[upbeat music] - Next on North Carolina Weekend, we're following the trail to some truly unique destinations across the state.

We'll meet rescued wild cats at Carolina Tiger Rescue, puzzle our way through Key to Escape in Statesville, and follow the Dale Trail in Kannapolis.

Coming up next.

- Funding for North Carolina Weekend is provided in part by Visit NC, dedicated to highlighting our state's natural scenic beauty, unique history, and diverse cultural attractions.

From the Blue Ridge and the Great Smoky Mountains across the Piedmont to 300 miles of Barrier Island beaches, you're invited to experience all the adventure and charm our state has to offer.

[upbeat music] ♪ - Welcome to North Carolina Weekend, everyone.

I'm Deborah Holt Noel, and this week, we are excited to take you to some truly unique destinations across our state.

Right now, we're here in the Outer Banks, filming an upcoming special episode celebrating the 50th anniversary of the North Carolina Aquariums.

I'm already learning so much, and I cannot wait to share it with you.

- Woo-hoo!

- But first, let's head to Pittsboro, where the Carolina Tiger Rescue is giving visitors a chance to learn about some truly remarkable animals and their work to provide them a safe place to call home.

I actually became one of those visitors, and the experience is beyond thrilling.

[upbeat music] - Carolina Tiger Rescue is an accredited sanctuary.

We are a nonprofit located in Pittsboro, North Carolina, with the focus of rescuing wild cats and some other wild animals.

We are rescuing animals that come from roadside zoos where they weren't getting proper care when they get shut down.

We also have animals that people had as private pets.

- So right now, we have 11 species that call Carolina Tiger Rescue their home.

We have carnivores.

We also have some frugivores.

We have some canids as well.

So with that, their care differs, but we can accommodate everybody here, and I feel like we do a pretty good job.

- Open.

- One of the biggest things here is how close you are able to get to those animals.

Sometimes, like people, the first time they are able to get that close to a tiger is, for some of them, a little scary, for some, pretty exciting.

- The Tiger Rescue offers public tours Friday, Saturday, and Sunday all year round, but reservations must be made in advance.

I got to go on a tour with Madison to learn all about the animals and their remarkable stories.

Now, this tiger, as I understand it, has a really special story tied to the Tiger King.

- Yeah, so this is Samar, and he came to us from Tiger King Park, which was a roadside zoo in Oklahoma that, unfortunately, a lot of people are familiar with.

And so they actually got shut down by the federal government, which is pretty rare that it gets to that level.

Essentially, he was evidence that couldn't sit in an evidence room, but once that court case settled and they determined that those animals were definitely not receiving proper care, he became ours, and we are his forever home, just like the rest of our animals, and he will stay here for the rest of his life.

- Samar, do you know your name?

- I know your story.

- This is incredible.

(gentle music) - Speaking of incredible, this year, Tiger Rescue completed their biggest rescue yet.

Five tigers flown all the way from Honduras.

- We are in front of Guru and Amir's enclosure.

So they are two of the five tigers that we rescued from a resort in Honduras.

- They are just beautiful.

- They are our two biggest males.

So they are both about 500 pounds.

Guru's our largest tiger.

- That's heavy!

- Yeah, they're big.

And they're pretty silly, goofy guys.

Amir is a little bit more laid back.

Guru is a little bit more social, so he's more likely to come up to the fence and he talks a lot.

(imitates tiger growling) All right, so we're gonna walk up to our other three Honduras tigers.

So we have our male, Sultan, and then our females, Ira and Debra.

- Debra!

(laughing) - Yep.

Right now, these three are living together, and then the other two males are separate.

We hopefully will reintroduce them someday, but the groups are divided up based on relationships.

And they are happy this way.

The girls definitely run this enclosure, and Sultan is happy to let them run it.

They were living on a resort in Honduras.

They were in a pretty small enclosure, and a new owner took over in 2022, and he very quickly recognized that he did not have the space or the means to provide proper care for these animals.

