Saturday is National Trails Day. OK, every day is trails day, or at least it should be. But things get in the way of us honoring trails on a daily basis, so for the last 40 years or so we’ve set aside the first Saturday in June to make sure there’s at least one day we won’t forget about our trails.
Category Archives: mountain biking
Discover North Carolina’s State Trails
How do you follow an event like Year of the Trail?
You don’t. But you do build on it.
The just-passed Year of the Trail was intended to promote North Carolina’s vast trail system. Hiking trails, sure, but paddling, biking and equestrian as well. Year of the Trail events were held in 94 of the state’s 100 counties, those events ranging from hour-long guided walks on local greenways to three-day festivals celebrating trails across the state. The ultimate sign of Year of the Trail’s success? When the concept was conceived by the state’s General Assembly in 2021, it included $29.15 million for trail development; in the budget passed this past fall, legislators allotted nearly twice that much for trail development in the next two years.
Will you remember where you were on the first Great Trails State Day?
I remember where I was on the very first Earth Day, on April 22, 1970: Standing mid-thigh in central Pennsylvania’s Buffalo Creek, ostensibly taking measurements of stream flow but instead watching the very expensive stream-flow measuring device break its cable and disappear quickly downstream. I remember this more than a half century later because our usually mild-mannered science teacher, Mr. Morris, became wildly animated as he told just how expensive the device, which he’d borrowed, was.
A Weekend Trail Festival for the Great Dismal and Elizabeth City
You likely can tick off all the great adventures you’ve had at the coast, in the Piedmont, in the mountains. But what about in the far northeast corner of the state, where perhaps the state’s most unique adventure challenge awaits — the Great Dismal Swamp.
YOTT Weekend Trail Festival’s Next Stop: Sanford
It was the late 1990s when got my first introduction to the Sanford outdoor scene. I was mountain biking more than anything else at the time and the Triangle had yet to develop it’s extensive network of trails (legal ones, at least). Lake Crabtree, Umstead, UNC North — that was about it. Then a friend suggested we try Sanford.