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…

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…

It’s not your stuffed-up imagination; the spring allergy season really is off to early start this year (and, thanks to climate change, may be trending in this direction). You can read all about it in today’s Charlotte Observer and The News & Observer, in a story I contributed to. That story is about spring allergies in general. But what about their effect on the more active among us? How does…

North Carolina’s diversity shows this weekend. At the coast, you can look for signs of spring, in the Piedmont you can run a venerable 5K and in the mountains, you can take a hike — possibly in the snow! Coast This is about the time the natural world starts to awaken from its cold winter nap — or as much of a nap as you can work in with temperatures…

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…

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…

Raleigh’s highly anticipated 3-mile House Creek Greenway is scheduled to open in March. Sunday, I took a little inspection tour. More about that in a sec. First, about that “highly anticipated” description. In Raleigh’s rapidly expanding greenway network, 3 miles isn’t a lot. The system consists of close to 70 miles at this point, and this 3-mile stretch is dwarfed, sizewise, by another stretch also under construction: the 28-mile Neuse…

A week ago, we issued a challenge: Walk once a day through the end of the month and you might just survive this holiday season. Less stress, improved mood, you won’t emerge from the holidays 15 pounds heavier— pretty good deal for walking just 30 minutes a day. Of course, being realists we acknowledged that finding 30 minutes a day might not be feasible during the typically hectic holidays. From…