Fall color is spreading across the state. Here are three ways to take advantage.
Coast
Sometimes, all it takes is the alignment of the right stars to kick-start an active lifestyle. Perfect weather — sunny skies, highs in the mid-60s. A challenging, but not overly so, adventure. A supportive environment. Beer.
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 or slide show 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.
A “brawl” at the coast, IDing trees in the Piedmont, checking out new trail in the mountains: it’s another active weekend in North Carolina.
Coast
You wouldn’t think that a nature preserve would be a suitable venue for a “brawl.” But when that preserve is the Brunswick Nature Park in Winnabow, with nine miles of singletrack mountain bike trail, then the venue does indeed seem appropriate for Saturday’s Brunswick Brawl endurance race.
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 or slide show 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.
Some rue the passing of summer, some despair over the approach of winter.
Others — hikers — revel in the fact it’s October.
With cooling temperatures, generally sunny skies, dry air and the natural world in transition, it’s hard to imagine a better time to be on the trail. Early in the month, the change begins on mountain peaks above 5,000 feet. As the days progress, the palette of autumn slowly descends — 4,000, 3,000, 2,000 feet. Finally, it reaches the Piedmont. And by the beginning of November it’s at the coast.