While the focus of this blog post is day trips from Charlotte, the destinations that made my list below are spots I selected that I think would greatly appeal to families. They’re spots we’ve visited with our boys that we’ve loved and many of them are places we’ve returned to time and time again throughout the years.
Also, to make my list below, the locations had to be within a two hour drive of the Charlotte area, though most are closer to a 60-minute (or less) drive. With three kids in the mix, we know our boys aren’t up for a ton of time in the car for a single day trip so I capped the drive time below at two hours since that’s more or less the criteria Ryan and I have in our heads when it comes to an out-and-back trip we’ll do with our kids in a single day. I hope something below pops out at you the next time you’re looking for something fun to do with your family!
Important note: Availability to visit some of the below destinations may be impacted by the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene. I did not want to remove these special places from this list as they’re wonderful places to visit, but please be mindful of closures and follow travel advisories from Western North Carolina.
For the sake of organization, I’m going to share our favorite day trips categorized by year-round places we love to visit anytime and seasonal day trips so you can skip ahead to day trips that might appeal to you based on the season we’re currently in and what you’re hoping to do!
Year-Round:
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North Carolina Zoo (Asheboro, NC)
Distance from Charlotte: 1 hour, 25 minutes / Distance from Lake Norman Area: 1 hour, 35 minutes
Read about our family’s experience here: North Carolina Zoo
The North Carolina Zoo is our family’s favorite local zoo and by square footage, it’s the largest zoo in the United States! You’ll walk a lot (about 5 miles) and you’ll also see a lot when you visit this zoo. It’s clean and beautifully landscaped with large habitats for the animals, some play areas for young kids and lots of interesting animals to see. Our kids love the Africa section of the zoo the most!
Also, for any local friends, I want to take a second to share what I think is the ultimate “zoo hack” Ryan and I discovered related to the North Carolina Zoo after many, many visits. In the past we’ve always parked at the the Africa entrance as it’s always a lot less crowded but the layout of the zoo means we’re either walking all the way across the park back to our car at the end of our visit or waiting in a long line for the tram. We now park in North America but use the “Connector Trail” to walk a mile to the Africa entrance to buy our tickets and enter the park. This works SO well since a quick one-mile walk isn’t daunting at the beginning of a zoo visit and then when you’re done at the zoo, you can walk right out to your car after concluding your time in the North American portion of the zoo. I cannot recommend this enough! It made the whole trip seamless from a logistical standpoint.
Distance from Charlotte: 50 minutes / Distance from Lake Norman Area: 60 minutes
Read about our family’s experiences here: Dan Nicholas Park + Camping at Dan Nicholas Park + Fall Camping at Dan Nicholas Park
Dan Nicholas Park is such a gem! Prices at Dan Nicholas Park are like a walk back in time and everything from tickets to ride the train and carousel to tickets to Rowan Wild, the small nature facility located within the park, are only $.50-$2.00. The gem mining at Dan Nicholas Park is also a major highlight for our boys (this is not $1 — haha!) and they love sifting through lots of sand to find big gems, a large shark tooth and other surprises. We chose Dan Nicholas Park as the spot for our first family camping trip for a myriad of reasons and cannot recommend it enough to those who love to camp with young kids. Our boys had the best time exploring and walking around the lake, fishing, looking for turtles, freaking out over all the little ducklings and catching and releasing frogs and toads.
Distance from Charlotte: 1 hour, 35 minutes / Distance from Lake Norman Area: 2 hours
Read about our family’s experience here: Riverbanks Zoo
The Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia, South Carolina is another wonderful zoo within driving distance of Charlotte. It’s an especially fun one to visit in the summer months, as the Waterfall Junction area of the zoo has a big splashpad area complete with a tree house, dinosaur dig zone and open field ideal for free play for the kids. As you’d expect, the zoo has a lot of animal exhibits but we especially love the new aquarium and reptile conservation center. It’s quite large and home to lots of cool reptiles, amphibians, fishes, invertebrates and birds which our boys loved!
Distance from Charlotte: 65 minutes / Distance from Lake Norman Area: 60 minutes
Chase visited the Catawba Science Center on a field trip last year and came back raving about it, so I figured the younger boys would like it as well and we all had a blast when we visited the science museum over the summer. It has a lot of hands-on exhibits, perfect for curious children, as well as animal habitats, a freshwater aquarium and a planetarium. There’s a very small outdoor play area but most of the science center fun is located indoors, making it a perfect day trip for a cold or rainy day.
