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 or slide show 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.
Tag Archives: Craggy Mountains
In 2016, GetHiking! The Southeast’s Classic Hikes
In 2015, we launched our GetHiking! Classic Hikes program with GetHiking! North Carolina’s Classic Hikes. Over the course of the year we hiked a dozen of North Carolina’s most notable areas: Shining Rock, Mount Mitchell and the Black Mountains, Panthertown Valley, the Mountains-to-Sea Trail and the Appalachian Trail, to name a few.
This weekend: Take a Hike
On trail or off, it’s a good weekend to take a hike in North Carolina.
Coast
One of our favorite hikes in North Carolina is the Neusiok Trail in the Croatan National Forest. Just not at certain times.
Like when the temperature is much above 60.
The Neusiok runs for 20 miles, from the Pine Cliff Picnic Area on the south bank of the Neuse River not long before the Neuse gives it up to to the Pamlico Sound, to the Newport River. Near Pine Cliff, the trail more resembles the Piedmont — even the mountains in spots. But once it crosses NC 306 headed east, it’s coastal forest all the way, passing through cypress swamps, bottom land forests and pocosins. Warm weather tends to arouse some of the regional denizens — some with little wings, some with no legs — that can make hiking an enjoyment challenge.
This weekend: Take a flying leap, celebrate a bridge, take a long hike
A good looking weekend is on tap across North Carolina. Our thoughts on how to make the most of it include a trip to the coast, where some of the best hang gliders around will be circling Jockey’s Ridge; an excursion into the Piedmont, where they’ll be celebrating another milestone for the Mountains-to-Sea Trail; and a visit to the high country where they’re doing what you do when the spring wildflowers start to pop: you go for a hike.