From Charlotte Five:
Prior to last week, I had not been to Belmont, NC in a dozen years. I could probably have given you several dozen reasons why, and the majority of them would have involved me mistaking it for Gastonia.
Fortunately, after an early trip out to the Whitewater Center, I decided to venture just a bit farther down US-74 and cross the Catawba River into an area I once had considered no-man’s land. By the time I crossed back over later that evening, I discovered just how much Belmont has changed since a puka-shell-sporting, awkward 17-year-old had been completely underwhelmed while there on a college visit in 2006.