Giving money to a good cause is good. Giving someone else’s money to a good cause is even better.
The good cause:Kids in Parks, an initiative by the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation and the Blue Ridge Parkway to get kids and families outside more. (I know, every time I read that — or write it — I think, “Why do we even need to think of ways to get kids outdoors? Shouldn’t we be having to think of ways to lure them back in?” Alas, this is not the case, as Richard “Last Child in the Woods” Louv has clearly demonstrated. Hence, the need for efforts such as Kids in Parks, which among other things aims to makes the outdoors too tantalizing for a tike to pass up. More on that in a moment.read more
Last week, I wrote about finding enlightenment through a race report filed by fellow Uwharrie Mountain Runner Charles West. After doing the UMR’s 40-mile version (I did the 20), he shared 11 things he learned from the race. Most were about performance, about nutrition, gear, tactics. I was most struck by point No. 11:read more
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 90-Second Escape: Standup paddleboarding.
Saturday, I had a chance to be on the water. Then I saw that the temperature at put-in time was forecast to be below freezing. Realizing that my kayak isn’t equipped with an ice-breaker, I passed.read more
On a sunny day, bikers, walkers and equestrians flock to the American Tobacco Trail.
I love a good trail, and while I’m familiar with a lot of traditional hiking trails in North Carolina (see “Backpacking North Carolina” and “100 Classic Hikes in North Carolina”) I’m less familiar with the state’s rails-to-trail’s projects. I realized this in December when, on a 50-mile backpack trip of the North Carolina Bartram Trail, I suddenly found myself on a 1.2-mile stretch of paved greenway along the Nantahala River. Later, I learned that I’d been on the Nantahala Bikeway, a U.S. Forest Service project that incorporates a half mile of old railbed along the Nantahala River in Swain County (near Patton’s Run, for you whitewater boaters).
I learned this by noodling around on the North Carolina Rail-Trails Web site, where I discovered the Nantahala Bikeway is not alone. In fact, there are 30 rails-to-trails projects in North Carolina encompassing 130 miles of trail. You’ve probably heard of one or two. In the Triangle, for instance, nearly everyone knows the American Tobacco Trail, a 22-mile, nearly complete trail that runs from western Wake County into downtown Durham. In the mountains, there’s the popular Thermal Belt Rail-Trail, which runs 8 miles from Spindale to Gilkey in Rutherford County, and the 4.5-mile Little Tennessee River Greenway in Macon County. At the coast, folks may have spent some time on the 5.5-mile Jacksonville-Camp LeJeune Rail-to-Trails in Onslow County.
What hampers the visibility of rails-to-trails projects in North Carolina is the absence of true superstars: Virginia’s 57-mile New River Trail and the 34-mile Virginia Creeper Trail; the 184.5-mile Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Historic Park trail in D.C. and Maryland; or the granddaddy, the 237-mile Katy Trail, which spans most of Missouri. We have no superstars in large part because, unlike in the north and Midwest where railroad companies have been willing to abandon long stretches of line, the obvious prerequisite for a rails-to-trail conversion, rail companies here retain hope that even their abandoned lines may once again become economically viable. And so, we have 30 projects across the state that have capitalized on smaller abandonments, from the 22-mile American Tobacco Trail to the half-mile Lansing Trail in Ashe County.read more
In my life as a guidebook writer, I frequently find myself returning from a scouting expedition and conducting a topopsy. That is, I get out the appropriate topographic map for where I’d been and try to figure where and how I got lost. It’s a helpful exercise. It sheds light on how I might help others avoid making the same mistake. And, to a lesser degree it turns out, helps me avoid making similar mistakes in the future.read more