It was our first international big cat rescue, so we had to get cats out of one country into another.

So it was a long couple of days of travel for these animals.

By the time they got here, they were pretty exhausted, pretty stressed.

Fortunately, they're very social tigers, and they warmed up really quickly, even in our quarantine building, almost immediately.

Seeing them get new things and learning what they love, just getting new experiences that they didn't have before has been pretty fun to watch.

(upbeat music) - Enrichment has definitely been something that is great to see out there with animals, in particular with new animals that we've gotten.

(upbeat music) - Living in captivity gives them more time to feel bored, so they don't have to worry about hunting or patrolling territory.

So we give them enrichment, which is anything that's going to stimulate them mentally and physically.

(upbeat music) So the pools that we give all of our tigers are a form of enrichment.

You might see kegs in there.

Tigers don't drink, but they do like to bat around a keg.

We're an accredited sanctuary, so we have lots of rules that we have to follow, being a non-contact facility, a non-breeding facility, and we are always looking out for their welfare, and we are here for them first.

When visitors leave, I am always, especially with young kids, I always tell them their homework is to just take something that they learned today and tell someone who wasn't here today.

Our biggest lesson is when you know better, you do better.

- I think the biggest thing we kind of say is that this place kind of feels like a home to people.

The animals are definitely a plus, but the people are kind of what keep you here.

- Well, Madison, this is just spectacular.

I've had an amazing time.

Thank you so much for the personal tour.

- Of course, and thanks for coming out.

- Carolina Tiger Rescue is open to visitors by guided tour only, and tickets must be purchased in advance.

To learn more and reserve your spot, visit carolinatigerrescue.org.

In Statesville, a historic church has become the setting for a unique adventure.

At Key to Escape, immersive escape rooms combine storytelling with local history and plenty of clues.

Producer Teresa Litschke has the story.

(upbeat music) - Roger had never been to an escape room.

- I didn't know anything.

It just happened to be my wife and I's first date.

And when she said, "Let's do an escape room."

I said, "Well, what is an escape room?"

- In one hour, under just a little pressure, you learn everything you need to know about somebody.

If they don't like when you solve a puzzle, if that bothers their ego, if you don't win the room and they pout the rest of the night.

- [Teresa] That was not the case with Roger.

- We did not solve the room, but we had such a good time together.

And all we talked about the rest of the night was like how we could have like done something a little different.

And, but we just, we got, it's just a great evening.

- They eventually married.

Then Kim convinced him they had what it took to create their own escape room.

- My background in electrical engineering and her background at psych, she knows brains and those puzzles.

And you put that in a bucket and stir it around and out can come an escape room.

- First, they had to find the right venue and found it on East Sharp Street in downtown Statesville.

- It was a church built in 1898, built by Anna Thornton Washington King.

- It was originally built as a church, but the building was eventually deconsecrated.

More than half a century later, the owner saw it as the perfect home for escape rooms.

- Very nice.

Welcome in, welcome in.

- We only have three.

The building's not so big.

Three experiences, we call it.

- Awesome.

Excellent.

Welcome in.

Welcome to Key to Escape.

- Each experience is different.

Right now we have a twist of Oz.

- And just like Dorothy, guests must find their way home.

- The question I have to you is, how does someone get to Oz?

You gotta take a ride on a tornado.

- I will say our twist of Oz room is pretty spectacular.

(evil laugh) And we get people from around the world.

- Which speaks to the popularity of this room.

- We've had people from Germany, from all over the place that fly to town.

- Another experience is called Under Pressure and relates directly to Anna's husband, Philip Barton Key, and the culture of Statesville in the early part of the 20th century.

(upbeat music) - Statesville was a whiskey town before Kentucky was on the map, before Kentucky was Kentucky.

It was Statesville, North Carolina that was the whiskey capital.

And Philip Barton Key owned Key & Company Distilling.

It's called Under Pressure for a reason 'cause that's the emotion we bring to it.

- There's some things that you really have to not be together.

