- This program is made possible in part by generous support from the American Battlefield Trust, connecting you to the places where our nation was forged.

Visit battlefields.org today.

♪ - Next on North Carolina Weekend, we're exploring what's new in town across the state.

We'll step into a Japanese-inspired listening lounge, check out a lively pickleball spot in Cornelius, and discover cookies with a mission in Southern Pines.

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're checking out what's new in town all across our state.

I'm at beautiful Duke Gardens in Durham, where there's a lot that's new to see.

The recently unveiled Garden Gateway Project includes a brand new welcome center, a garden cafe, expanded green spaces, and a carnivorous plant garden.

There's even a new self-guided tour app that lets you dig deeper into the history, garden spaces, and plants across all 55 acres.

- It's a wonderful setup where we can address all the visitors who come in and answer all their questions, tell them what they need to see that day and before they enter the gardens.

You know, used to, people could drive by our visitor center, but now they have to park and they have to actually walk through this breezeway.

So it's an actual portal that people come through now, and they know they're gonna receive some information.

- We'll explore it more in a future episode, but first, let's head to the mountains, where vinyl records set the tone.

Inspired by Japan's listening cafes, the Joyful Noise Listening Lounge brings together carefully curated music, all-day espressos, and a menu of Japanese small plates.

Let's see what's new in Asheville.

- Joyful Noise is a all-vinyl listening lounge and kitchen.

It's a phenomenon that started in Japan.

What that means is that we only play music on vinyl records through a really cool vintage analog sound system.

My wife and business partner, Bryna, and one of my good college friends, we all started Highwire Brewing together.

It was a wild ride, still is a wild ride.

We opened that in 2013.

Still have, you know, my interest in Highwire, but my business partner, Adam, is running the company day to day, and we decided to do this venture, Joyful Noise.

The hurricane hit, you know, we all lost power, we all lost water.

You kind of sit, and you're like, "What do you do now?"

It's a crazy situation to be in.

It was rough, it was really rough.

But again, life goes on.

Post-storm, time to do what we love, which I've heard a lot of people from Asheville say recently, which is cool.

Kind of puts everything into perspective.

So that's how we got here.

- My earliest conversations with Chris when we were operating out of the coffee truck last year, post-Halleen, and we actually met at Highwire, where the coffee truck was operating.

And he said, "Yeah, we're trying to do this new venture, and we want coffee, and we wanted to talk with you about it."

So we sat down and had a conversation, and since then, it's been a pretty smooth partnership.

- We sat down and had a meeting at a coffee shop, and just started discussing the concept pretty loosely, and it definitely struck my attention.

I've been an avid vinyl collector myself, been in bands, been a musician.

Obviously, I've been cooking for about 30 years.

- We'll be open every day at 7, and have kind of full-service coffee, tea, matchas, all the offerings, pastries.

So it will be your cafe.

Traditionally, lots of people like to work from our cafe, so hopefully that will return, and it'll just be a warm, inviting space.

- Initially, I think being able to sit, listen, have good cocktails, and be able to snack, and be able to just casually eat.

These are all gonna be small plates.

With the listening lounge being kind of a Japanese thing, we are gonna try to bring in some of those flavors, and some of that kind of inspiration as well.

One thing we're gonna try to focus on is a very traditional Japanese kind of street food thing, is the katsu sandwich.

So that's a breaded and fried pork loin that we have brined overnight, and that's served on Japanese milk bread.

♪ Yeah.

That's good.

- It slows down your pace of life.

It's a good way to connect with friends, and to bond over a great record, and the fact that there's also food and coffee here at all times during the day, so I'm very excited about that.

- You know, music's the focus.

To add a coffee component really, really made sense.

Their product is super high quality, lots of local love, and then Josiah's cooking.

He's an incredibly talented human being.

Turns out he's also a big music guy.

He's got a great vinyl collection.

Not that Joyful Noise is a unique idea, but it's unique for the area, unique for Asheville.

♪ - It's very nice to know that such wonderful business owners that have had anchor businesses around this area have taken over this spot.

I'm excited to see what happens here.

- Nothing like we have here in town, and some really incredible creative forces behind this place, so it's an amazing spot, and I think everybody should give it a try.

- We really want this space to be a gathering place.

You know, we feel really good about what we're doing, breathing some new life into this space and the River Arts District, and we're really proud of it.

♪ - Joyful Noise Listening Lounge and Kitchen is in Asheville.

The new space is expected to open this spring, so hours and details are still being finalized.

For the latest updates and upcoming events, check their social media pages.

