It’s one of the cheapest recreation deals going: for as little as $5 an hour you can captain your own ship on any number of waterways throughout North Carolina. These bargain basement deals are offered at various county, municipal and state parks throughout the state.
This weekend, there’s inspiration by the surf, less perspiration in an evening run, more inspiration (not to mention answers to vexing questions of the great outdoors).
Coast
Sometimes watching can be as inspiring as doing. Case in point: This weekend’s 7th Annual Reef/Sweetwater Pro-Am Surf Fest at Wrightsville Beach. Some of the best pro and amateur surfers in the world will descend on Wrightsville in one of the largest surfing competitions on the East Coast (OK, so the East Coast of the Atlantic ain’t exactly the North Shore). The action begins on Friday, runs through Sunday and includes an art and music festival at Wrightsville Beach Park on Saturday.
I was emailing with a fellow runner in Charlotte earlier today and happened to mention that I went for a run at 9:30 this morning and it was already unbearably hot/sticky/miserable.
“I don’t know how you did it at 9:30!,” she wrote back. “I ran this morning at 5:30 and it was already 80 degrees!”
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.
A decade ago, there were perhaps 50 miles of greenway in the Triangle. Small stretches of mostly 1- and 2-mile paths that offered recreation for the immediate neighborhood, but not much more. Certainly nothing to throw the bikes on the roof rack and drive across town for, let alone rely on as a secondary transportation network for commuting to work or getting groceries.