You know, somebody's over here reading something while you're doing something over here.

- You gotta turn off a still.

You go back to 1925 and turn off a still before it blows up.

The room puts you under increasing pressure until boom.

- Lending to that pressure are people behind the scenes.

- The game hosts are like the conductor of an orchestra.

Nothing happens until they conduct the orchestra.

We're available when people need help.

We're stuck, we don't know what to do.

And then the staff will provide a clue in some unique fashion that also matches the theme of the room.

But other than that, there's not a whole lot of contact that we have.

There's no live actor.

The room itself is the actor.

There may be characters, but there'll be characters that appear.

For instance, you'll see in Oz, they come out of a crystal ball.

(evil laughing) - The third experience, Echoes of Anna, is currently under construction and centers on the woman who commissioned the building.

- The room will be kind of reconciling Anna's past with activities that you do in the present.

- Interacting with stories, real or make believe, is what escape rooms are all about.

- Love escape rooms.

My whole family loves escape rooms.

- It is life-changing fun.

- Thank you.

- Okay.

- I tell people, if you've ever seen a movie, a National Treasure or an Indiana Jones movie, you come and you live it.

People can get intimidated.

We hear it a lot.

"I just don't think I'm smart enough.

I don't wanna do it 'cause I'm not smart enough."

Yeah, you are.

- The first one we ever did, we found out that literally everybody in the room could do something.

They all brought something new.

- Some people might have more propensity to understand a pattern.

Some people get a math reference.

- There are some specific puzzles in this building that if you were a plumber, you got a leg up.

- And all the sights, sounds, and gameplay created by the union of an engineer and a psychiatrist have helped elevate Key to Escape in the escape room world.

- Been to escape rooms all over the place.

This is top tier.

This is better than anything else we've done.

- It's so cool to know that, you know, out of the top 100 of escape rooms in the country, Statesville has one.

And it's like everybody else on the top 100 list is either in a major city or a tourist area, and we get to be here.

(upbeat music) - Key to Escape is located at 150 East Sharpe Street in Statesville.

They're open Thursday and Friday, 11 a.m.

till 11 p.m.

and Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m.

to 11.30 p.m.

Reservations are required, so give them a call at 704-253-4559.

Next, we're heading to Old Fort, where Wonderland Resort combines a unique stay with outdoor adventure.

Set against the Pisgah National Forest, guests can go glamping in the woods, hit the trails, or unwind with one of their nature-focused wellness experiences.

(birds chirping) - Wunderland is a place where people come and reconnect at its most simple level, whether it be through, like, into nature.

Intentional spaces designed to allow people to create more meaningful, deeper conversations, connect deeply with the ones they're with.

I'm Sean Verbrugge, the founder of Wunderland Resort.

We're here in Old Fort.

This is 35 acres.

It's got this beautiful open area, and then it's got all this really cool, diverse forest here.

We're bringing sustainability into this industry.

We have adventure all around us, outside of us.

Pisgah Forest is right there.

200,000 acres of untouched forest.

And then we've got plenty of experiential adventure stuff on the site.

(dramatic music) - We have the ability to escape in your own little way, and then also come out here and reconnect with yourself.

Really, our biggest three pillars are experience, connectivity, and sustainability.

And the wellness area, this community area, really brings a lot of that experience and connection.

So it allows you to escape into nature and reconnect with yourself.

(dramatic music) So we have the wellness area.

We have the fire pit and the nest, and those really allow for everyone to connect with one another.

And we have really cool games.

People have bonfires, and it really allows that playfulness.

We also really encourage people when they first get here to go to our soul trail, which is in the back of the property.

It's about a little less than a mile loop.

It's very private.

The wellness area that has a cold plunge, an eight-person sauna, a swimmable pond.

And then we have our nest that has the ability to bring people together.

We also do community events that is really cool that people get to experience when we've had yoga events, music events, all different types of things.

And then just the area we're surrounded by, we have the ability to point people in the direction of mountain biking, hiking, swimming hole streams.

