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.

They were busy about getting their business done because the canopy overhead was ripe with buds. The pastel greens of oak and hickory, a smattering of pinkish red buds. All against a sky, for duration of our hike at least, of sparkling blue. It was the sort of spring day a hiker dreams of. And there are more to come.

We share 84 seconds of Sunday’s hike in the accompanying video. You can accompany us on our upcoming spring outings by checking out our lineup, including our weekly Sunday hike series and our Tuesday evening hikes, at GetGoingNC.com /then click on Explore with Us.