Distance from Charlotte: 45 minutes / Distance from Lake Norman area: 50 minutes
Read our family’s experience: A Day Out with Thomas
For anyone with toddlers, I highly recommend planning a trip to the North Carolina Transportation Museum around their annual A Day Out with Thomas weekend event. (Dates change every year but are shared well in advance, so keep an eye out!) The event was a huge hit with our toddler-aged boys and offers a real train ride, games, activities, food and family fun. The whole event definitely exceeded our expectations and we easily spent more than three hours watching our boys play with train toys, run through a hay maze, pop giant-sized bubbles, ride mini Thomas the Trains and play blow-up basketball, baseball, football and soccer.
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Patterson Farms (Mt. Ulla, NC)
Distance from Charlotte: 50 minutes / Distance from Lake Norman area: 40 minutes
Read about our family’s experience here: Patterson Farms
Patterson Farms has a little bit of everything and, depending on when you visit, also offers some fun seasonal activities. (We’ve done strawberry picking in the spring and visited their pumpkin patch in the fall!) It’s easy to spend several hours at Patterson Farms feeding farm animals, going on tractor rides, completing barnyard bingo cards for little prizes, meandering through a corn maze in the fall and more. With so much to do for young kids and families, it’s one of our favorite places to take the boys and a spot we visit a least once or twice a year. One important note: Patterson Farms is a field trip hot spot, so sometimes it can be a little crazy if you’re there when field trips are there as well. If you’re hoping for a less crowded experience, it might be worth a call before your visit.
Distance from Charlotte: 50 minutes
Read about our experience: Lake Norman State Park
Lake Norman State Park is, hands down, our favorite place to hike that’s reasonably close to Charlotte. It’s 10,000 times less crowded than the incredibly popular Crowders Mountain State Park and still offers beautiful views and awesome trails. We tend to stick to the Lake Shore Trail, a five mile loop that offers tons of little lookout points over gorgeous Lake Norman. There are lots of elevation changes and while I wouldn’t say it’s an easy hike, it’s not too strenuous either. We often see deer along the trail and it’s very dog-friendly!
Distance from Charlotte: 45 minutes / Distance from Lake Norman area: 25 minutes
Read about our family’s experience: Carrigan Farms
Carrigan Farms is a fifth-generation family farm our family loves visiting at different times of the year for different reasons. In the spring, it’s a hot-spot for strawberry picking. In the late summer/early fall, it’s a great spot for apple picking. In October, they offer pumpkin picking in their pumpkin patch. I’ve also heard great things about swimming in the quarry on the farm’s property in the summer months and now that our boys are a little older, it’s something we’re hoping to do as a family next summer!
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Stone Mountain State Park (Roaring Gap, NC)
Distance from Charlotte: 1 hour, 35 minutes / Distance from Lake Norman area: 1 hour, 20 minutes
Read about our family’s experience: Hiking Stone Mountain
If you enjoy hiking, making a day trip from the Charlotte area to Stone Mountain State Park is well worth it! The trails on the Stone Mountain Loop are incredibly well maintained and if you park in the Upper Trailhead Lot and veer left at the trail to hike clockwise around the loop, you’ll surely be challenged! We love hiking the loop in this direction because you’re fairly isolated from the views until you reach the summit making the “big reveal” feel especially gratifying! You’ll see waterfall views and finish your hike feeling very accomplished! We’ve also done this hike with the boys but approached the experience a little differently if you’d like to read about that experience here: Hiking Stone Mountain with Kids.
Winter:
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Tweetsie Christmas (Blowing Rock, NC)
Distance from Charlotte: 2 hours / Distance from Lake Norman area: 1 hour, 45 minutes
Read about our family’s experience here: Tweetsie Christmas
Tweetsie Railroad is a wild west-themed adventure park but for several weekends in late November and most of December, it transforms into a winter wonderland, complete with a holiday train ride on a real steam engine, fun rides for kids, the opportunity to meet Santa and Mrs. Claus and more. The highlight for our family was the train ride but we also loved the Christmas village and took advantage of some of the rides while wandering around, sipping hot cocoa and enjoying the twinkling lights and holiday music.
