Tag Archives: Eno River

GetOut! And do it Friday or Saturday, because Sunday …

Such lovely springlike weather we’re having, with sunny skies, temperatures in the mid-60s, dry air!

Until Sunday, when, once again, temperatures barely topping 40 accompanied by a wintry mix return. But, again, until then … . So what say we start the weekend a bit early, on Friday? If we do that, we have a couple of intriguing options: read more

Long hikes for cool fall days

Something about cool, fall weather makes you want to hike farther. Now that that weather has finally arrived, we’ve got some of those longer trails we think you might like. Here are 11, including nine in the Piedmont and two along the Blue Ridge Escarpment. (We’ll talk long trails at the coast in coming weeks, once the weather turns from cool to cold.) read more

A Sunday awash in spring

There were only two hours of sun on Sunday, but man, did our GetHiking! Sunday hikers ever take advantage. We hiked about 5 miles on the Mountains-to-Sea Trail upstream along the Eno River from Penny’s Bend Nature Preserve in Durham, taking in one of the best spring unveilings we’ve seen in years. We saw vast carpets of spring beauties, their little satellite petals of white and pink scanning the sky for sun. We saw the slightly larger rue-anenome, then their less-common cousin, the Dutchman’s breeches, a small hillside of them looking like clusters of pulled teeth (only stunning). There were violets, there were bluets, there were mayapples about to do their thing, there were trout lilies that already had. read more

Waking up to Winter

I woke up earlier than usual Tuesday morning and didn’t realize it until later. I was well into my morning routine before I happened to notice a clock.

6:10? Why am I awake at 6:10?

I looked out the living room window and saw why: the sky was already light, a glowing light even though sunrise was a good 45 minutes off. Even official twilight was a few minutes away. Yet it was already light out. read more