Everything that Western North Carolina screams is really in our backyard.

(dramatic music) - My background is sustainability.

I thought long and hard about how we can bring sustainability into this industry.

Not only play all the parts of it, but maybe teach people what's possible.

So from the builds, we do like a clean, healthy build.

And then also just like the entire grounds, we only chopped down five trees.

We positioned all of our units, everything to work with nature.

(dramatic music) - I think there's just something really special about this valley and the combination of the really artistic buildings that we have.

And it's just, it's very Zen.

And then we have the Garden of the Gods, which I built.

We've got a lot of great areas, like the social spa area with the sauna and the fire pit over here.

And of course, swimming in the pond.

It's just, it feels like it's a wonderful place for circles of people just to get reconnected with each other.

(light guitar music) (water splashing) - There's a little bit of art and culture and like experiential design.

Our villas, but it's the Yogi and the Creator Villa.

So each of these villas has a, what we call a journey.

And you can think of a journey like, basically like a mini retreat.

You could come here and dial into the journey of that theme.

And so for instance, Yogi, the theme is, it introduces you to the sutras of yoga.

Which are designed to really just lift the distractions of life.

So allow you to be present.

And so you could go on that journey, reading some sacred texts to breath work or meditation or something like that.

And then for the creator, you have references to like the artist's way and some amazing books that allow people to get through blockages and inspire people.

And so it is very intentional to take people on a journey.

- Well, for me, it's a place to come when I need space from the world and to go more on to my internal self and reconnect with myself.

I've done personal retreats here and I really just enjoy the ability to be outside, reconnect with nature, but also take time to journal, to just sit and be.

And in our busy lives, it's really hard to be able to find time to do that consistently.

So I love this place.

It's very special in terms of having a lot of magic to come along with reconnecting to yourself.

- The other day I was actually, I woke up in the morning and I was actually walking along the pond and I noticed a little box turtle floating on the top of the water, eating the grass that was along the edge.

But then, you just take another walk in various different places at Wunderland and you can connect better to nature.

But it's also convenient to Old Fort.

And Old Fort, there's a lot of really cool places to go.

And it seems that people are coming from up the mountain in Black Mountain and Asheville into Old Fort.

So just being close to everything, plus being able to come back here and just decompress, I think that's what makes it kind of special.

- Mostly I want people to leave here and feel inspired and take something home with them that makes whatever they do more exciting, more, they're more passionate about it.

They figure out new nuances to add to their life.

You feel different when you're done.

- Wunderland Resort is located at 448 Curtis Creek Road in Old Fort.

The resort offers forest villas, glamping pods, and tent and vehicle campsites, along with a variety of outdoor and wellness experiences.

Reservations can be made online or you can call 828-419-4632 for more information.

In Kannapolis, you can follow a trail dedicated to one of the biggest names in NASCAR history.

The Dale Trail connects locations throughout the hometown of the legendary Dale Earnhardt, giving racing fans a closer look into his life and legacy.

Rob Holliday takes us on the trail.

[music] - [Announcer] Back to the line, comes Earnhardt to win it.

- [Rob] The number three black and silver Chevrolet helped give Dale Earnhardt his fame.

It's this blue and yellow number two Oldsmobile that gave him his foundation.

- Most fans are shocked when they see it because it was a pretty rare car.

It was only around for about two years.

That paint scheme's only around for about two years.

- But they were a formative two years, highlighted by Earnhardt's 1980 NASCAR championship, first of seven he would win over his career.

The Oldsmobile Cutlass and a similar Chevy Monte Carlo are both housed at the Curb Motorsports Museum in Earnhardt's hometown of Kannapolis.

It's one of several Cabarrus County locations celebrating the NASCAR legend who died in 2001.

- As the hometown of Dale Earnhardt, Kannapolis really is an essential experience for any race fan.

We actually see fans year round who are motorsports fans, Earnhardt fans, coming to seek out the locations where they can find that history.

- History and connections that are found in dozens of places in this region, so we'll narrow it down to a few of the most popular.

