With the end of Daylight Savings Time on Sunday, GetGoingNC.com is looking at various ways you can keep active during the dark times ahead.
For maybe the fifth time in five minutes Alan stopped to comment on the trail. “This is a great trail,” he commented. And for the fifth time in maybe five minutes I reminded him that we had hiked this same trail maybe a half dozen times. His sense of discovery was justified, though. This was the first time we’d hiked the trail in daylight.
Every Wednesday through Thanksgiving, GetGoingNC.com will feature a hike in North Carolina that just about anyone can do. It won’t be a long hike (though we may throw in a recommendation for going longer), it won’t be strenuous hike (there could be a hill-climb option as well). The hikes will be timed to coincide with the changing colors of fall. This week, the 1.5-mile Buckquarter Creek Trail in Eno River State Park.
Does it help to have friends in high places? If there’s any truth to the old political adage then expect to see rapid development of the East Coast Greenway through the region, now that homegrown Dennis Markatos-Soriano is executive director of the East Coast Greenway Alliance. The alliance was founded in 1991 with the goal of creating a paved, 3,000-mile path for bikers, walkers, runners and other non-motorized travelers spanning the East Coast, from Key West, Fla., to Calais, Maine, on the Canada border. Markatos-Soriano, who grew up in Pittsboro and graduated from UNC Chapel Hill in 2001, was appointed executive director of the alliance in August. We caught up with Dennis at the ECGA’s Rhode Island headquarters to get an update on the trail and hear what his plans are for its future.
I needed a water bottle. I wound up contemplating the price of paradise.
Packing for a week of backpacking last night, I could only put my hands on one Nalgene bottle. My MSR water filter screws into Nalgene water bottles, making an otherwise annoying task – pumping water from a stream – slightly less annoying. Since I was leaving town early this morning, I’d have to pick one up on the road. Which put me standing in front of the somewhat new REI in Asheville late this afternoon.
Before you wait for Suzy to slip off to sleep tonight, her Halloween sugar buzz having finally worn off, and before you sneak into her room to pillage her plastic pumpkin, think about this: For every fun size Baby Ruth bar you filch, you’ll need to go disco dancing for about 15 minutes.