While Durham officials circle their wagons and privately mull how to come up with another $2 million to build a pivotal pedestrian bridge over I-40, thereby completing the 22-mile American Tobacco Trail, others outside the city are more candid with possible solutions.
We’ve added two more greenways to our greenway guide, both of which offer a potential day of escape, especially for young families.
Smithfield: Buffalo Creek Greenway. When we stumbled across this work-in-progress in spring 2010, we were surprised by the audacity of such a project (a $1.2 million, 3.3-mile greenway) in a relatively small town (population 13,000ish). The greenway joins the city’s historic center with new development on the north side of town. Starting at Bob Wallace Kiddie Park (and Riverside Cemetery, worth a visit in itself), the greenway skirts the Neuse River (passing the Neuse Little Theatre), then follows Buffalo Creek out to Smithfield Community Park, home of the new (2009) Smithfield Recreation & Aquatics Center, complete with indoor pool and splash park, indoor track, racquetball, basketball courts and more. Meanwhile, back downtown Smithfield’s wide streets and minimal traffic make exploring by bike enjoyable even for the newest of peddlers. Destinations include the Ava Gardner Museum and 75-year-old Howell Theatre and $3 movies.
To paraphrase a former vice president attempting to paraphrase a popular saying from the ’70s, a June weekend is a terrible thing to waste. So don’t.
Coast
No matter how far you’ve ever walked, I’m guessing you’ve never walked back in time. You can Saturday, on the monthly two-hour historical walking tour through Wilmington’s Oakdale Cemetery.
Sometimes all you need to get moving is a good excuse. Permission, say, to get up from your desk and take a 30-minute walk. Which is what you have today from the American Heart Association.
Today is National Start! Walking Day, deemed so by the American Heart Association. Today, over your lunch “hour,” the AHA wants you to get up from your desk and take a 30-minute walk — a 30-minute walk-a-day being the AHA’s prescription for better heart health (in addition to yielding a host of other benefits). And if the boss raises an eyebrow and says, “Whoa! Bumstead! Where do you think you’re going?”, the AHA has a succinct elevator speech for you to deliver:
America, you may have noticed, has developed a case of the runs. Hardly a weekend goes by when you don’t run across at least one 5K benefiting a worthy cause. They raise awareness and they raise a lot of money. They also give millions of runners a reason to train.