Of our recent greenway coverage (see below), Bob writes: “Great overview! The only section I didn’t see mentioned this week is the missing link of the Crabtree greenway between Lindsay Drive and Umstead. Any good news on this one?” I asked Sig Hutchinson about this stretch last week. Sig, as many of you may know, is the Triangle’s go-to guy when it comes to making trails happen. Back in…
For the past week, we’ve been looking at the current explosive growth of the Raleigh greenway system: $35 million to add about 45 miles of greenway. By 2014, Raleigh should have about 116 miles of greenway, with new, vital links along the Neuse River, Crabtree Creek, Walnut Creek, House Creek and Honeycutt Creek. The current construction will basically fulfill the city’s 1976 goal of establishing a greenway network, a secondary,…
Within two years, here’s how your day on the Raleigh greenways might look. You start out on a bike ride at Lake Johnson. Park at the boathouse and take a leisurely (except for the hills on the lake’s south side) lap around the lake before heading down Walnut Creek through N.C. State’s Centennial Campus taking note of all the new construction. Stop at the Farmer’s Market to see if the…
Three and a half miles of the Neuse River Trail is expected to open in August, another 8.7 miles in October and 7.0 more miles in November; coupled with the 6.5 miles opened last fall, the 28-mile greenway running along its namesake river from Falls Lake south to the Wake County line will be more than 90 percent done, at 26 miles. The entire trail, according to Raleigh greenway planner…
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…
If you’ve been driving Raleigh’s Beltline between Wade Avenue and Glen Eden Drive, sneaking peeks into the woods and wondering when on earth the House Creek Greenway is going to open, the answer is June 25. That’s the official answer. In reality, it should be passable by Memorial Day. The eagerly anticipated 2.9-mile greenway will link the 11-mile Crabtree Creek Trail to the north with the Reedy Creek/Museum of Art/Rocky…
Driving to Wrightsville Beach Friday I glanced to my right and saw an older fellow pedaling a beach cruiser. He was on a greenway paralleling Eastwood Road, which you may not think you know, but if you’ve ever driven to Wrightsville Beach, its the road that takes you across the drawbridge into the heart of WB. The man was riding in front of what looked like an upscale retirement community,…
31.5. It was a mileage marker by the side of the greenway. Having spent last week hiking the Mountains-to-Sea Trail along the Blue Ridge Parkway, I was accustomed to seeing mileage markers in the form of the parkway’s knee-high stone obelisks that tick off every mile. And I have seen them before on greenways, but never with such a high number. Rarely, in fact, in double digits. The 31.5-mile marker…
I love a good trail, and while I’m familiar with a lot of traditional hiking trails in North Carolina (see “Backpacking North Carolina” and “100 Classic Hikes in North Carolina”) I’m less familiar with the state’s rails-to-trail’s projects. I realized this in December when, on a 50-mile backpack trip of the North Carolina Bartram Trail, I suddenly found myself on a 1.2-mile stretch of paved greenway along the Nantahala River….
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…