The annual “Stecoah Arts & Crafts Drive-About Tour” will be from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Nov. 29-30 at featured studios in Bryson City, Stecoah and Robbinsville. 

As the temperature drops in Western North Carolina, the fun only heats up. The holiday season here is filled with events and activities aimed to celebrate the best way we know how — with friends, family and visitors alike. 

The annual Stecoah Harvest Festival will return Oct. 18-19 to the Stecoah Valley Cultural Arts Center in Robbinsville. 

Rising Americana/old-time ensemble The New Quintet will perform at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 21, at the Stecoah Valley Center in Robbinsville. 

As part of the annual “An Appalachian Evening” concert series, bluegrass icon Dale Ann Bradley will hit the stage at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, June 29, at the Stecoah Valley Center in Robbinsville. 

The annual “Stecoah Arts & Crafts Drive-About Tour” will be from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. June 28-29 at featured studios in Bryson City, Stecoah and Robbinsville. 

Celebrating a quarter-century this coming summer, the “An Appalachian Evening” live music series at the Stecoah Valley Cultural Arts Center in Robbinsville brings in some of the biggest names in bluegrass, old-time, mountain and Americana music.  

While most Americans are looking forward to receiving the $1,400 payments included in President Joe Biden’s $1.88 trillion American Rescue Plan (ARP) passed by Congress on March 6, counties and towns across the country are also eagerly awaiting a stimulus package of their own.

It was nighttime in the White Mountains, and Steve Claxton was pretty sure he wouldn’t make it till morning. Rain was falling, and winds were ripping through his campsite at 90 miles per hour, sharpening the 40-degree temperatures like a knife. He’d known that camping above treeline was a bad idea, but an incoming storm had forced him to do it — now he was afraid it was the last thing he would ever do. 

“At Mount Washington there’s a huge wall of people who died in the White Mountains, most of them in July and August and most of them from hypothermia,” Claxton said. “I really thought they were going to have to add my name to that.”

When the holidays wind down and schools go back in session, kids in some Western North Carolina classrooms will have more to look forward to than just books and lessons. For some, the first day back at school will also be a reunion with the tank full of trout sitting in their classroom. 

“It’s just pretty cool to have a tank of fish to watch grow over the course of the year,” said Ben Davis, a science teacher at Robbinsville High School who’s in his fourth year participating in Trout Unlimited’s Trout in the Classroom program.