The Triangle is two ramps away from having a 60-mile hiking trail. Just before Christmas, contractors using a really big crane lowered a steel bridge onto concrete footings spanning Little Lick Creek at Falls Lake. The bridge will join Sections 14 and 15 of the Falls Lake portion of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, and will make it possible hike undisturbed from Pennys Bend on the Eno River in Durham County downlake…
Raleigh’s highly anticipated 3-mile House Creek Greenway is scheduled to open in March. Sunday, I took a little inspection tour. More about that in a sec. First, about that “highly anticipated” description. In Raleigh’s rapidly expanding greenway network, 3 miles isn’t a lot. The system consists of close to 70 miles at this point, and this 3-mile stretch is dwarfed, sizewise, by another stretch also under construction: the 28-mile Neuse…
A week ago, we issued a challenge: Walk once a day through the end of the month and you might just survive this holiday season. Less stress, improved mood, you won’t emerge from the holidays 15 pounds heavier— pretty good deal for walking just 30 minutes a day. Of course, being realists we acknowledged that finding 30 minutes a day might not be feasible during the typically hectic holidays. From…
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. Today’s…
For those of you who like to stand on formality, the official opening of the first stretch of the Neuse River Trail is Wednesday at 3 p.m. For those of you who like to stand on accuracy, the trail clocks in at 6.46 miles, not the 8 that I have previously reported. When it’s completed at the end of next year, Neuse River Trail will run 28 miles, from the…
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 … .” Things are, in fact, finally moving along with the 586-acre park along Falls Lake,…
Raleigh voters’ approval of a $40 million transportation bond last week means the entire Walnut Creek Greenway should be completed by the end of 2013. The greenway would run from the 28-mile Neuse Trail greenway, scheduled to be completed by the end of 2012, west along its namesake waterway to N.C. State’s Centennial Campus, a distance of nearly 11 miles. Currently, about seven miles of the Walnut Creek Greenway are…
Raleigh has again been deemed the best place in America to live, this time by BusinessWeek.com. The reasons are several — good public schools, the universities, diverse cultural institutions, lots of bars and restaurants, low crime, strong (relatively) economy. Near the top of the list, great parks. Much of what makes the area great are the key services you expect from government: good schools, economic policies that promote culture and…
To follow along with the trails mentioned below, download a copy of the Raleigh greenway map here. The first 8 miles of the the Neuse Greenway Trail is all but 20-feet finished. That’s the official word this morning from Raleigh Senior Greenway Planner Vic Lebsock. Officially, there’s only 20 feet left to finish, on a boardwalk a little over two miles south of the northern trailhead (off the old Falls…
In the mid-1990s the Triangle’s greenway system wasn’t a system. It was a disjointed connection of asphalt strips scattered hither and yon. If you lived a block or two away from one of these strips, you probably paid it an occasional visit. If you didn’t live within a block or two, you probably had no idea the Triangle even had greenways. Then the Triangle Greenways Council came up with the…