Fayetteville Woman Wins $200,000 on Scratch-Off Ticket

A Fayetteville woman is celebrating today, after winning $200,000 on a North Carolina Education Lottery scratch-off ticket.

Ruby Murray won the prize on a $5 Carolina Jackpot ticket she bought at the Shop N Save on Ramsey Street.

Murray claimed her prize Tuesday, and after the federal and state tax withholdings, she went home with $142,021.

The prize is the second of the $200,000 jackpots available to be one. There are four more remaining to be claimed.

According to the NC Education Lottery, the game also features a new second-chance opportunity for those who buy Carolina Jackpot tickets. For the first time, any Carolina Jackpot scratch-off can be entered into second-chance drawings that feature a rolling jackpot. As more tickets are entered, the larger the rolling jackpot grows.

The first four drawings feature the rolling jackpot and the fifth drawing features a top prize of $200,000. The next Carolina Jackpot second-chance drawing is scheduled for July 27.

Ticket sales from scratch-off games make it possible for the lottery to raise more than $900 million per year for education. For details on how $22.6 million raised by the lottery made a difference in Cumberland County in 2021, visit www.nclottery.com and click on the “Impact” section.

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While getting away on a vacation this year may sound desirable, sometimes we just need to find the best places for a staycation instead.

Uncle Fred said Don, "most days are sunny and hardly ever hotter than 80." My wife Debbie has an aunt and uncle that live in Honolulu, Hawaii. We both spent a week in paradise a few years ago and like uncle Fred said, every day was full of sunshine and blue skies and no matter where you are on the island of Oahu, the tropical waters of the Pacific Ocean are only a few minutes away. Those seven days were some of our best days ever.

Recently, our good friends at Wallethub released its annual survey of the Best Places for a Staycation. Results of the survey were based on attractions, food, entertainment, rest and relaxation, spas, museums, zoos, aquariums, swimming pools, tennis courts, golf courses, ice cream shops and coffee shops per capita.

If you happen to be a local living in any of the top areas on the list, consider yourself lucky. But don't fret for those of you on the bottom of the list, there's still hope if you're creative and find ways to make the most of your staycation.

Oh, and if you're around the Fayetteville area, we came in at No. 131 on this list. 

Check the list below and see how many of the locations that you have visited. We've also added all the North Carolina cities appearing on the list, so you can see where we rank.

In order to determine the best staycation spots, WalletHub compared 182 U.S. cities — including the 150 most populated U.S. cities, plus at least two of the most populated cities in each state — across three key dimensions: 1) Recreation, 2) Food & Entertainment and 3) Rest & Relaxation.

We evaluated those dimensions using 44 relevant metrics, which are listed below with their corresponding weights. Each metric was graded on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the most favorable conditions for staycationers. For metrics marked with an asterisk (*), the square root of the population was used to calculate the “Number of Residents” in order to avoid overcompensating for minor differences across cities.

We then determined each city’s weighted average across all metrics to calculate its overall score and used the resulting scores to rank-order our sample.