Category Archives: Uncategorized

90 Second Escape: Winter’s End on the Blue Ridge Escarpment

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. read more

Don’t let Mother Nature rain on your weekend

Tweety would probably love a peanut butter 'n' bird seed ball.

Sure, it’s supposed to rain almost everywhere in North Carolina this weekend. But that doesn’t mean you need to stay home and sulk.

Coast

After warm and sun during the week, it figures that we’re looking at rain for the weekend, approaching a 50 percent chance along the coast. So, how about retreating to the dryness of a classroom to learn something about the outdoors world. Like how to supplement our feathered friends’ diet come the Spartan days of winter? Sunday at 2 p.m. you can learn how to make treats your bird buddies will love, at Dismal Swamp State Park tucked up in the far northeast corner of the state. read more

Footing the bill for a truly happy holidays

Happy holidays! Here’s hoping you survive them!

If you’re looking for a time of year that’s hardest on your body, you’d be hard-pressed to beat the one that kicked off with pants-unbuckling Thanksgiving and ends with a cold pack on your head New Year’s Day. Think about the damage alone done by the one-two punch of Thanksgiving and Black Friday. read more

Fall starting to light up the Piedmont

The understory (dogwood) is turning at Hemlock Bluffs, the canopy not yet.

Sunday, Marcy and I headed over to Hemlock Bluffs Nature Preserve in Cary after roadside flashes of sourwood red and dogwood peach suggested the fall color show was just getting underway. Roadside trees — stressed by the heat of automotive exhaust — are often the first to show their chromatic hand. When they start to go, we grab the camera and head for woods. read more

Hey, you! Take your kid outside

This is Take A Child Outside Week, a week that, for reasons that escape me, we must force ourselves to force our kids outside. Not to sound like an old crank, though I will, back in the day our parents used to boot us outdoor first thing in the morning every day. Then, come sunset, they’d open that door and start yelling for us to come in. That was a daily occurrence. Today, again, we set aside one week to remind ourselves to take the kids outside. read more