Start with lots of pickleball, add a cafe, a restaurant, a bar, and a lot more, and producer Teresa Litsky says it's all under one roof at a place called the Serve Pickleball and Kitchen in Cornelius.

It's a big facility, 60,000 square feet in all, just off I-77, and this is why they need all that room.

♪ - Well, we have outdoor pickleball courts, we have indoor pickleball courts, and we have Topgolf swing suites.

Along with a full restaurant, we have a cafe, a bar.

We have a lot for everybody.

- This idea of bringing food and fun and family kind of together and seeing other people enjoy it as well.

So we're here to stay.

We're family-owned and operated.

We're one of one.

And so you have to kind of see it to believe it.

- First and foremost are the pickleball courts.

- We have 10 indoor courts.

There is a rubber surface that people are playing on.

So it creates this unique cushion-like feel, but yet it's still a real court.

So, like, the surface on top of the rubber is sort of this, like, gritty paint that allows the play to feel like a normal court.

But if you play a few hours on these courts, you'll feel much less wear and tear than just playing on a concrete slab.

- The serve also has six outdoor courts.

- All the courts are regulation size.

All the courts are individually fenced in.

- I work nearby, and so there's a group of us from work that come out here, like, once a week to the serves.

Super convenient.

We, you know, we started playing indoors during the winter, and then we've moved outside now.

So it's great.

Food's great.

It's a good time.

- Since he mentioned food... - The food is fantastic.

- So our cafe does typical coffee, beverages.

We also do smoothies as well.

We have a pastry chef who does phenomenal baking.

- Fun fact about the cafe, we home-make all of our baked goods in the back.

So personally, I build a lot of self-control walking by these goods every day.

- I've even come here at, like, 7 a.m.

and worked over coffee and macaroons and croissants.

We have our restaurant that's an actual sit-down restaurant with breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

The food is amazing.

You can get your healthy choices.

- Yeah, food's really, really good.

I've had a few things off the menu, the chicken sandwich, the wings, the quesadilla.

Nothing's disappointed yet.

- I've had the quinoa bowl.

Fantastic.

The brunch is great.

The chorizo tacos are so, so good.

Really good.

- And then behind us, we have our bar area that people can just come and have a cocktail and drink and socialize.

- The drinks really are.

They're the best in town.

[glasses clinking] [upbeat music] - But if you want more sports, they have top golf swing suites.

- So those are simulators.

You can play golf, but you can also play other sports like football, dodgeball, hockey, baseball, soccer, football.

There's carnival games, Dave & Buster-style games.

Like, skee-ball is in there, too.

- We are one of only two locations in the state of North Carolina that have these type of simulators.

We call them bays.

We have four bays.

We have two bays that can actually adjoin for a party of more than ten, 'cause you can put about ten people in one bay.

- And so you can book those online for, like, an hour.

So we do that a lot.

We did it on Valentine's Day with our kids.

- It's a good idea for just, like, an adult date night.

- Or... - Mom's Night Out.

- In the end, the name says it all.

- It's funny, that word "serve" means different things, can be different things.

Serving the community, serving the pickleball, serving a good plate of food.

- This really is, like, a cool place.

[upbeat music] - The Serve Pickleball & Kitchen is located at 2220 Chartown Drive in Cornelius.

They're open from 7 a.m.

to 10 p.m., Monday through Saturday, and 7 a.m.

to 8 p.m.

on Sundays.

For more information, call 704-851-1800 or visit theservepickleball.com.

In Curie Beach, Fort Fisher is giving visitors, even those who've been there before, fresh ways to experience its history.

Producer Rick Sullivan has the story.

- Fort Fisher was America's biggest sand castle ever.

Fort Fisher was an earthen fort because that was the material available to build Fort Fisher.

And also, it had the side benefit of being a superior material to brick and masonry and stone with the advancements in artillery.

- That's because sand was really good at absorbing the artillery bombardments that were happening here at Fort Fisher more than 160 years ago.

(gunshot) But when it comes to designing and building a new visitor's center, to detail what happened here, the more hardened building materials have been used to create this highly functional and modern facility that can handle the massive tourist traffic today.

- There are 27, I believe, historic sites throughout the whole system.

By far, we have the most visitation.

Our visitation finally broke a million visitors a year in 2021, and that was up from what I saw in 2007, which was around just under 600,000 visitors a year.

And I've watched it climb over the years.

From an architectural standpoint, if you haven't noticed, this building was very much designed with the views in mind, with all the glass and all the windows and the vistas.

And we wanted something fairly modern.

This building is three times the size of the old building at 23,000 square gross feet.

