Finally, the forecast and the calendar align: we should have springlike weather this weekend.
As we’re attempting to do on an every-Friday basis, we’re here today to get you thinking about the weekend. Today, 40 seconds of last Sunday’s GetHiking! adventure at Umstead State Park in Raleigh: a little on the cool side, but sunny and glorious nonetheless.
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.
At our weekly GetHiking! Triangle hike a couple weeks back, I was approached at the trailhead by a woman who introduced herself as being from Virginia Beach, Va. She, her daughter and a friend were in town asked if they might tag along with our group.
When I first started writing about fitness and the outdoors back in the early 1990s, there were a handful of ways you could welcome the New Year in most communities. There was usually a 5K run, a bike shop sponsored a casual ride, canoe clubs held members-only paddles, there was a hike or two, and some oddball group was jumping into a local lake (and jumping right back out again). You had options for welcoming the new year, but not a lot.
We’re staring down the first steamy weekend of the summer. Frankly, I’m hard pressed to think of something to do outdoors that doesn’t involve water.
There’s swimming, of course. At your local pool (search for local parks and rec departments with pools at the North Carolina Recreation & Parks Association Web site), at a trusted swimming hole (find 76 in North Carolina at SwimmingHoles.org), at the coast (find Outer Banks beaches here, Wilmington area beaches here and assorted other beaches here.