, so often, we knew more about where we were than the locals,” she says, laughing. A trip to Mount Airy always included a stop at Miss Angels Heavenly Pies to eat moonshine cookies, a visit to Mayberry Antique Mall, and dinner at The Loaded Goat. “Magical weekends,” she says. “Magical.”

And then, Scott — “never sick a day in his life” — got Covid. On December 10, 2021, he died of complications from pneumonia at age 56. Pam, who’d been an ICU nurse for 26 years, decided to, as she puts it, “repurpose herself.” She sold Scott’s businesses, retired, and hopes to build a “barndominium” on 20 acres near the Blue Ridge Parkway in Meadows of Dan, Virginia, where Scott is buried.

To commemorate the first anniversary of Scott’s death, Pam took her mother, Lola, and daughter, Amber, to New York City, a trip with its own North Carolina connection: Pam’s mother had a lifelong friend in Pinehurst — “We always go [there] for peaches” — who was a former Rockette.

Despite Pam’s loss, memories are still being made, and the travels will continue. “I have a basket of the magazines in my bedroom beside my recliner,” this 30-year subscriber says. “That way, I can read it at night and have something good on my mind when I go to bed and plan my next adventure.” Happy trails, Pam. You’re our kind of Our State reader.