We were in Charlotte as part of our Southeast Lollipop trip in January 2020. Read about our first two Airstream trips to Charlotte in 2017 here and here, and our fourth in 2021 here.

Charlotte’s an easy overnight stop for us when taking the Airstream south or home to VA from the South. The campground is convenient to a cool part of town, and that cool part of town is full of breweries.

Campground

Elmore RV Park and Campground is well-located and has full hookups and a shady lane for walking your dog past the permanent trailers. It’s not fancy but we think it’s pretty great and have stayed there each time we’ve taken the Airstream to Charlotte. Note that we don’t think they have a public bathroom, if you’re trip planning without your own facilities.

Beer

On past visits, we’ve enjoyed beers at Birdsong, with its relaxing yard for drinking with your dog, and NoDa, for the good beer and fun bar scene. This trip, we wanted to branch out and experience different breweries.

Divine Barrel Brewing was recommended to us, but we were skeptical because they specialize in wild and sour beers, and while we like some wild and sour beers, we’re still developing the taste for them. Their regular old IPA was good but the stars of our tasting were the pastry Berliner weisses. Pastry beers! How did I not know these existed? Divine Barrel was pouring cherry and peach, and mixing them together for the best treat. The taproom, brick and wood and a bit industrial, is cool and laid back and next time we’ll bring Bugsy.

Fresh off my pastry beer high I found another new favorite beer at Salud Cerverceria: a sour IPA with lactose and tangerine. Salud has a variety of creative beers along with coffee drinks, pizzas, and salads.

Food

We decided to eat at home to keep Bugsy company, so we ordered sushi from Uber Eats. It was ok, not interesting enough to report on. However, our dessert from Reigning Doughnuts is blog-worthy! The donuts are made to order when you buy them at the window and so good!

Tuesday morning we said goodbye to Charlotte after a delicious and healthy breakfast at Snooze, located a short drive from the campground and really close to a house I lived in twenty years ago (how is that possible???). Yes, Snooze is a chain in (soon to be) seven states, but it’s reliably tasty and healthy, which is impossible to tell from the terrible photo, sorry. We first enjoyed Snooze when urban camping in the Airstream in Denver and didn’t hesitate when we saw one nearby. See you soon, Charlotte! Next stop, Virginia!