It also has many more amenities.

We have expanded the size of the exhibit gallery.

We have an activity hall that is available for special events and rentals.

(gunshot) - On the day this story was filmed, Fort Fisher was observing the 160th anniversary of the fall of the fort.

On that day, January 15th, 1865, the fort was overrun by the Union Army, thus cutting off Confederate access to Wilmington's port.

Just a few months later, the Civil War was over.

- At the time the fort fell, General Sherman was running roughshod throughout the South.

General Grant was battling General Robert E. Lee outside of Richmond, and Robert E. Lee and the Army in northern Virginia kind of had their backs against the wall.

And Lee himself had said that if Fort Fisher falls, I cannot sustain the Army, that we are finished.

- Fire!

- Here at Fort Fisher, there are no admission charges to walk the grounds, walk inside the earthen mounds, visit the scenic oceanfront trails, and to go everywhere the Confederate and Union soldiers would have gone back in the 1860s.

But the best starting point is the Visitor's Center, also free of charge, where you'll get the background information about the site and what happened here.

- Our mission statement is to preserve and interpret this historic battlefield for present and future generations.

And our specific goal here at Fort Fisher, and we have been hammering away at this for years now, and it fed into the creation of our new exhibits, was that we want Fort Fisher to be a place where any American and anybody from anywhere in the world, really, can come here and go through our exhibits and go through this site and find some sort of a human connection across time that connects with them.

- The Fort Fisher State Historic Site Visitor's Center is located at 1610 Fort Fisher Boulevard, South N. Currie Beach.

For hours and more information, visit nchistoricsites.org/fort-fisher.

- I love the new Gardens Cafe here at Duke Gardens.

Next, let's head to Southern Pines and a new bakery that's serving up chunky, homemade cookies with a mission.

Bravory Bakehouse is dedicated to serving the community and honoring our hometown heroes.

Producer Meredith Brown has the story.

(upbeat music) - I've never been to a bakery quite like this.

It's really nostalgic.

As soon as you open the door, you just smell the cinnamon and the chocolate.

Everything is fresh from scratch, and I just appreciate quality.

- We sell premium baked goods, handcrafted by the home front heroes.

- Hand rolled, hand stuffed, gourmet, just over the top.

- I mean, just even the names of everything, it's just a whole different vibe of coming in here and being like, "We know you, and we want you to feel special."

- You feel welcome and understood when you come in.

- The baked goods, the drinks, everything here is fabulous, and there's something new every time you come in.

- The Campfire Commander's probably my all-time favorite.

It's a cookie where it has marshmallows.

It's like having a s'more in a cookie.

- It's all enveloped in it, and just the toasted marshmallows on top took it off the bus.

- My kids love the crookie, which is a croissant with cookie baked in and cookie on top.

We love supporting local, especially military affiliated, and Erin and her husband Nicholas are huge supporters.

- Bravory Bakehouse is a social impact organization.

After two decades serving in the military, my wife and I decided to stand up Bravory Bakehouse to represent what we call the home front hero, which is the family members, the caregivers, who stand behind the service member.

The home front hero is often unseen and unsupported and give up opportunity for their own careers, sacrificing their own self-interest.

And so at Bravory Bakehouse, we want to give that demographic a voice.

We want to let them know that they've been seen and heard.

Our proceeds go back into nonprofits that create veteran and military spouse entrepreneurs.

The point is to give the average American who may not be so connected to the military an opportunity to give back.

There's over 50,000 veteran service organizations out there, and so we're working through those organizations to help provide opportunity to this demographic.

- They have supported me significantly.

I've been baking bread, and they've opened up the kitchen to me in off hours.

When somebody says, "You're starting something new, don't go through the struggles I went through," you can't be thankful enough for somebody who does that for you.

I am a military spouse.

This is the first time that I've worked with for someone that truly understands what that lifestyle is like.

You know, I can't put blame on people that don't understand it, but when you have somebody that truly understands what you're going through on a day-to-day basis, it just makes you feel seen and heard.

So, you know, if I come in maybe a little off, you know, she's immediately understanding of that.

So this is my Appie.

He was a colonel in the Air Force.

He was in Operation Market Garden, and he was a pilot, and he got shot down.

And this is my sister, who's the Air Force veteran.

These are her books that she self-publishes, and she rescues horses with the proceeds from that.

Nicholas's dad is over here in Vietnam.

I'm Italian, so cooking and feeding is in my blood.

When I first started baking, I was just experimenting and trying to figure out how to get my mom's cookie recipe into a cookie that I specifically wanted, just something to fill up my time.

