Renee Wright

wwnorton.com — The complete guide to North Carolina's stunning coast—some of the most beautiful in North America—is better than ever in this revised, updated, and beautifully redesigned edition. Detailed reviews of lodging, dining, and recreation, plus outfitters, campsites, trails, and point of historic and cultural interest make this book the indispensable companion to the incomparable Outer Banks region. Whether it's wild Banker ponies, historic Kitty Hawk, or hidden beaches that visitors would otherwise never find, the gems of the Outer Banks are yours to discover.

WRAL TechWire — Cucalorus 25 kicks off in downtown Wilmington with parties, dance and "cucktails" at Thalian Hall and the Brooklyn Arts Center. And our writers are there - check out the first in a series of stories coming the rest of this week.

MRV: The Buzz — The Buzz visits Fort Mill, South Carolina and the home of the world's hottest pepper, the PuckerButt Pepper Company.

MRV: The Buzz — The Buzz connects with Wes Smith, founder and managing director of Caravan and Camping Hire in Australia, now the country's number one peer-to-peer caravan, camper and RV hiring community, with over 300 privately owned vehicles for hire. For many people, making an epic road trip around the “Land Down Under” occupies a prominent spot on their bucket list. RVers, in particular, look at maps of Australia’s miles and miles of terrain, and begin to dream of hiring/renting a campervan or trailer to explore it all.

MRV: The Buzz — The Buzz meets with inventor of the Bear Bowl, Cory Santiago, to speak about his creative solution to a common problem among RVers - utilizing space. The Bear Bowl is a cooking pot that folds flat and is small enough to fit in a pocket.

MRV: The Buzz — RVers will be heading north this summer on a journey that tops many bucket lists, following the Alaska Highway, formerly called the Alcan, through Canada to Alaska. This year marks the 75th anniversary of the opening of the road, the only land route from the “Lower 48” to our 49th state. Lots of celebrations are planned all along the more than 1,300-mile route from Milepost One in Dawson City, British Columbia, to Fairbanks, Alaska.

WRAL TechWire — UPDATED: WILMINGTON-AI experts from across the state gathered at the Cucalorus Connect conference in Wilmington Nov. 8-9. Aimed at exploring the interface between technology and creativity, the conference was divided into several tracks, including HealthTech, FinTech addressing the future of banking, Community Brew showcasing trends in social entrepreneurship, the Startup track featuring futurist Charlie Fink, and GigTech with an emphasis on AI and the sharing economy.

MRV: The Buzz — For an unassuming building in the southwestern town of Mesa, the Arizona Museum of Natural History (AzMNH) packs a lot of punch. Inside, exhibits tell stories that stretch back all the way to the formation of the earth and forward into the future, with stops along the way for dinosaurs, giant Ice Age mammals and a unique and successful prehistoric Native American civilization.

MRV: The Buzz — Johnny Cash Grew Up In A Home That Was Part Of A New Deal Government-Sponsored Colony Of Farmers In Arkansas And Is Now The Johnny Cash Boyhood Home. Back in the late 1940s, kids attending the local high school in Dyess, Arkansas didn’t like to see one name on the roster for talent night, the boy known to everyone as J.R. “They never wanted him to compete, because he would always win,” Larry Sims, former mayor of the town of Dyess, said. “Even back then, he could always sing.”

MRV: The Buzz — The Rotation of The Traveling House Is Its Most Interesting & Unique Feature, Says Clément, A French Energy Engineer Who Helped Create sCarabane.

WRAL TechWire — WILMINGTON - One of the main startups presenting at last week's Wilmington's Cucalorus Connect conference, opiAID, wants to apply the power of data science and cloud computing to one of today's most pressing problems - the opioid epidemic. "It's the gorilla in the room," David Reeser, one of the startup's founders, says.

MRV: The Buzz — Crater Of Diamonds State Park In Arkansas Is The Only Diamond Mine In The World Where Individuals Can Keep What They Find.

MRV: The Buzz — Elsie Mills Boarded The HV Britannic In Liverpool in 1945 Married To A Canadian Soldier & One Of The Millions Of Immigrants Who Would Step Ashore At This Historic Site. From 1928 to 1971, Pier 21 welcomed more than one million immigrants to Canada from around the world. It was designated as a National Historic Site of Canada in 1997, as the last surviving immigration seaport in the country. In 1999, the Pier 21 Society opened an exhibit in the pier building honoring the many immigrants who began their lives in Canada there. The exhibit expanded into the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 in 2011.

