Celebrate your independence this July 4 weekend by exercising your right to pick the adventure of your choice. And in this free market of North Carolina adventure, you’ve got plenty of options, from a walk celebrating history at the coast, to mountain firecracker 5Ks, to an adventure of your choosing to the beat of live music.
Category Archives: Walking
This weekend: Walk into history, ID your birds, a winter summit
This is a weekend for just about anyone. At the coast, take a mellow walk into the past in downtown Wilmington. In the Piedmont, brush up on your bird awareness for the upcoming census. In the mountains, strap on your crampons for a high country winter hike.
Update: The Triangle’s evolving bicycle-pedestrian Scene
Progress never comes fast enough.
That was evident at this morning’s Fourth Annual Triangle Bike and Pedestrian Workshop, where local transportation planners got together to talk about progress made in 2013 and share what’s on the drawing board for this year and beyond. Nothing like getting a look under the tree a year or more in advance.
Report: House Creek Trail open
The latest word from the field, via the ever-reliable Michael Bowers, a longtime greenway aficionado, is that the House Creek Greenway in Raleigh is pretty much open: “I rode across the bridge” — for the last couple of months the greenway’s lone missing link — “today [Saturday]! All paving is done … connecting to the Meredith-[Museum of Art] greenway trail. The tunnel under Glen Eden is closed though due to fencing installation…which should be done in a few days. You just have to go around via Ridge Road.”
Man, is there ever a lot to do in North Carolina
Tuesday, I had one of the more exhausting times I’ve had in 20 years of covering outdoor adventure — and I was in an air-conditioned building. At a catered affair.
The affair was a media event sponsored by the North Carolina Division of Tourism, a gathering of tourism promotion types from around the state and the people they hoped would write about them. People such as myself.
Immediately upon walking in the door of the Contemporary Art Museum — CAM for short — in downtown Raleigh I was met by my old buddy, Suzanne Brown. Suzanne and I worked together for years in the Features Department of The News & Observer, Suz overseeing everything entertainment, me doing my outdoors thing. In 2008, we were both part of a massive newsroom exodus. I landed here, Suz at Tourism, a job that suits her as she wasted little time getting my attention.
“Do you know about the Southeast Coast Saltwater Paddle Trail?” she asked.
I didn’t, but I didn’t feel too bad upon learning that the trail is a work in progress, a proposed — though some of it exists — paddle trail running from Virginia south through the Carolinas and Georgia, where it will meet with the existing 1,515-mile Florida Circumnavigational Saltwater Paddling Trail. A kind of Appalachian Trail for paddlers.
“Cool!” I said.
“What about Jetpacks?” she wanted to know.
“And what about telephones with TV screens and flying cars?” I said.
No, she said, you can now rent a JetPak on the Outer Banks.
Then, in a Graduatesque nod to the Next Big Thing, she leaned in and whispered “Zip Lines.”