Camping facilities enable visitors to extend their stays.   Zip lines stretch for half a mile overhead.

It started with a grandfather and his grandson. After Don Wilburn took his teenage grandson, Cooper, trail riding in Brushy Mountain, Tenn., he couldn’t contain his excitement.

“He said it was the most fun he had ever had for $10,” recalls Joe Phelps, the general manager of Carolina Adventure World.

Back home, Wilburn, the owner of the Wilburn Auto Body Shop chain in the greater Charlotte region, couldn’t get his mind off the adventure, so he decided to use his entrepreneurial skills to bring the experience to the Carolinas.

“At that point, he started seeking out a large tract of land, and he found this one in South Carolina and bought it from a timber company,” Phelps says of the 2,600 acres Wilburn bought four years ago.

The land is in the timber region of Fairfield County near Winnsboro, just 30 minutes north of Columbia and 75 minutes south of the Lake Norman area on I-77.

From ground to air
After three years of work, Carolina Adventure World opened in April 2007. It now offers 100 miles of trails, a motocross course, a mud bog, a 40-acre beaver pond, tent and recreational vehicle camping amenities with a bathhouse, a welcome center with a shop and food services, and a half-mile of zip lines. Expansion plans for this year include 10 miles of mountain bike trails, walking trails, a go-cart track, a sport quad fast track and a wash bay system for bikes or vehicles. There also will be a corporate meeting facility inside a yurt and packages for those services. By mid-summer, the facility plans to have motocross and go-cart races, popular events with loyal followings.

“We’ve listened to the industry, and we’ve listened to our guests,” Phelps says. “We’ve tried to tailor it to what they want.”

Customers have responded. In the site’s first 11 months of operation, it had 20,000 guests, including 9,000 in the first quarter of 2008, while weather was still cold.

“It will take us years to do everything that we have in mind to do,” says Terri Wilburn, Don’s daughter, who handles marketing.

David Stewart, a Davidson resident, enjoyed motocross, a sport that is based on navigating obstacles such as jumps and water at the quickest speed possible, in his youth and has returned to the sport as an adult. He heard about Carolina Adventure World long before it opened and kept up with its development over the Internet. In December, he tried it for the first time and has returned many times since.

“I really don’t know of another place where you can go park in one place that has the same variety. If you took your family, you can rent four-wheelers or golf carts. I don’t think you could ever know all the trails. They do a really nice job,” Stewart says.

Family outing
With so many amenities available, families can make a day of it, with everyone having fun.

“There are not many places to ride,” Phelps says. “When you buy a dirt bike and you don’t own your own 400-acre farm, where are you going to ride it? Right after you buy it, you ask, ‘Where can I ride it?’ We have feeder markets from as far as Raleigh, Charleston, Savannah and Myrtle Beach. There are wives then with young kids who can’t ride, but they want this to be a family activity, and what we offer allows them to do that.”

In fact, many families divide and conquer when they reach the park. Some members might enjoy the motocross course, while others might try the zip line, rent an ATV to ride the well-marked casual recreation to black diamond trails or rent a golf cart to explore the service roads. At Top of the World, guests can enjoy panoramic views of the countryside and a dynamic sunset at the highest point in the county. It’s also the perfect location for a small hotel, an idea that Phelps hopes might come to fruition in the coming years.

“If we are able to host more guests here for several days at a time, it will benefit the local area much more,” Phelps says.

Want to Go?
Carolina Adventure World is located 2 miles east of I-77, exit 46, on Camp Welfare Road in Fairfield County, S.C.
Hours are 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily.

For more information, call 803-482-3534 or visit www.carolinaadventureworld.com.

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