By Ann Marie Byrd, Feature Writer
When most people think of New Bern, they picture waterfront views, brick sidewalks, and bustling downtown shops. For Lindsey Able, owner of Bear Feet Street Tours, those same streets have become both her office and her calling.
“I say that Bear Feet Street Tours is now ‘the most New Bern thing you can do,’” Lindsey explains. “I want people to discover the nuances of historic downtown on foot, in addition to the retail shops and eateries. It’s more than a history tour.”
Bear Feet Street Tours officially began in December 2025, born out of an encouraging conversation with a friend and fellow small business owner. While most people were finishing their last-minute Christmas shopping, Lindsey was at the tax office filing her DBA. On Christmas Eve, she made the business’s first social media post. Then she went into what she jokingly calls a “cave” for two months—building a website, researching, and writing tour scripts. On March 6, 2026, she took her first paying guests out on tour.
Since then, Bear Feet Street Tours has quickly carved out a distinctive niche in downtown New Bern. Unlike other local tours that may incorporate history into a broader experience, Bear Feet’s singular focus is guided, historical walking tours. But Lindsey is quick to clarify that this isn’t a dry recitation of dates and names.
“I don’t fancy myself a history savant of any kind,” she says. “But I’m a heck of an educator, a storyteller, a researcher, and I’m fascinated by the human experience and how we connect to each other. I think ultimately, that is what history is all about.”
Her tours reflect that philosophy. Guests still hear about key moments, places, and figures in New Bern’s past, but always through a human lens. “I try to balance facts and dates with the human experience behind every stop,” Lindsey says. “People may remember what they see, they may remember what they hear, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
A Love Story with New Bern
Lindsey’s path to owning a walking tour company in coastal North Carolina traces back to her roots in a very different kind of tourist destination: Kentucky’s bourbon country.
In 2022, she and her husband were living near his family in western Kentucky. They had put their house on the market and were seriously considering a move back to the central part of the state—the area many know as the “bourbon capital.” New Bern wasn’t even on their radar.
Then came a three-day vacation that changed everything.
They drove east to New Bern to clear their heads and think through their next steps. “What we didn’t anticipate was the feeling of coming over the twin bridges,” Lindsey recalls. “It was like the heavens opened up and the angels sang.” Those three days, packed with one meaningful interaction after another, convinced them to pivot their plans entirely. Instead of moving back to central Kentucky, they sold their house and moved to New Bern—just two weeks later.
“Every time I’ve stepped out into the unknown since moving here, New Bern has caught me,” Lindsey says. “I’ve loved New Bern since day one, and she keeps loving me right back. I could never turn my back on that, and I can’t talk about any other place in the world with as much affection and genuineness as I do New Bern.”
That reciprocal relationship between Lindsey and her adopted hometown is at the heart of Bear Feet Street Tours. Her routes are designed to help both visitors and locals experience historic downtown through fresh eyes—and feet. She leads guests past familiar landmarks, but also into the stories and lives that shaped the city.
From Bourbon Country to Bear Feet
Lindsey’s love for guiding and storytelling didn’t start in New Bern. It’s woven through her family history and professional life.
“I was a Kentucky girl,” she says. Her grandparents were administrators at the Jim Beam Distillery in the 1980s and 90s, and her grandmother ran the visitor center there. In retirement, that same grandmother worked part-time as a guide for coach bus tour groups. As a child, Lindsey watched her welcome visitors, share stories, and manage the flow of guests through a place people traveled from all over the world to see.
After college, Lindsey followed a similar path for a time, working as a tour guide at Maker’s Mark Distillery. But another influence had been running parallel her whole life: small business.
Her parents owned and operated a furniture store, and Lindsey grew up in the middle of it. “I remember being about 10 years old in the room as they negotiated a new order with a sales rep,” she says. “At the end of the conversation I stuck my little hand out to the man and firmly said, ‘Sir, it’s a pleasure doing business with ya!’” Always a natural extrovert, she treated the sales floor like a second home. The rhythms of entrepreneurship, customer service, and community connection seeped into her bones early.
Still, college felt like the expected next step—and teaching seemed like the practical path. No one in her family had gone to college before, and she was strongly encouraged to become an educator. Lindsey wanted to major in history, but in her Kentucky hometown most history teachers were also football coaches—a role she knew wasn’t for her. “Spoiler—I’m bad at sports,” she laughs. So instead she majored in Spanish, taught in K–12 classrooms for five years, then spent another five as an advisor in the community college system.
Moving to New Bern, however, changed more than her mailing address. “The move began a fundamental shift in reforming my life and who I wanted to be,” she says. Within a year, she left her decade-long career in education and took a job downtown at Midtown Olive Oil. That decision unexpectedly set the stage for Bear Feet.
She moved into a place on Johnson Street, started riding her tricycle to work on Saturdays, and spent all day talking to customers. Even after a full shift of conversation, she found she still craved more of New Bern. “I’d peddle home at night and still feel like I didn’t get ‘enough’ of New Bern,” she remembers.
So she walked.
She followed the streets to the water, to the library, the cemetery, past the New Bern Academy, the Masonic Lodge, the Presbyterian church. She wasn’t researching local history yet; she was simply moving through the city, letting it sink in. “Those walks alone did something to recalibrate my brain,” Lindsey says. “It’s like the Neuse became my personal true north and gave me a new orientation to home.”
For about two years, she was in what she calls a “metamorphosis” season—learning about New Bern, but also about herself. She realized she still loved educating, but not in the traditional classroom sense. She was using her retail jobs as a platform to introduce visitors to the city, instinctively weaving in stories and recommendations.
Then came a pivotal conversation with a friend and business mentor who encouraged her to create something of her own—a way to focus fully on sharing New Bern with others. “After that conversation…it was off to the races,” Lindsey says. Bear Feet Street Tours was born.
A One-Woman Show with a Strong Community
Today, Bear Feet Street Tours is a true one-woman operation. Lindsey is the sole owner, the writer, the marketer, and the guide—powered, as the business name suggests, by her own two feet.
“I am a one woman show!” she says. But she’s quick to add that she hasn’t done it alone.
New Bern Goods, located at the corner of Pollock and Craven, serves as home base and departure point for her Feature Tour route. Lindsey first met owners Sheila and Danny Batten when she started working at New Bern Goods. As soon as she was ready to launch Bear Feet Street Tours, they stepped in with tangible support—from logistics to visibility—that helped the business gain traction quickly. “They’ve been pivotal in establishing a tour presence on that corner,” Lindsey says. The entire staff at New Bern Goods, she adds, has pitched in “in ways both big and small that keep the tours running.”
It’s a fitting arrangement for a business so focused on connection. Bear Feet Street Tours doesn’t just tell New Bern’s stories; it’s become one of them—woven into the daily life of a downtown that continues to reinvent itself while honoring its past.
How to Walk with Bear Feet
Bear Feet Street Tours departs from New Bern Goods at 301 Pollock Street, right in the heart of historic downtown. Tour schedules and tickets are available online at:
www.bearfeetstreettours.com
You can also call 252-349-0849 for information or reservations, and follow Bear Feet Street Tours on Facebook and Instagram for updates, seasonal offerings, and a behind-the-scenes look at life on the sidewalks of New Bern.
Whether you’re a first-time visitor or a longtime local who’s walked these streets a thousand times, Lindsey’s hope is the same: that you’ll see New Bern a little differently—and carry its stories with you long after the tour ends.