We visited Boone in September 2023, as part of our Five Days in the Mountains trip. Read about our previous visits in Spring 2021 and Summer 2021, and technically we were there in Spring 2016 too.

We chose to spend night #2 of our whirlwind mountains trip in Boone. From Fayetteville, it’s about a 3:15 drive due south. Boone has a lot to offer: a mountainous setting, a college town vibe, a sweet downtown, and lots of beer!

Campground

Once again, we stayed just outside Boone proper at Flintlock Campground, in a lovely creekside campsite. The sites are pretty tightly packed together, but we appreciate the backdrop of water and trees, and the shade from those trees on a hot day. Flintlock is a peaceful park, other than the obnoxious grinding of semi brakes from the highway up the hill.

Eating and drinking

Breweries

Appalachian Mountain Brewing is our current favorite brewery in Boone. Only about an eight-minute drive from the campground, it has an inviting beer garden with an interesting mix of college kids and grownups and plenty of dogs. We both found beers we liked (hazy IPA for J, sour for me) and the smells from the pizza truck were heavenly. Maybe next time we’ll try the pizza!

Booneshine was previously our favorite brewery in Boone, partially because we loved their healthy grain bowl. This time when we went for dinner, we felt the food and beers were just ok and not compelling enough to rank Booneshine so high on our priority list for next visit.

We hadn’t been back to Lost Province Brewing since our first visit in 2016, so we popped in for a half-pour when bopping around downtown. I asked the beertender to recommend the most sour-tasting sour from the few on tap and I really enjoyed his choice: a sour brewed with skittles! Yum!

Non-breweries

J needed fuel for a big meeting, and I needed fuel to take Bugsy exploring, so we hit Kovu’s Coffee for lattes. It’s a friendly place with yummy drinks and couple tables out front along a noisy road.

We can’t visit Boone or Blowing Rock without hitting Blue Deer for a custom ice cream sandwich! Pro tip: if you can’t decide on a cookie flavor, you can get one flavor for the top cookie and a different flavor for the bottom cookie! Oh myyyy so delicious.

Exploring

We just had time for a bit of Boone exploration. Walking along King Street is always enjoyable; there are some interesting shops and plenty of eating and drinking establishments. For us, that meant Lost Province and Blue Deer.

While J worked (he gave a thumbs-up to the coworking space he rented for his meeting), Bugsy and I walked. Nearby, accessible from Clawson-Burnley Park, is an absolute gem: the Boone Greenway. The core of the Greenway is a part-paved, part-gravel three-mile trail along the South Fork of the New River, tucked away in the woods but still in town. The connected Kennedy Trails system, home of the App State cross-country teams, adds four more miles of trails to the mix.

Bugsy and I absolutely loved our morning walk on the Greenway and Kennedy Trails and can’t wait to take J to see them. What an asset to the community, and based on all the walkers, runners, dogs, bird watchers, nature lovers, commuters, and cyclists we shared the path with, it’s clearly appreciated.

To do

Scrolling around a map of Boone, I noticed Vicious Biscuits, a small regional chain serving biscuit sandwiches. You know me and biscuits… I guess I should check it out!

After enjoying our time in Boone, we skipped up the hill to Blowing Rock for night #3 to do some hiking!