[Mooresville, NC/Danville, VA, Mar 29-30, 2025]
It was time for my annual conference again, which was about to take place in Atlanta, GA in the beginning of April. I normally add a couple of vacation days after the conference to sightsee. This time, I also added a full week beforehand to see some friends who live in the Charlotte, NC area.
I flew into Charlotte early on Friday morning and worked from my friend’s house in Mooresville, NC. Mooresville is a northern suburb of Charlotte but still feels quite rural even though it’s only 30 minutes from downtown. The area is home to Lake Norman, the largest manmade lake in North Carolina. A state park covers 17 miles of its northern shoreline, and it made for a perfect place for a walk once we finished work on Friday. We did the south end of the Lake Norman Shoreline Trail, which took us about 90 minutes. It was a beautiful sunny day but the area was charred from a prescribed burn that had just taken place. We could smell and see smoke, and the trail was not nearly as green as I had expected.
On Saturday, we left early to drive to Danville, VA, where we had both gone to college at Averett University. I hadn’t been back to Danville since 2011. I looked forward to seeing some old friends and was also curious how the town had changed since my last visit.
Our first order of business upon arrival was a walk around campus. Main Hall looked like it always had. I lived in that dorm all 4 years, and seeing it again brought a wave of emotions and memories.
The rest of the campus looked as I remembered, although it was eerily quiet. It was about 11 am on a Saturday, but we didn’t see a single soul! Was it Spring break, I wondered? We finally ran into a staff member who assured us it was not. Maybe it had to do with the fact that the university had recently run into some financial trouble. I was sad to learn that the university had lost 75% of its endowment due to some alleged financial mismanagement. The situation is quite dire and I hope my alma mater recovers.
For lunch, we went to Crema & Vine, a popular cafe that opened in 2017. The 1009 Main Street location was previously an Exxon gas and service station that closed in 2010. Crema & Vine is located along Danville’s Millionaire’s Row in the Old West End. Wealthy tobacconists and textile entrepreneurs lived here in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Beside Crema and Vine is the Sutherlin Mansion. For a week in April 1865, it housed the Confederate government, which was fleeing Richmond after it was burned by Union troops. The Sutherlin Mansion is now the Danville Museum of Fine Arts & History. On Saturday afternoons, two different groups of protesters have been gathering in front of the museum. One group has been protesting the removal of the confederate flag in front of the museum, while another group shows up to celebrate diversity. As we left Crema & Vine, we saw both groups in front of the museum.
Next, we drove through Danville’s Tobacco Warehouse district, which has been slowly gentrifying since my last visit. Many of the former tobacco warehouses have been converted to condos, and the area is now home to many businesses and restaurants.
We spent the rest of our day hanging out with friends. In the evening, we headed to Dry Fork, VA, where we spent the night at the home of another friend. We enjoyed a sunset walk on the rural roads before turning in for the night.
We drove back to Mooresville on Sunday. For dinner, we decided to check out the Lake Norman community of Cornelius, NC. I had been spending lots of time in Cornelius, OR, so it was only fitting to visit its east coast counterpart. Macs Speed Shop BBQ did not disappoint – North Carolina is famous for its BBQ for a reason!
