We’ve got a celebration of the Scuppernong River by paddle craft, a Great Amazing Race for you and a member of your family near Charlotte and a duathlon (trail run/mountain bike) on private property (worry not, it’s legal) near Asheville.
Coast
Climber/photographer Cory Richards is in town tomorrow night to speak about his experience as a top climber and photographer. His talk at the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences, “Both Sides of the Lens,” is part of The North Face Never Stop Exploring Speaker Series. I managed to get an interview with Richards late last month; I say “managed” because Richards was on location in the Crimea and he managed to fit my questions in between his climbing and shooting.
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.
We tend to think of paddle trips as epic affairs: get out the maps, surf the internet, pick a spot, pack a lunch, load the boat and go. Whew! No wonder we don’t get out as often as we’d like: it takes a lot of work to get out on the water.
But it doesn’t have to.
There’s something almost mystical about exploring northern Durham County. Perhaps it has something to do with the “forbidden fruit” thing.
There’s not a whole lot of public land in this northernmost reach of the Triangle. Until 2004, the lone option was the 2,450-acre Hill Demonstration Forest operated by N.C. State University. While yes, technically, it is public, the mention of recreational permits to visit always put something of a damper on a spontaneous drop-in. Then, in 2004, the 391-acre Little River Regional Park opened. With 7 miles of hiking and 7 miles of separate mountain biking trail, it was a welcome addition to the Triangle’s outdoor scene. Yet it was essentially the lone northern Durham option.