Top 10 Cheap All-Inclusive Resorts

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Nestled in the Piedmont area in south-central North Carolina, Charlotte, the second largest financial center in the U.S., is more than just a soulless city of suits. Check out its interesting museums, stroll the McGill Rose Garden, and enjoy family-friendly fun without the chaos of other major family hubs.

At the newly opened ImaginOn: The Joe & Joan Martin Center, teens can animate their own movie at Studio-i, equipped with four cameras, a large blue screen, and state-of-the-art software; toddlers and older kids put together computer-generated picture books using touch-screen computers and oversized keyboards at the Story Jar; families enjoy watching productions together at the facility's Children's Theater.

See your shadow stay on the wall after you walk away at Discovery Place, a science center with interactive exhibits and demonstrations designed primarily for kids six to 12. Little tykes can build a dam at a water table or explore a treehouse in KidsPlace. Feel the force of a simulated tornado in the Our Living Planet exhibit, or play at being an on-screen meteorologist in the WSOC-TV Severe Weather Center.

The talking "Grandpa Tree" at the Charlotte Nature Museum's Nature Dome explains which critters make those spooky sounds at night. Puppets educate and entertain at the museum's Dragonfly Theater and hundreds of butterflies flitter about at the Butterfly Pavilion.

Play checkers on the front porch of a mill house or step inside a one-room tenant farmer's house at the Museum of the New South's "Cotton Fields to Skyscrapers: Charlotte and the Carolina Piedmont in the New South" exhibit. With more than 1,000 artifacts, images, video clips, music, and oral histories, this museum offers a comprehensive interpretation of post-Civil War Southern history. The 18th century comes alive as costumed guides take visitors through the Hezekiah Alexander House on the grounds of the Charlotte Museum of History. Built in 1774, the home is the oldest surviving structure in Charlotte. Peak into yet another era at the "Shotgun House," built in the late 1880s and fitted with furnishings from the 1940s, at the Afro-American Cultural Center, home to exhibits, films, and live performances.

Charlotte has been host to festival in the park for more than four decades, a gathering of hundreds of artists, craft exhibitors, and entertainers. The fall event (September 21-24, 2006) features pony rides and face painting for kids. For more kid thrills, drive ten miles south of town to Paramount's Carowinds Theme Park. New attractions for 2006 include Boomerang Bay Water Park featuring Platypus Plunge—a two-person tube twisting through 100 feet of curvy, banked turns—and Kookaburra Bay, a mammoth heated beach lagoon in a tropical setting. Big kids can hop on the hair-raising stand-up Vortex roller coaster, while the little ones have Nickelodeon Central, themed with the Rugrats Runaway Reptar, Wild Thornberrys River Adventure, and other rides based on the popular television characters.

NASCAR motorheads should make for Lowe's Motor Speedway, 12 miles northeast of town, for a guided tour, and also visit the nearby Hendrick Motorsports Museum, showcasing classic cars, racecars, and racing memorabilia.

Tip: Tired of walking? Take the Gold Rush-era rubber-wheeled trolley service around the Center City. Hop on Streetcar #85—an electric streetcar built in 1927—for a guided tour of the Historic South End and Center City.

Side trips: Asheville, Raleigh, Great Smoky Mountains