What’s better than probing a cemetery on a hot summer night? Hiking the base of Pilot Mountain, perhaps? Or maybe a triathlon of the sprint variety. You’ve got options this weekend.
Coast / Coastal Plain
It’s every kid’s perfect summer night: wait until sunset, then grab a flashlight and wander through the local cemetery. A rite of youth fraught with the forbidden: sneaking out after dark, trespassing, cavorting among the dead … . No wonder it was a highlight of being a kid.
Last weekend, we had a taste of the hot, muggy weekends that will rule for most of the next three months. This weekend, however, a reprieve: temperatures won’t get above 70 in the mountains, while low to mid 70s under sunny skies will be the rule in the Piedmont, slightly warmer temps at the coast. In short, a good weekend to get out and do just about anything.
Saturday, 30 hikers with our GetHiking! Triangle hiking group set off on an ambitious, but certainly not arduous, task: To hike all 60 miles of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail along Falls Lake. In Greensboro, our GetHiking! Triad group likewise launched a month of exploring the MST with a 5.7-mile hike on a section it piggybacks on the Sauratown Trail between Hanging Rock and Pilot Mountain. And this Saturday, GetHiking! Charlotte will commence its month-long exploration of the MST with a hike from the Basin Cove Overlook to the Devil’s Garden Overlook along the Blue Ridge Parkway.
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.
One thing about the recent weird winter weather: the breaks are, mercifully, falling on the weekends. Our upcoming one, for instance, is supposed to be dry with temperatures that’ll defrost your winter-weary soul. At least in the Piedmont and at the coast. The mountains, on the other hand, promise more winter fun.