Travel North Carolina: Going Native in the Old North State

Since 1954, John F. Blair, Publisher, has been specializing in nonfiction books about the Southeast, and specifically North Carolina. Over the years, Blair has published numerous travel guides, so to say that the Blair staff knows something about travel in their own home state is no small assertion.

Travel North Carolina is a comprehensive guide to the Tar Heel State. In this volume, you will find information about historic places, gardens, tours, museums, science centers, cultural offerings, special shopping, recreation, seasonal events, accommodations, and restaurants.

If you buy only one travel guide to the Old North State, here are some reasons why it should be Travel North Carolina:

* This guide was written by longtime residents of North Carolina
* This guide was published by a North Carolina publisher known for its travel guides
* This guide offers more annotated entries about unique places to eat and stay than any of the other guides on the market
* You will need to purchase only one guide to cover the entire state
* The authors accepted no advertising fees when selecting what to include in the book

Who better to publish a travel guide to North Carolina than the staff of a North Carolina publisher? As the staff of John F. Blair, Publisher, planned its future publication projects, we asked ourselves that very question. We looked around and realized that, collectively, we were in a better position to write about our home state than some guy from New York City who popped in for one weekend and recorded some snap judgments. When we decided to undertake this project, we also decided that we wanted the guide to reflect each of the five authors' personalities. That's why you may notice distinct styles in each section.

When discussing a format for the book, we decided that we didn't want an inclusive listing of every accommodation in each city. If you want that kind of list, we've provided contact information for local convention and visitor bureaus. What we tried to do was avoid the chains, unless there was something unique about a particular chain hotel or motel. We looked for locally owned, one-of-a-kind places that visitors might be unaware of. We did the same thing when choosing restaurants. We tried to find the places the locals would put on their list if you asked them for the best places in town to eat. We couldn't include them all, but we tried to offer a variety of cuisines and price ranges. We didn't charge any establishment a fee to be included in this book. Although our choices were subjective, we wanted to approach these places just like regular visitors would.

We worked on our individual sections for over a year. All things considered, it's been a good project for us. Although each of us came to our section with some previous knowledge of the area we were writing about, we all learned even more about our home state. Each of us is proud to be from North Carolina, and we're glad that we can share our enthusiasm with you.