31.5.
It was a mileage marker by the side of the greenway. Having spent last week hiking the Mountains-to-Sea Trail along the Blue Ridge Parkway, I was accustomed to seeing mileage markers in the form of the parkway’s knee-high stone obelisks that tick off every mile. And I have seen them before on greenways, but never with such a high number. Rarely, in fact, in double digits.
This weekend, there’s a walk for non-walkers, a 100-miler in 100 days, and the Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour, two days of film-watching guaranteed to get you up and moving.
Coast
We’re always on the lookout for good reasons to walk for people who don’t like to walk. Such as Sunday’s African-American Historic Downtown Walking Tour of Tryon Palace in New Bern. This ramble through New Bern’s Historic District will cover 16 blocks (a little over a mile, by our reckoning) and 300 years of African-American history in New Bern. It’s estimated to take an hour and a half; lots of short walks with pauses in between to learn.
I thought we had lost the trail but in fact we were smack dab on course. The Haw River Trail was intended, it turns out to meander through the Glencoe neighborhood of restored mill homes.
Yet another attraction of this 70-mile work-in-progress that runs from Haw River State Park above Greensboro to its namesake river’s exciting conclusion — especially after a good rain — in Jordan Lake. In addition to showing off the natural beauty along — and in — the Haw — the trail is intended to showcase, and in the process help preserve, the remarkable human history that has evolved along the river. (Check out yesterday’s 90 Second Escape along the Haw for a video perspective.)
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.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, I’m doing you a huge favor by sparring you 15,000 words in exchange for 15 pictures, all from my journeys this week on the Mountains-to-Sea Trail along the Blue Ridge Parkway.
Enjoy, and have a slideshow-worthy weekend.