The Curb Museum is high on the list.

- In this building, we have 42 cars in our collection, and about 39 of them are race cars, and they cover eight decades of racing.

- Joining Earnhardt's race cars in the museum is the championship trophy he used those cars to win.

(crowd cheering) Dale Earnhardt was a towering figure in motorsports, and in the center of his hometown of Kannapolis stands a towering tribute.

- This is home of the Dale Earnhardt Tribute Site.

It's kind of a place to come and reflect and remember.

He's nine feet tall, about 900 pounds.

We did the statue as Dale, the person that you would see in Kannapolis with wearing his Wrangler jeans and cowboy boots and his gargoyles in his pocket.

I think it means a lot to his fans.

They're here all the time, but it's most heavy during race weeks in May and October.

- Dale was my hero as a kid, still is my hero all these years later.

Things he represented and meant to our community and all the race fans out there.

- It brought me to tears.

It's just, ah, the guy meant so much to so many people, and I just love watching him race every week, and he was the man.

- Dale Earnhardt Tribute Plaza is full of symbolism, from the stairs to the way the benches are grouped, and even from directly overhead.

- There's seven steps that lead down into the tribute site, which is one step for each one of his championships.

The benches around the outside of the walk are all done in sets of three.

The outer sidewalk is designed in an oval, which simulates the racetrack.

- Dale Earnhardt Tribute Plaza is in a central spot in Kannapolis, and there are several locations related to the NASCAR champion just steps away.

You can get an Earnhardt Outdoors coffee at Local Patriot Roasting, or an Earnhardt Outdoors ale at Old Armor Beer.

Both are produced by the company owned by Earnhardt's oldest son, Kerry.

- Slot car track downtown.

Dale won his very first trophy slot car racing.

Cheapest form of motorsports, I'll add.

- Kannapolis also has a minor league baseball team.

Now called the Cannonballers, they were once known as the Intimidators, rooted in Earnhardt's nickname.

NASCAR champion was also a part owner of the team.

Just outside of Kannapolis in Concord is one of NASCAR's best known tracks, the scene of several big moments in Earnhardt's career.

- At Charlotte Motor Speedway, you can experience a tour year round.

And of course, that legendary venue is home to so many amazing moments that happened on the track, the racing action that happened there with Dale Earnhardt and his competitors through the years.

- Including eight trips to Victory Lane and the Pass in the Grass during the 1987 All-Star Race.

Heading back into Kannapolis from Concord can include a trip on Dale Earnhardt Boulevard, fittingly renamed North Carolina Highway 3, and a drive through a section of Kannapolis that's very appropriately named.

- Car Town is where Dale grew up.

His family's house that he was raised in is still there on the corner of Cochin and Sedan Street.

But all the streets in that area are named after cars.

Ford, Chevy, Plymouth, DeSoto, Chrysler.

- 25 years after Earnhardt's death, his fans and those who followed his career remain as engaged as ever and grateful to have Tribute Plaza as a place to share their memories.

- Almost feels like you can feel his spirit here.

I just feel like this is Dale's stomping grounds.

It just, you feel that way.

So it brings you closer to it, to the man and just what he meant to this town and to the world, actually.

(gentle music) - To learn more about the Dale Earnhardt locations and more motorsports tours, visit explorecabarrus.com.

Well, that's it for tonight's show.

We've had a fantastic time showing you unique destinations across the state.

And if you've missed anything in tonight's show, remember, you can always watch us again online at pbsnc.org, and you can find all of our stories on our YouTube channel.

Have a great North Carolina weekend, everyone.

(upbeat music) ♪ - Funding for North Carolina Weekend is provided in part by Visit NC, dedicated to highlighting our state's natural scenic beauty, unique history, and diverse cultural attractions.

From the Blue Ridge and the Great Smoky Mountains across the Piedmont to 300 miles of Barrier Island beaches, you're invited to experience all the adventure and charm our state has to offer.

(upbeat music)