Fort Macon State Park, North Carolina

We visited Fort Macon after going to the Pine Knoll Shores aquarium. The Battle of Fort Macon was fought during March and April 1862.  The Fort was opened as a State Park in 1936. Fort Macon State Park is the second most visited state park in North Carolina, with an annual visitation of 1.3 million people, despite being one of the smallest state parks in North Carolina with only 424 acres. Fort Macon State Park also completely surrounds United States Coast Guard Station Fort Macon.  There is a little beach a short distance from the fort that had small waves and fun shells to find.  My favorite part of the beach was that they had used old Christmas trees as a dune stabilizer.  The fort itself was in great condition and the kids had a ton of fun running around all the vaulted rooms.  There was one part of the stairs that had a notch cut out from where a cannon ball landed. Milton wasn't all that enthralled with the video and fell asleep, but not deep enough to let Owen take his submarine!

North Carolina Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores

The Pine Knoll Shores aquarium is one of several of the North Carolina Aquariums.  The main exhibit is a replica of  a U-352, a German submarine that lost a World War II battle with a Coast Guard cutter off the North Carolina coast. This exhibit has the larger animals and schooling fish.  Notable among them are sand tiger sharks, a green moray eel measuring about six feet long, a goliath grouper approaching four feet, and a number of sizable nurse sharks, sandbar sharks and various game fishes.

Great Smoky Mountains, North Carolina

Another long weekend we drove out to the Western side of North Carolina to the Great Smoky Mountains.  It is on the border of Tennessee so we were able to have lunch un Tennessee.  Since we visited in winter, the higher elevation visitor centers were closed and we couldn't see Clingmans Dome.  The Appalachian Trail passes through the center of the park. With 12.5 million visitors in 2019, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most visited national park in the United States. This is more so than Yellowstone or Yosemite due to its proximity to the major cities of the Eastern US.  We also visited the Biltmore estate. It was built by George Washington Vanderbilt II from 1889 and 1895 and is the largest privately owned house in the United States, at 178,926 square feet.  The surrounding gardens and grounds were designed by Frederick Law Olmsted.