MRV: The Buzz — Domaine Summum Is A Rustic Lodge Close To Quebec's Mt-Tremblant Ski Area In Canada, Where Owners Can Get Away With Their Dogs And Be In Nature. At this rustic lodge, dinner includes more than a bottle of wine and a gourmet meal. You also get cuddles from the resident Bernese Mountain Dogs. And your own pooch is invited as well.

MRV: The Buzz — Dr. Frank Albo Shares His Discoveries & Theories Of The Esoteric Architectural Design Of The Manitoba Legislative Building In Winnipeg

MRV: The Buzz — Zach Sheldon Is An Outdoor Photographer Who Lives In Valdez That Offers Photography Tours To Customers Wanting To Experience The Great Alaskan Wilderness. Valdez has something picture-worthy all year, Zach says: “The most popular time to visit is July and August when there’s more activity and action. The days are longer, bears are out feeding on the salmon runs, and the wild flowers are in bloom. May is the best month for whale-watching. You can go down to the ferry landing and watch the humpbacks breach right off shore. I saw one breaching non-stop for 2-and-a-half hours once.”

MRV: The Buzz — Every Christmas Sarah Stokey gets cards from all over the world. They show kids making snow angels…families building snowmen. Sarah knows exactly where and when the pictures were taken because she was there. It was during summer high up on Alaska’s Godwin Glacier. Sarah, as a partner in Seward Helicopters and Turning Heads Dog Sled Tours on the Kenai Peninsula, just south of Anchorage, knows the feeling. “A lot of people who take our tours have never seen snow before,” she explains. “For many kids, this is their first experience in snow. So we always try to allow time up on the glacier for playing and taking pictures.”

MRV: The Buzz — World War II Base Fort Wainwright Is Largely Overlooked By Visitors But It Preserves A Unique History Involving The Fairbanks Lend-Lease Agreement

MRV: The Buzz — Just as in the U.S., national parks in the United Kingdom are among the most popular camping destinations for visitors and locals alike. The fifteen parks spread across England, Wales and Scotland include some of the most stunning scenery on the British Isles, where you’ll find moors, mountains, lakes, castles, ancient stone circles, and even whisky distilleries. But few would dispute that the most amazing of all is also the largest: Cairngorms National Park in Scotland.

MRV: The Buzz — Stephens Cruises, Operated By the Stephens Family, Takes Its Guests On Full-Day Excursions To Two Of Alaska's Largest And Most Spectacular Glaciers.

MRV: The Buzz — Dani Gregory & Jeff Fox Are Avid Mountain Bikers In Southwest Colorado In Support Of Maintaining The Trails Of Mesa Verde. They discuss their favorite trails in the area.

MRV: The Buzz — Living Structures And Farming Techniques Of Ancient American Indian Tribes Are Examined At This Archaeological Center in Cortez, Colorado. For thousands of years, the American Indian tribes of the Southwest managed to live in conditions of drought that many people today would consider impossible. “Not only were they able to survive, they became a big success in this harsh environment,” Paul Ermigiotti, an educator at Crow Canyon, tells The Buzz. “These people have been growing things here since about 1,000 B.C. We’re trying to find out how they lived the way they did, and what made them so successful.”

MRV: The Buzz — The Pequot Museum In Connecticut Tells The Story Of The Pequot Tribe, Displaying Their Culture, History, And Reservation Lands. At 308,000 square feet, the Mashantucket Pequot Museum is the largest Native American museum in the world, larger even than the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC. Exhibits begin with the Ice Age as you go inside a glacier, and a display of megafauna, including a mastodon, dire wolves and giant beavers. People enter the picture with a dramatic diorama of an elk hunt 11,000 years ago. The next gallery recreates a Pequot Village as it would have been in 1550, on the eve of European contact, when both hunting and foraging in the forest and agriculture, the so-called Three Sisters - squash, corn and beans - became important to the people.

MRV: The Buzz — Merrill Jensen is that rare person that literally found a job with his name on it. “I’d always dreamed of living in Alaska, ever since I visited my uncle in Fairbanks when I was a kid,” Jensen says. The job he found literally had his name on it: the Jensen-Olson Arboretum. “I found out it was only posted the day before,” Merrill says. “I call it Plant Karma.”