Last week, the Civil War blockade runner Condor, sunk in 1864 off the coast of Fort Fisher, was dedicated by NC Sec. of Natural & Cultural Resources Susi Hamilton as North Carolina's first Heritage Dive Site. She hopes this will be the first in a series of Heritage Dive Sites. Hamilton said the Condor is essentially an underwater museum that divers can visit and see what a blockade runner was like and what it might have been like to live and work on the vessel. Hamilton stated that this was a joint public/private project between several state agencies, as well as private partnerships with SeaGrant and The Friends of Fort Fisher. The 218-foot-long wreckage rests in 25 feet of water, about 700 yards off the beach in front of the NC Aquarium at Fort Fisher, making it an accessible dive. Buoys mark the site along with mooring lines for boats and kayaks. The site will be open for divers from June through November each year..

The snip of a ribbon earlier this month declared the destination that mountain bikers are hailing as "amazing" and "world-class" to be open for business, when Cherokee officially opened its new 10.5-mile Fire Mountain Trail System. A trail system is a big system, and it wasn't cheap. The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians spent $356,000 on the effort. But this is just the first phase of a much larger endeavor, as it hopes to expand and possibly add more trailheads. Though more than 2 million people pass through Cherokee each year on their way to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, most of them - especially those not interested in gambling - zip right through rather than pausing to spend some of their tourism dollars in town. Harrah's Cherokee Casino Resort is by far Cherokee's biggest draw for out-of-towners, but tribal leaders have long recognized the need for economic diversification. With a rich culture to draw from and mountain land all around, Cherokee could fill the ecotourism niche quite nicely.