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: Neighborhood Wilderness.
Category Archives: Hiking
Blue Ridge Parkway: Closed to traffic, open to adventure
My favorite time to be on the Blue Ridge Parkway?
When it’s closed.
As of Thursday, 81.8 miles of the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina are closed because of wintery weather conditions. (With few exceptions, the entire 469.1-mile parkway isn’t plowed during the winter. When it snows or the road ices over, the road stays closed until the snow or ice melts.) When those sections are closed to automotive traffic they become some of North Carolina’s best outdoor playgrounds.
This weekend: a Dismal hike, a really cool ride and … lost!
A glorious experience in a Dismal place, riding with the polar bears, avoiding getting lost (but what to do if you do). Just another diverse weekend of outdoor adventure in North Carolina.
Coast
“Remember that resolution you made to get outside and exercise more this year?,” asks Dismal Swamp State Park. (Hey, if companies are people and are entitled to a voice, certainly a great natural area is as well.) “There’s no time like the present to start!” And this chatty park would like you to start with its Resolution Hike this Saturday. Meet at the Visitor Center at 10 a.m., then explore what POTUS No. 1 and avid surveyor George Washington called “a glorious paradise.” The Great Dismal has a fascinating natural and human history (check out Bland Simpson’s highly entertaining “The Great Dismal: A Carolinian’s Swamp Memoir”) that can’t be captured in two miles, but it’s a start.
Dear Diary: I am a cow
I was thinking I’d just had a bad day on the wall. Then I opened my climbing journal to record my workout and discovered that my last workout, a week earlier, had been “a bad day.” Likewise, the workout before that, during the week between Christmas and New Year’s, had been “somewhat aimless.” Aimless and anti-productive, I discovered upon further review: Had it really been nearly two months since I’d done a 5.9 climb? My journal said it had.
90 Second Escape: Everybody Loves Umstead
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: Everybody Loves Umstead
Not only was parking lot full — which I had never seen before — but the road leading into Umstead State Park from I-40 was sidewalled with cars. “I’ve never seen it this full,” observed avid hiker Liz King, hiking the Company Mill Trail.
Impressive, but not surprising. It was a Saturday afternoon, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the mercury was zeroing in on 70. A good hiking day anyday, but especialy in January, when you never know when your next shorts-and-T-shirt day will come. And Umstead, located in the heart of the Triangle, is one of North Carolina’s most popular state parks.
So what’s it like when you need practically need a ranger to direct traffic over foot bridges? If you weren’t one of the hundreds at Umstead on Saturday, spend 90 seconds and take a look.