Say goodbye to September with a coastal paddle, a Piedmont adventure race, or a day in the mountains with your heads, thoughtfully, in the clouds.
Coast
Perhaps we’ve mentioned this a time or three before; if so, forgive us. But one of our favorite paddles in the state is on the Scuppernong River upstream from Columbia. Wide and open as the river is at Columbia, shortly before giving it up to Bull Bay and the Albemarle Sound, the river just upstream, where it becomes part of Pettigrew State Park, is close and intimate. Perfect for a fall canoe trip.read more
There are times when you flat-out need to sleep in a tent but don’t have time to get out of town.
Like when the first warm days of the year present themselves and you realize it’s been … how long since you’ve been camping?
Or when you realize the kids have been hibernating behind their screens all winter and need some fresh air.
Or when you’ve had it with work and need to be as far from any electronic reminders of civilization as possible.
Times that you need to be encased in ripstop nylon but don’t have time to be encased in steel, glass and plastic to get there.
For those times, you have your local campground.
You might be surprised at how close the nearest campground is. In the Triangle, for instance, between Jordan Lake and Falls Lake alone, there are more than 1,300 campsites at six campgrounds. And the Triangle is not unique. Charlotte, Greenville, the Triad and Wilmington all have camping opportunities within their city limits.
In our ongoing collaboration with Great Outdoor Provision Co., we have identified five top campgrounds in each of the outdoor retailer’s seven markets (Chapel Hill, Charlotte, Greensboro, Greenville, Raleigh, Wilmington and Winston-Salem). We’ve compiled everything you need to know — from location (down to the latitude and longitude) to number and type of campsites to cost to what activities you can do nearby — to plan a quick trip.
You can find the information in one of two places.read more
This year’s edition of the annual Great Backyard Bird Count is Feb. 15-18. On those days, amateur birdwatchers — or Citizen Scientists, as joint sponsors The Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Audubon refer to them — take as little as 15 minutes a day to record the bird activity around them. Count the number of different species you see in a given location, enter your findings at the GBBC Web site.
The count is open to even the most inexperienced birder. But if you are that inexperienced birder, you’d like to have at least some idea of what you’re looking at. If you can’t tell a robin from a wren, then you might benefit from an Armchair Birding class, which they just happen to be offering Sunday at Dismal Swamp State Park. Tips on how to ID birds and “make a contribution as a Citizen Scientist … in next week’s Great Backyard Bird Count.”read more
Welcome to our latest effort in our quest to build a comprehensive list of places to play in North Carolina: Mountain biking.
North Carolina, if you aren’t aware, is a hot spot for mountain biking. Last year, Outside magazine named the Pisgah National Forest one of the top five mountain biking destinations in the U.S. Singletracks.com asked its followers to name the their favorite trails in the world, and four were in the state: Tsali, the Fletcher Creek area of Mills River, Bent Creek near Asheville and Overmountain Victory Trail at Kerr Scott Reservoir near Wilkesboro.
You want an epic ride? You don’t have to go far if you live in North Carolina.
Here’s our preliminary offering of 19 places to ride that we think are pretty swell. But we want to hear what you think. Think a place on our list is overrated and should be replaced? Let us know. Have we made a glaring omission? Fill us in. Or maybe we’ve omitted a key detail about one of the places that is listed. Tell us about that as well.
We’ll update the list periodically, and so you don’t have to go searching around the site to find, it will live permanently in the left rail of our home page. Scroll down to “Mountain biking,” click and you’re in business.
And send us your thoughts. Nothing like another good excuse to ride.read more
A little behind in ticking off your 2012 resolutions? This weekend gives you a chance to knock off a sprint tri, a mud run or a 5K.
Coast
A sprint triathlon isn’t the kind of thing you decide to do at the last minute. Unless … . Unless, for instance, you’ve had an active year but thought your season was over in September. Then, suddenly, you hear about a sprint tri this Saturday at Emerald Isle. Or unless one of your resolutions for the year was to do a sprint tri and here it is mid-October and you still haven’t done one. Or unless you don’t have plans for the weekend and a swim/bike/run at the coast sounds fun.read more
