Welcome to Charlotte. Now hit the road.

To those of you new to the Charlotte area, on behalf of all of us who live here:

Thanks for coming.

Now please get lost.

Wait. Come back. I don't mean it that way. We're glad you're here. Yes, you might see the occasional bumper sticker that says “We Don't Care How You Did It Up North.” But what they are talking about (I'm pretty sure) is barbecue. Down here it's a noun, not a verb.

What I mean by getting lost is this: The publication you're reading now is jammed with places to see, things to do, the icons and touchstones of this part of the world. But the best way to learn Charlotte is to get in your car, or put your walking shoes on, and wander. Charlotte rewards people who like to stumble onto interesting things.

Wander out to Whitehall Corporate Center in south Charlotte. It's a normal business park, not much to see here, until – whoa! – you come around a corner and there is a fountain in the shape of a giant metallic head. It swivels. It looks like something off the lost Pink Floyd album. Every time I have ever taken someone out there, we've had to stop and take pictures.

Wander over to Dori Sanders' farm down in York County, S.C. – where you can buy sweet peaches and hear amazing stories from the author of the best-selling novel “Clover.”

Wander to Charlotte's crossroads – the intersection of Trade and Tryon streets – on a Friday night. You're likely to hear a brass band from the United House of Prayer of All People, their trombones blaring into the night.

Might as well wander, because a map here is not much help. There are probably fine reasons, now lost to history, why most key roads in Charlotte change names about every 100 yards. What you need to know is that the street you're on is likely to have a different name the next time you hit a red light. Just roll with it. (Charlotte is not nearly as fun now that GPS has been invented. Before that, most of us got around with a compass.)

I've lived in this area 20 years – first, in Lancaster. S.C.; then in Rock Hill; then in Charlotte. I still get lost around here, mainly because somebody puts a whole new town where there used to be cornfields and goats. When I first got here, you could roll a bowling ball uptown on a weeknight and not hit a soul. Now there's a bowling alley uptown, and good restaurants, and thriving bars, and an NFL stadium, and an NBA arena. The story of Charlotte's past 20 years was a story of almost unending growth.

Lately, though, that growth has slowed. In the past, when I sat down to write a column for Living Here, I knew that the preceding year would have brought thousands of new people to Charlotte – mostly people with new jobs thanks to our booming economy. Now we've been hit hard, just like everyone else. You can also, if you wander, find subdivisions of foreclosed homes and shelters packed with the newly homeless. Like every other big metro area, Charlotte has its chronic aches.

But this has always been a hopeful town. People expect good things to happen here, and most of the time they do. The weather's warm, and we're close to the mountains and the beach, and people wave when you pass them on the street. My wife and I just spent a year in Boston, and we loved it, but people didn't wave. I missed that. I missed a lot about Charlotte.

It's a good place to get lost – or, put another way, to lose yourself.

It's not a bad place to find yourself, too.

Tommy Tomlinson has worked for the Observer since 1989 and has written a local column since 1997.

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