You ask questions, I try to answer them. Among your recent inquiries:
Forest Ridge Park, Raleigh
Lance was noodling around on the site, discovered an old post about Forest Ridge Park-to-be in North Raleigh and wondered “if there is any news there. It looks to me like things are moving toward construction starting next spring … .”
New trail opens along the Eno River, there’s a hike on some of the state’s highest trail and there’s a run on battleships at the coast.
Piedmont
We don’t normally recommend ribbon cuttings, but when that ribbon cutting is part of a chance to hike 1.5 miles of virgin Mountains-to-Sea Trail, which connects with another 8 miles of what might be the sweetest hiking on the Eno River — coupled with what’s forecast to be a lovely fall weekend — well, we’ll make an exception.
The hardest part of a race? Anymore, it’s just getting in.
This morning, at 7:59, I sat at the keyboard, my right index finger poised of the Enter key. In the window of my browser was this address: http://www.sportoften.com/events/eventDetails.cfm?pEventId=7902 — the site to register for the Feb. 4 Uwharrie Mountain Run. The site was set to go active at 8 a.m. today, Nov. 1, 2011.
Monday — never an easy time for the outdoors enthusiast. After a weekend of adventure, returning to the humdrum work-a-day world can make one melancholy. To help ease the transition, every Monday we feature a 90 Second Escape — essentially, a 90-second video of a place you’d probably rather be: a trail, a park, a greenway, a lake … anywhere as long as it’s not under a fluorescent bulb.
“I can’t believe we haven’t seen anyone,” Krista said midway into our 15-mile hike.
“I wonder what Umstead’s like right now?” Amy wondered. “Probably bumper-to-bumper people.”
Probably, considering: 1) It was the second weekend in October and the first true weekend of fall color in the Piedmont, 2) It was a Saturday afternoon, 3) There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, 4) The temperature was struggling to get out of the 60s.
In short, it was a perfect fall day. The kind of day where it occurs to everyone to go for a hike, and it occurs to everyone to go to the same places. To Umstead State Park in Raleigh, to Hanging Rock and Pilot Mountain state parks in the Triad, to Crowders Mountain near Charlotte.
Need proof?
The Crowders Mountain Web site offers this warning front and center on its home page: “Expect parking delays on nice fall weekends.”
Which isn’t to say you should hide at home and experience fall through silde shows such as the one above. If you know where to go — like Amy and Krista did — you can experience the magnificence of fall in magnificent solitude.