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Polar Express at the North Carolina Transportation Museum (Spencer, NC)
Distance from Charlotte: 45 minutes / Distance from Lake Norman area: 50 minutes
Read about our family’s experience here: Polar Express
Nabbing tickets to The Polar Express at the North Carolina Transportation Museum is insane. Getting 5+ tickets together on the train is next to impossible unless you scope out tickets in the summertime and buy them in June. I had my act together enough to get tickets for our crew last holiday season and oh my gosh I now understand why tickets on this festive train are so coveted. The Polar Express at the North Carolina Transportation Museum was one of the best holiday activities we’ve done together as a family. The train cars are completely decked out in holiday decor and the experience includes hot cocoa, a bell for each child from Santa, a stop at the North Pole and lots of holiday cheer and singing along to Christmas carols.
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Snowland at Great Wolf Lodge (Concord, NC)
Distance from Charlotte: 25 minutes / Distance from Lake Norman area: 30 minutes
Read about our family’s experience here: Great Wolf Lodge
The chokehold this place has on kids, I’m tellin’ ya! Our boys freaking loveee Great Wolf Lodge with some serious intensity. They think it’s one of the coolest places on the planet and for the past several years in a row, we’ve made it a point to book a room in early December because we love visiting our local GWL during the holiday season but day passes are available if you’re looking to make a day trip out of it! During the holiday season, Great Wolf Lodge is decorated with snowflakes and twinkling lights and the boys get the biggest kick out of the fake snowfall that happens several times a day in the lobby. It’s also fun to have access to a waterpark in the middle of winter and we love taking advantage of the winter and Christmas-themed activities that take place all day long. And I cannot forget to mention MagiQuest which is our big kids’ absolute obsession and the reason we easily walk 5+ miles inside of the hotel whenever we visit GWL!
Spring/Summer:
Distance from Charlotte: 1 hour, 30 minutes / Distance from Lake Norman area: 1 hour, 35 minutes
Read about our family’s experience here: Jellystone Golden Valley
If your family enjoys outdoor fun, Jellystone Golden Valley is such a gem! You can purchase day passes to Jellystone on certain days, making it such a fun spot for a special day trip from the Charlotte area. We’ve spent numerous weekends at Jellystone and think the absolute best time to visit is in the summer months because you can take full advantage of the pool and water playground (SO fun for kids) and the giant blow-up obstacle course on the lake. Jellystone also offers gem mining, fishing, a mountain coaster, hiking, laser tag, playground fun, arts and crafts activities, as well as tennis, gaga ball, volleyball and basketball courts and a mini lake zipline. My main tip: Rent a golf cart!!! Our boys loveeee exploring Jellystone by golf cart and it makes it much easier to get around and discover all of Jellystone’s gems!
Fall:
Distance from Charlotte: 65 minutes / Distance from Lake Norman Area: 50 minutes
Read about our family’s experience here: Alpha & Omega Corn Maze
This place is so much more than a corn maze! It’s kid heaven and the kind of place you can easily spend full day. There’s a reason we go back every single year! In addition to a corn maze (that is legitimately challenging!), Alpha & Omega has a ton of activities for kids to enjoy, including rubber duck races, pumpkin launches, pig races, a dirt track for giant tricycles, mini train rides, corn pits, wagon rides and jumping pads. They offer food on property if you want to stay for lunch or dinner and it’s big enough that even on the busiest days it never feels too crowded.
Distance from Charlotte: 1 hour, 20 minutes / Distance from Lake Norman Area: 65 minutes
Read about our family’s experience here: Perry Lowe Orchards
Perry Lowe Orchard is a sixth-generation apple orchard located in the foothills of North Carolina. It has the most wonderful family feel and offers a wide variety of delicious apples for picking — even Honeycrisp! The location makes you feel like you’re in the mountains without the need to drive 2+ hours and our boys absolutely loved playing on the jumping pad, tube slide and playground. Make sure you try the apple cider slushies and apple fritters!
Question of the Day
Charlotte-area friends, do you have any fun hot spots you’d recommend for anyone looking to plan a family-friendly day trip from the Charlotte?
