Vacation to Central South Carolina in near future. Ideas?

[hoosierdude]

Taking a short week vacation, visiting family in the state capital of South Carolina. We want to see some sites along the way travelling from Indy to Columbia. Would rather drive larger state highways instead of the Interstate for most of the trip, do you guys/gals have any must see places?

From Mom and Pop restaurants, diners, dives, famous locations, off the beaten path things, to Nascar and sports interests we would love to see while we travel there and back...

Just my wife and I will be taking the trip, so if you all have some ideas, or experiences (both good and bad), please feel free to chime in! :)

Appreciate it!

[Butter]

I travel from Dayton to Greenville, SC fairly regularly, but usually take the highway and try to get there as quickly as possible.

Gatlinburg is not too far off the beaten path, if that sort of thing is your bag. Other than that, I'm no help.

[albionmoonlight]

Lexington, NC is generally considered to have the best BBQ in the state of North Carolina: http://hkentcraig.com/BBQ11.html

Also, I have never been, but the Biltmore in Asheville is supposed to be pretty cool if you like that kind of thing: http://www.biltmore.com/

And, if you happen to be in or around Asheville around breakfast time, then you have got to try the Early Girl Eatery. Yum yum yum. http://www.earlygirleatery.com/

I'll try to think of some more later. Oh, you might also want to try registering here and asking these guys about food options. I have never been let down and have in fact found a couple of great "off the beaten path" places while on road trips. http://forums.egullet.org/

[Flasch186]

take Burt Reynolds with you.

[Easy Mac]

suicide

[General Mike]

Also, I have never been, but the Biltmore in Asheville is supposed to be pretty cool if you like that kind of thing: http://www.biltmore.com/


I've been there before when visiting family in South Carolina. It's pretty interesting, but might not be for everyone.

[albionmoonlight]

You might also want to check this out: http://www.blueridgeparkway.org/

There are lots of little 1/2 hour hikes and meadows and whatnot along the Parkway, as well as some longer hikes, etc. I don't know where they all are, though. If you are interested, you might want to do some research and find some. I'm sure googling "Blue Ridge Parkway hikes" will be fruitful. Or, even if you don't want to get out of the car, it is a very pretty drive with tons and tons of senic overlooks.

[albionmoonlight]

dola--

And I am just assuming based on your screenname that you are a college basketball fan. If so, you might be interested to know that Cameron Indoor Stadium on Duke's campus tends to be open to the public. Basically, if they have nothing going on in there, then the public can go in and look around, shoot baskets, whatever. The problem with this is, you won't know until you get there whether it is open or not, and parking on Duke's campus is like parking on any college campus--very hard.

If you find yourself near Duke (or in Durham in general), then you should be sure to take the kids to the Durham location of locopops: http://www.locopops.org/ Fun, funky popsicles for the whole family.