With high temperatures expected to soar into the mid-70s in parts of North Carolina this weekend, you have no excuse for not getting into the wild, be it learning to reconnoiter at the coast, scoping birds in the Piedmont or hiking the Blue Ridge escarpment.
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.
A new year brings new opportunities to be active: go birding with seasoned birders on the Outer Banks or learn the sport of curling. Or, stick to the tried-and-true with a good ol’ winter mountain hike, courtesy the Carolina Mountain Club.
Coast
We adopt a three-day weekend for the purposes of this week’s recommendations in order to alert you to the weekly bird walks held every Friday at the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge. Pea Island is home to about 400 species of birds, and now is a good time to catch a good mix of year-round residents and migrants down for the winter from Canada and other points north.
When I first started writing about fitness and the outdoors back in the early 1990s, there were a handful of ways you could welcome the New Year in most communities. There was usually a 5K run, a bike shop sponsored a casual ride, canoe clubs held members-only paddles, there was a hike or two, and some oddball group was jumping into a local lake (and jumping right back out again). You had options for welcoming the new year, but not a lot.
A polar bear plunge, a 5K, a hike, a kayak tour, a clinic — all good ways to end 2012 and usher in 2013.
Coast
Looking for a good reason to make one last trip to the coast in 2012? Try the five-day Crystal Coast Countdown, which begins Friday and runs through New Year’s Day (Tuesday). A range of activities are scheduled for North Carolina’s mid-coast area; those of most interest to active types include: Friday, 9 a.m.: Guided Kayak Tour in the Pine Knoll Shores area; Saturday, 8:30 a.m.: Resolution Run (1-mile fun run and 5K) in Beaufort; Tuesday, 10 a.m.: Guided hike at Fort Macon State Park in Atlantic Beach; Tuesday, 1 p.m.: Penguin Plunge, in the Atlantic, from Atlantic Beach.