Monday — never an easy time for the outdoors enthusiast, especially come summer. After a weekend of adventure, returning to the humdrum work-a-day world can make one melancholy. 
To help ease this trying transition, we’re running a new feature every Monday, at least during the summer, called 90 Second Escape. Essentially, it’s 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 in the sun.

Today’s 90-Second Escape: Paddling to Bear Island.

It may have the best payoff of any 2-mile paddle trip in the state. And the trip itself ain’t too shabby, either.
The paddle trip from Hammock’s Beach State Park Swansboro out to Bear Island is an intimate passage through a maze of channels meandering through tidal marsh. Your destination: the northern tip of an 892-acre barrier island. While there is daily passenger ferry service to the island between Memorial Day and Labor Day, the ferry lands mid-island meaning you’ll likely have the northern end to yourself. And you well could have the entire island to yourself from November through March, when there is no ferry service (it runs Wednesday through Sunday in May and September, Friday through Sunday in April and October).

Take 90 seconds and pay a visit.