(Every Monday for the duration, we’ll explore an aspect of Exploring Your Neighborhood. Today, a gem we stumbled upon in our own backyard.)
I’d heard tell of some trails I wasn’t aware of in western Orange County a couple years back while researching a story about the Mountains-to-Sea Trail’s path from Saxapahaw to Hillsborough. Because of landowner objections along the planned route, the route was pretty much just that, planned. “That is,” came the vague caveat, “except for a couple miles of trail somewhere along Seven Mile Creek.”read more
These days, you find adventure where you can — provided it’s close to home.
Personally, I’ve established a 10-mile perimeter for how far I’ll go, for the most part, for a good adventure. (I say “for the most part,” because if there’s an adventure to be had that’s slightly beyond that, I’ll go if the odds of encountering others is slim to none. So far, I’ve breeched my 10-mile containment zone once, a paddle trip that easily complied with social distancing standards.)read more
Just as we started wondering when trails might start reopening, they closed even more more earlier this week.
On Monday, the U.S. Forest Service announced it was closing roads and trails in the 500,000-acre Pisgah National Forest. “It is not a closure of the whole forest,” Forest Service spokeswoman Cathy Dowd told the Asheville Citizen Times. “There’s about 200 miles of road and 700 miles of trails that remain open on the Pisgah National Forest.”read more
We had to skip our morning walk this morning, the first since we started taking you along with us on our new Morning Walk with Joe Facebook live feature. The reason: the weather.
We’ve long advocated hiking in the rain — a light rain. Not a driving rain that spend the previous day and night rampaging across the country spawning heavy rain, thunderstorms and tornados, causing death and destruction. That’s what we woke up to this morning. Rather than take a stroll, we opted to hunker down in the bathtub instead.read more
We are in the cusp of a gorgeous weekend, at least here in the Piedmont of North Carolina. A cold front is moving through, dropping temperatures 20 degrees from the past several days. At least through Saturday, that means temperatures only in the low 60s under sunny skies.read more
