SHORE BETS
A guide to the pearls scattered throughout the Lake Norman area By TAYLOR BOWLER, GREG LACOUR, and ANDY SMITH
Lakeside Activities “SO THIS IS THE BRAND-NEW RAPTOR CENTER,” says Michele Miller Houck, technically the Carolina Raptor Center’s associate executive director but someone who, on the center’s website and in her email signature, has adopted the title of “Chief Wonder Maker.” “And it’ll have 40 enclosures. It’ll have an outdoor classroom and health and wellness center for the birds—so, essentially, this is where the diet is prepared. This is where the quarterly health checks are done on the birds. This is where they would come if they had an injury. This is for our resident birds that live at this facility—which will be probably between 60 and 80 birds that will live here.” It’s midday on a January Friday at Quest, the new, multimillion-dollar science education center for the nonprofit RAPTOR CENTER AND LATTA NATURE CENTER AND PRESERVE (6345 Sample Rd., Huntersville); 1,460-acre Latta, Mecklenburg County’s largest nature preserve, has hosted the Raptor Center since 1984. No one else is around—we’re all still slogging through the winter of COVID—and Houck and I keep our masks on and our conversation properly distanced. But eventually, Houck and the rest of her team hope, as many as 100,000 children and adults per year will roam the trail that leads to new enclosures for owls, eagles, hawks, vultures, shrikes, and even a laughing kookaburra, and take in bird shows at a new, 200-seat Duke Energy Amphitheater. This alone would be a significant step for the Raptor Center. But those improvements join hands with the now-completed, 13,000-square-foot Quest, a modern education center for Latta with water-themed interactive exhibits, meeting spaces, classrooms, and an indoor fountain that demonstrates how Charlotte gets its drinking water: rain that collects in nearby Mountain Island Lake. The back part of Quest serves as an introductory stop for the Raptor Center, and the building’s design allows visitors to take in the hydrological Latta exhibits in front, then the Raptor Center space in back. From there, they can head behind the building to the bird enclosures and amphitheater. Houck expects 20 of the enclosures to be finished this year. Even after nearly 40 years, and even though Latta and the Raptor Center are technically separate entities, they’ve never integrated their missions this fully. The complex’s touchstones are “innovation and collaboration,” she says. “We just think that we’re stronger together.” —Greg Lacour
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CHARLOTTEMAGAZINE.COM // APRIL 2021
A Visit to Lake Norman State Park (and Others) Even boomtowns have oases. Here’s Lake Norman’s biggest: nearly 2,000 acres of pines and mixed hardwoods, 30 miles of mountain biking and hiking trails, a 125yard sandy beach, and 32 sites for camping—and, of course, fishing. The state park (759 State Park Rd., Troutman) opened in 1962 after Duke Power donated the land, and the lake’s sediment-rich waters teem with crappie, perch, bass, and channel catfish. The park, about a 45-minute drive from Charlotte, hugs the northern edge of the lake near Troutman, and trails meander along the edges
of coves and inlets. On a chilly Sunday afternoon in January, families ply the tracks with their dogs and, at the bottom of a peninsula near the visitor center, a father and his two young sons cast lines from a sandstone boulder that juts into the water. If you don’t need the expanse or care to drive that far, check out any of a trio of local parks in Cornelius: RAMSEY CREEK PARK (18441 Nantz Rd.), with its 44-acre waterfront area; JETTON PARK (19000 Jetton Rd.), with its reservable decks and gazebos; and ROBBINS PARK (17738 W. Catawba Ave.), a newer offering with a disc golf course and an expansive play area for kids. —G.L.
LOGAN CYRUS; COURTESY
A Look at the New Latta Nature Center and Preserve and Carolina Raptor Center
