Real Estate & Lifestyle Posts in WNC

By Jon Tharp, Broker  ·  July 2, 2026

Chainsaw art is not the first thing most people picture when they hear the words arts and crafts show. In Maggie Valley, it is part of the draw. When the 35th annual Maggie Valley Arts & Crafts Show opens on Soco Road the weekend of July 11, artisans will be turning raw logs into bears, eagles, and mountain scenes right there on the field, and that is only one corner of what runs to more than 100 vendors.

The show takes over the Maggie Valley Festival Grounds from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, July 11, and again on Sunday, July 12. Admission is free. Parking is free. If you have been meaning to spend a summer weekend up in Haywood County, this is a good reason to point the car toward the mountains.

By Jon Tharp, Broker  ·  July 2, 2026

More than 25 people crowded into Twenty-Eight Main, the event space tucked below street level in downtown Franklin, on June 23 to answer a deceptively simple question. What is Franklin, and what does it want to become?

That question sat at the center of a community visioning workshop led by the N.C. Department of Commerce's Main Street and Rural Planning Center, working alongside the Appalachian Regional Commission. Residents, business owners, and local officials broke into small groups and started drafting. By the end of the night, the groups pinned up six candidate vision statements for the room to consider, each one a slightly different attempt to put Franklin into words.

By Jon Tharp, Broker  ·  July 2, 2026

The first Cherokee artists who joined together in 1946 were earning pennies for work that took days to finish. A single rivercane basket, split and dyed and woven by hand from materials gathered along the creek beds of the Qualla Boundary, might trade for pocket change. Eighty years later, the cooperative they built is the oldest Native American art and craft organization in the United States, and it turned that pennies-on-the-dollar arrangement into something a person can actually build a life around.

Qualla Arts & Crafts Mutual in Cherokee marks its 80th anniversary on Sunday, August 23, 2026. For anyone in Western North Carolina who has driven past the low stone building across from the Museum of the Cherokee People and never stopped in, this is a good year to change that. The story inside is one of the more significant economic and cultural achievements in the region, and it has been sitting in plain sight the whole time.

By Jon Tharp, Broker  ·  July 1, 2026

Chimney Rock is throwing itself a birthday party this Independence Day weekend. One year ago, on June 27, 2025, the park reopened after Hurricane Helene shut it down for nine months. Now it is marking the anniversary alongside America's 250th with two days of Revolutionary War programs, live folk music, and a flag ceremony at the top of the Chimney.

The park sits in the Hickory Nut Gorge along US-74A, about 25 miles southeast of Asheville and roughly a 40-minute drive through some of the prettiest mountain road in the region. If you have been meaning to see how the gorge and the village of Chimney Rock have bounced back since the storm, July 4 and 5 give you a good reason to make the trip.

By Jon Tharp, Broker  ·  July 1, 2026

Picture forty hot air balloons lifting off a Piedmont airfield at sunrise, drifting over farmland while the crowd below cranes their necks and reaches for coffee. That is the Carolina BalloonFest, and it is one of the oldest events of its kind in the country. It is also the thing most people picture first when they hear the word Statesville.

But the balloons are only the opening act. Statesville and the wider Iredell County pack an entire weekend of history, food, distilling, and lakeside living into a stretch of the North Carolina Piedmont that a lot of mountain folks drive right past on their way somewhere else.

By Jon Tharp, Broker  ·  July 1, 2026

Picture your kids standing on a paved path, looking out through a curtain of falling water. At Dry Falls, just northwest of Highlands, that is the whole experience. The trail is short, the walk behind the 80-foot falls is the payoff, and nobody has to be talked into it. This is the kind of easy win that makes Highlands work for families in summer.

Set at 4,118 feet in the southern Blue Ridge, Highlands is one of the highest towns you will find east of the Mississippi. That elevation matters. While the lower country bakes through July and August, the average daily high here sits around 74 degrees. The town was founded in 1875 as a summer health resort for people escaping the heat, and more than a century later, that is still a big part of why families point their cars up the mountain.

By Jon Tharp, Broker  ·  June 30, 2026

A broken plate started one of these careers. A picked-up log started the other.

Anne Henschel and Linda Girardi are both member artists at Trackside Studios in Asheville's River Arts District, in Buncombe County, and the way each of them found their craft says a lot about how art works in these mountains. Henschel picked up a log and a sharp tool many years ago and, in her words, never looked back. Girardi broke a treasured plate, decided to turn the pieces into a mosaic, and has been exploring the form ever since. The studio sits at 375 Depot Street, a short drive from downtown Asheville and easy to reach off I-240 and I-26.

By Jon Tharp, Broker  ·  June 30, 2026

A new fly shop on Main Street in Waynesville opened its doors with a ribbon-cutting this week, and it comes with a feature most tackle shops do not advertise: cold beer on hand. Shining Rock Angler & Outfitters, owned by husband-and-wife team Josh and Nina Whorton, celebrated its grand opening on Monday, June 29.

The couple call it a mom-and-pop fly-fishing shop, and the goal is to welcome anglers of every experience level, not just the people who already know a nymph from a dry fly.

By Jon Tharp, Broker  ·  June 30, 2026

A chairlift built to carry skiers down a snow-covered mountain is about to spend its summers hauling mountain bikers and their bikes to a 12-trail park that did not exist a year and a half ago.

That is the headline at Hatley Pointe Mountain Resort, which opens its first lift-served bike park on Saturday, August 1. The first phase, designed and built by Marshall-based Elevated Trail Design, links 12 trails through three primary descents off the summit, giving riders a real menu of ways down the mountain. For a resort most people in the region know as a winter destination, this is a new identity taking shape.

By Jon Tharp, Broker  ·  June 30, 2026

The earliest deadline to win a blue ribbon at this year's N.C. Mountain State Fair is August 14, almost a full month before the fair gates open in Fletcher. That is the part most people miss. They show up in September ready to enter a pie or a quilt and learn the window closed weeks ago.

So consider this your early warning. The fair runs September 11 through 20, but if you want to compete, the real action starts now.