Why are you looking at me like that?

-Because Erin is underselling herself.

She has spent endless hours, seven days a week.

She's in the bakery perfecting every single recipe.

-I, myself, wanted to serve, and I didn't get to that point in my life.

And when I met Nick and married into the military, I was really proud to become a military spouse.

This business has given me the ability to show my love for the community.

It's my own way of serving.

-Bravory Bakehouse is located at 974 South Bennett Street, Unit A, in Southern Pines.

They're open Tuesday from 9 to 4 and Wednesday through Saturday from 9 a.m.

to 8 p.m.

For more information, visit bravorybakehouse.com.

Robert and Benjamin Cleveland fought side-by-side at Kings Mountain in a crucial battle of the American Revolution.

Both left their marks on their homes and on their state.

Today, one of those homes still stands as part of the Wilkes Heritage Museum in Wilkesboro.

Producer Lucas Pruitt shares the story behind the Robert Cleveland Log House.

-This is the Robert Cleveland Log House in Wilkesboro, North Carolina.

Nearly as old as Wilkes County itself, the structure was built around 1779 in the midst of the American Revolution.

But the man who built it didn't just live during that war.

He and his brother fought in one of the most decisive battles of the entire Revolution.

When Robert and Benjamin Cleveland moved to North Carolina, they quickly gained influence.

By 1778, both brothers were appointed as officers to the new county militia.

Benjamin is colonel, and Robert was captain of his regiment.

But after a series of patriot defeats in the South, British Lord Cornwallis marched into North Carolina.

So the call went out to the mountain communities and frontier towns to fight Cornwallis' officer, charged with guarding his left flank, at Kings Mountain on October 7th.

Benjamin personally led the left-wing assault at the head of several regiments.

Robert fought beside him.

Ferguson was shot from his horse.

His troops surrendered, and it was a turning point of the war in the South.

After the war, Benjamin would become the namesake of Cleveland County in 1841.

Robert Cleveland came home to Wilkes County to live out his days.

Today, his house is still standing, carefully preserved as a window into the world those brothers left behind, and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.

Relocated from its original site near Perlier and restored, it opened to the public in 1986 as part of the Wilkes Heritage Museum's collection of historic properties in downtown Wilkesboro.

- Five generations of the Robert Cleveland family lived in this house over 150 years span.

It's one of the very few structures in this area that survives from the late 1700s.

This was a very large house, the fifth largest house in all of Wilkes County.

- The logs would have been roughly 18 to 24 inches in diameter.

Some of them are 30 feet long.

These trees are older than America itself.

- When you walk into the Robert Cleveland Log Cabin, you are gonna walk into what life would have been like in revolutionary times here in Wilkes County.

- This was an Irish soda bread.

- It brings history to life.

It's not just something flat in a book with a name and a place, because that is so very boring.

- The log home is part of a larger complex that includes the old Wilkes Jail and the restored 1902 Wilkes County Courthouse, now home to the Wilkes Heritage Museum itself.

- So those three buildings were each built in three different centuries.

Anything from our county's history could be held here at the museum.

There's something here for everyone.

- It's a good resource center for people who really care about the history and heritage of Wilkes County.

Currently, we're upstairs in our revolutionary room.

This is where we have displays on our back country patriots.

- Through artifacts, images, and exhibits, the museum tells the story of Wilkes County from its earliest settlement through the present day.

- So salt was very important to them, not just for seasoning their food, but also for food preservation.

- Guided tours of the log home run Monday through Saturday and are included with museum admission.

Plan on two to three hours to take it all in.

- People actually built this.

It didn't just appear, and it's not just a museum piece.

Our ancestors were a part of this.

- When you come here and you sit at the cabin, you see the person and not just the hero.

You see him and his family.

And then you realize what courage it took for him and his family to take up their arms and fight the greatest military power in the world.

[light guitar music] - The Robert Cleveland Log House is located on the grounds of the Wilkes Heritage Museum at 100 East Main Street in Wilkesboro.

The museum is open Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m.

to 4 p.m.

and closed on Sundays.

For more information, call 336-667-3171 or visit wilkesheritagemuseum.com.

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

We have had a wonderful time here at Duke Gardens.

And be sure to look out for our upcoming Weekend in Durham episode, where we're gonna take you on an even bigger tour of the gardens.

And if you've missed anything in tonight's show, remember you can always watch us again online at pbsnc.org, or 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 VisitNC, 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.

This program is made possible in part by generous support from the American Battlefield Trust, connecting you to the places where our nation was forged.

Visit battlefields.org today.