Where to stay in North Carolina

North Carolina is too big to see from one hotel. The mountains, the Piedmont and the coast are each a long drive from one another, and the best way to see the state is to move between two or three bases, spending a few nights in each. The areas below are the ones this site's landmarks cluster around, and the road trips use them as overnight stops.

Whatever you choose, book early for October in the mountains, the Parkway's busiest month, and for summer on the coast, the busy season on the islands. Hurricane Helene damaged many businesses in the mountains in 2024, so confirm directly with any place you book there.

Asheville is the obvious base for the mountains. It has the most hotels, inns and restaurants in western North Carolina, from the Art Deco downtown to the grand Grove Park Inn of the Arts and Crafts movement, and the Blue Ridge Parkway runs past the city, with the Folk Art Center and the Parkway's main visitor center nearby. Biltmore is at its southern edge, and Mount Mitchell, Craggy Gardens and Chimney Rock are day trips.

Helene struck the city hard, and parts of it, especially along the rivers, are still recovering; the hotels and restaurants that reopened depend on visitors, and staying in the city is one way to help.

For the northern Parkway, stay in the High Country around Blowing Rock and Boone. Blowing Rock sits right on the crest of the Blue Ridge and is busiest in the fall leaf season, and Boone, the largest town of the High Country and home of Appalachian State University, has an outdoor drama, Horn in the West, every summer since 1952. From here Grandfather Mountain, the Linn Cove Viaduct and Linville Falls are close.

For the Great Smoky Mountains, the natural base is Cherokee, the capital of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, at a main entrance to the park and at the southern end of the Parkway. It has campgrounds, motels and hotels, and it is a living community with its own institutions: the Museum of the Cherokee People, founded in 1948 by the Eastern Band, the Oconaluftee Indian Village, a living-history museum, and the outdoor drama Unto These Hills. Many street signs are written in both the Cherokee syllabary and English.

South of Asheville, Brevard lies at the entrance to Pisgah National Forest and makes a quieter base for waterfalls and the Forest Heritage Scenic Byway; it is known for its moderate climate and for its white squirrels. Hendersonville, 22 miles south of Asheville on I-26, grew as a summer retreat for low-country planters in the 1800s and is handy for Chimney Rock and Hickory Nut Gorge.

In the Piedmont, Winston-Salem is a good halfway stop between the mountains and the Triangle, with Old Salem, Reynolda House and Pilot Mountain close by. In the Research Triangle, Raleigh has the state museums and the most hotels, Durham has the lively downtown of the American Tobacco Campus and Duke, and Chapel Hill, the university town founded in 1793 around Franklin Street, is the quietest of the three.

The Triangle makes a good base for day trips as well: Duke Chapel and the gardens, the Museum of Art and its park, and, with an early start, Old Salem to the west along I-40.

Charlotte, the largest city, is mostly a place to start or end a trip, near its busy airport, with a night in Uptown for the museums and the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

On the coast, the northern Outer Banks have the most beds on the islands: rental houses, motels and hotels along the beach in Nags Head, Kill Devil Hills and Kitty Hawk, where the population rises greatly in summer. From here the Wright Brothers memorial, Jockey's Ridge and the start of the Cape Hatteras seashore are all close.

Across the sound, Manteo, the county seat on Roanoke Island, is a small town handy for Fort Raleigh and The Lost Colony, and a little away from the beach crowds.

Many of the best places to stay in the mountains are in the parks themselves. The Blue Ridge Parkway has campgrounds at Doughton Park, which also has a lodge, at Julian Price Memorial Park beside Price Lake, at Linville Falls and at Crabtree Meadows, and the Pisgah Inn, a Park Service concession at Mount Pisgah, sits right on the Parkway. Cherokee and the Oconaluftee valley have campgrounds at the edge of the Smokies.

In the Piedmont, Pilot Mountain State Park has a family campground of 49 sites among hickory and oak, and Hanging Rock State Park has 73 campsites and ten vacation cabins. On the coast, camping is allowed on the beach at Portsmouth, though not in the village, and Jockey's Ridge is a day-use park with no campground. Check each park's own site for its season and reservations before you go.

For the lighthouses and the empty beaches, stay on Hatteras Island in one of the villages along NC 12, Rodanthe, Avon, Buxton or Hatteras, or go on by ferry to Ocracoke, whose village of hotels, campgrounds and weekly rentals fills in the season and shrinks in winter. These are remote places; book early and keep hurricane season in mind.

Farther south, Beaufort and Morehead City are the bases for Cape Lookout, the wild horses and Fort Macon, and Wilmington, with its historic downtown and riverwalk, is the base for the southern beaches, from Wrightsville Beach, just east of the city, to Carolina Beach and Kure Beach on Pleasure Island. New Bern, with its historic districts and bed and breakfasts, is a quieter base for the central coast.

Wrightsville Beach, the closest to Wilmington, is a beach island of more than four miles with an inner island, Harbor Island, and a long history as the city's resort: its yacht club, founded in 1853, is one of the oldest in the country, and a railroad began carrying passengers from downtown to the beach in 1887. Carolina Beach and Kure Beach share Pleasure Island farther south.