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…
My idea of a good time when I can’t be outdoors? Sitting around a big conference table with the head of the state’s largest trail system and a newly minted map. Wednesday, Kate Dixon, executive director of the Friends of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail attended a meeting in New Bern about the path the MST would take from New Bern to the Outer Banks. Thursday, she took a few minutes to…
I was thinking I’d just had a bad day on the wall. Then I opened my climbing journal to record my workout and discovered that my last workout, a week earlier, had been “a bad day.” Likewise, the workout before that, during the week between Christmas and New Year’s, had been “somewhat aimless.” Aimless and anti-productive, I discovered upon further review: Had it really been nearly two months since I’d…
While most of you are staring down Day 3 of your 2012 New Year’s resolutions, I find myself with less than five months to go on my annual birthday resolutions. Make that “first” annual birthday resolutions: When I turned 55 last May 11 I got to Googling and discovered that 55 is a somewhat pivital year for a male. Among other things, our muscles and organs begin to atrophy; we…
Starting today and running through the end of the year, we’re suspending our normal programming to help those of you with kids on winter break find stuff to do. Every day through year’s end we’ll throw out an idea to get you and your young ones out of the house and, most importantly, have the little ones exhausted upon your return. Consider it GetGoingNC.com’s gift to you. Plan for today:…
Starting next week, a lot of you will be getting to spend more quality family time together. Parents often take time off from work over the holidays — either by choice or by employer mandate — the kids enter that glorious time known as winter break. Together, it adds up to more time to do ______ together. Starting Monday and running through the end of the year, we’ll help you…
Since it’s never too early to start making weekend plans, we give you our weekend planner a day early. Coast Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock — Scratch that — been spending too much time on all-Christmas-all-the-time radio. Make that Jingle Bell Run, as in the third annual 5K sponsored by the Wrightsville Beach Museum of History this Saturday in Wrightsville Beach. Speed is good, holiday costumes are better…
The gentleman in the meticulously trimmed salt-and-pepper beard and Tilley Duck Hat paddling the $3,000 fiberglass kayak sounded surprised when I replied that, no, I hadn’t seen any osprey or bald eagles. Hadn’t seen or wouldn’t recognize? he seemed to imply. “I did see a boatload of great blue herons,” I offered. He seemed unimpressed and continued paddling to the upper reaches of Bush Creek. Understandable, I guess. I’d actually…
This weekend’s offerings are proof that adventure in North Carolina knows no seasons. Coast Every once in a while, the Mackay Island National Wildlife Refuge opens its roads allowing the public in to better explore this 8,219-acre refuge in Currituck County. To explore its low-lying freshwater and brackish marshes, it’s upland and lowland eastern pine hardwood forests. And this time of year, to be treated to a variety of migrating…
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…