About Lost In the Carolinas

About Orlando & Kelly

Welcome to Lost in The Carolinas and Beyond! We are excited to meet you and help you learn more about us in our little section of the internet. By now, you probably know we run this website called “Lost in The Carolinas.”

We’re Orlando and Kelly Buck, and on this site you’ll learn more about our experiences, photography, and informative travel guides from around the Carolinas and Beyond. We have a passion for traveling, eating delicious food (and of course barbeque), enjoying outdoor sports, taking photos, and many other random things.

After years of enjoying our travels around the Carolinas and Beyond, we decided it was time to share our experience about our home state, North Carolina.


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We Provide Information And Helpful Advice.

You’ll find useful travel tips, hotel reviews, restaurant suggestions, itineraries, and attractions around the Carolinas and Beyond on this website. Lost In The Carolinas and Beyond is a place you can find up-to-date information and helpful guides.

Our goal is to ensure you make the most out of your time, a place we hold dear in our hearts. Unless otherwise noted, every blog post on this website is written by our writers or us and comes from personal experiences. Our content is not AI generated. If you have an experience you would like to share on Lost in the Carolinas and Beyond, send us a message and let’s see if we can work together!

This is our home

We haven’t explored every nook and cranny of the Carolinas yet! However, we’ll do our best to bring you the best and most timely information, even if it takes us a lifetime of learning about and exploring the region.


A little about us…

Orlando & Kelly

We made the move from L.A. (that’s Lower Alabama where we come from ;>) to the mountains of North Carolina in 2019 and have no regrets! “The mountains are calling and I must go…” (John Muir, Scottish naturalist and mountaineer, 1838-1914) is a popular saying and has held true for us. After years of taking vacations in the mountains of North Carolina, North Georgia, and Eastern Tennessee, we put a plan in place and now, years later, we are honored to call this place home.

Both of us are teachers. Kelly teaches 4th and 5th grade ELA and social studies, while Orlando teaches middle school math (6th, 7th, 8th, and Algebra 1). Our campus is “the little red school house” on the hill: Summit Charter School in Cashiers, NC. As teachers at Summit Charter School we get to take our students on exciting outdoor adventures, which is something we absolutely love! From trips to Dollywood to Chattanooga, TN, hikes on the Appalachian Trail, and a week in Charleston, South Carolina, our adventures allow our students to learn more about the place we call home.

We are blessed with five children and one grandchild, though, our family is beginning to expand rapidly! Having the opportunity to share our travels with our family – while creating memories – is something we do not take for granted.

The decision to move to North Carolina changed our lives. We wake up to views of the Blue Ridge Parkway in the distance and sounds of the creek and waterfall in the backyard. When not in class we enjoy hiking, backpacking, camping, eating at local restaurants, staying at great resorts, and finding the next interesting item to put in our home. We have also made many trips to the Dominican Republic and Cuba helping those who may not have the same opportunities we do.

From the mountains we call home to the beaches we enjoy relaxing on, and everything in between, we look forward to sharing our journeys with you! We both consider ourselves locals and know the Carolinas will always have a piece of our hearts.