You’re eager to show your visiting friends and family why you love living in the region: the outdoor opportunities that make this such a wonderful place to explore. You also don’t want to alienate your guests — or worse, harm them! — by taking them on an outing beyond their capabilities. Fortunately, you can do the former while avoiding the latter with the 10 hikes below, hikes that offer considerable esthetic bang for minimal physical exertion. 

We give a short description of why these hikes are suitable for the non-adventurous in your life, then provide a link for additional information.

Coast, coastal plain

The Basin Trail

2.2 miles (out and back)

Fort Fisher State Recreation Area, Kure Beach

Spending time at the coast this holiday season? This hike, just outside Wilmington, starts at the Atlantic Ocean and makes its way through open marsh (the soggier parts are on elevated boardwalk) to The Basin on the sound side. At the midpoint, visit an old World War II munitions bunker that was later home, for more than a decade, to the Fort Fisher Hermit.

More info here.

Bay Trail

4 miles

Jones Lake State Park, Elizabethtown

Need to get your beloved visitors out of the house for the day? Send them to Jones Lake southeast of Fayetteville for a 4-mile meander around a regional oddity: a Carolina bay. No one is quite sure how these shallow, oval-shaped bays originated (the result of a meteor shower is the best bet), but there were once a half million of them along the East Coast. The hike around this surviving bay is half pine savanna, half swampy bay forest, all flat.

More info here.

Charlotte area

The Boulders Access

0.5 miles

Crowders Mountain State Park, Kings Mountain

Lure your hiking-recalcitrant crew to The Boulders with the promise of seeing the boulders just a short hike from the car. Then, when they’re smitten, suggest hiking just a little farther, a little farther, a little farther on the Ridgeline Trail, which will take you either south into South Carolina or north for about six miles to the main part of Crowders Mountain State Park.

More info here.

Triangle

The Peaks Loop

1/2 mile

Horton Grove Nature Preserve, Bahama

This half-mile trail is especially alluring in late fall, with the mature beech forest casting a brilliant yellow glow over a carpet of copper leaves. Ridgeline and valley hiking, with a short drop in, a short climb out on well-groomed trail. Want more? Tack on the 0.8-mile Holman Loop through a recovering Piedmont prairie.

More info here. 

Seven Mile Creek Natural Area

2 miles

Orange County southwest of Hillsborough

You’ll find some of the foot-friendliest trail around on this ramble through mature upland woods and down to Seven Mile Creek, a spritely creek that, shortly, feeds into the Eno River. The preserve’s difficult-to-find trailhead all but insures you’ll avoid holiday crowds.

More info here.

Pump Station Trail

1.5 miles

Pump Station Access, Eno River State Park, Durham

An especially good hike for kids — closely supervised kids — because it takes in the ruins of the old Durham waterworks. Brick foundations, an old dam, and other remnants of the long-abandoned water plant make for great kid exploring. The trail includes a stretch along a particularly rocky run of the Eno.

More info here.

De hart Botanical Garden

up to 4 miles

Louisburg

A short hike in gets you to a waterfall, a bamboo garden and a lake with a rock outcrop perfect for hanging out on. Venture farther and you’ll find another waterfall and one of the oldest white oak trees in the region. Something is always in bloom at this 92-acre preserve off U.S. 401 between Raleigh and Louisburg.

More info here.

Triad

Cane Creek Mountains Natural Area

2.5 miles

Snow Camp

Live in the Triad or Triangle and don’t have time to visit the mountains? How about the mountains in our midst, the Cane Creek Mountains south of Burlington? You’ll get an Appalachian-type experience on this 2.5-mile loop that traverses surprisingly rocky terrain before topping out just below 1,000 feet. A bit more of a physical investment, but the payoff is worth it.

More info here. 

Horne Creek Trail

2.5 miles

Bean Shoals Access, Pilot Mountain State Park, Pinnacle

The main parking area atop Pilot Mountain gets so crowded on weekends that hikers are now shuttled from the base to the summit. Avoid Pilot’s plenty by heading to the Bean Shoals Access and hiking this flatter stretch of trail that includes intimate Horne Creek and the expansive Yadkiin River.

More info here.

Little Long Mountain

1.6 miles (out and back) 

Uwharrie National Forest, Asheboro

From the Joe Moffitt Trailhead it’s a 0.8-mile hike up the north side of the 922-foot mountain (you’ll pass a spring midway, on your left) to the best on-trail view in the Uwharrie range. From the summit meadow you have a 240-degree view from the east to the south to the west; early risers can catch sunrise, night-owls sunset and the rest of us an expansive view of this relict central North Carolina mountain range.

More info here.

The post 10 Hikes for Holiday Visitors appeared first on GetGoing NC!.

Pack a camera, a notebook, a handful of nature guidebooks. Camp, stay in cheap motels. Cook dinner over a camp stove, linger over breakfast, eat lunch on the go. And listen. 

November especially is the time to listen to the outdoors. The seemingly constant breeze lets the trees, the grass, the plants tell their stories. Stories that began with a colorful birth in March, that celebrated the lazy days of summer, that grew melancholy come early fall and that ended, much like they began, in an explosion of color. The circle of life lived in just eight months. But what a story to be told at season’s end.

It’s a story told in one of three ways.

Long trails

If you’ve got the time, two coastal trails would love you stay a spell and listen.

• 

  Neusiok Trail, 22 miles, Croatan National Forest, Havelock. The Neusiok runs from the Pine Cliffs Recreation Area southeast to Oyster Point Landing. No need to rush: there are three shelters/camping areas along the way where you can camp and take the time necessary to experience the pine savannah, the bay woods, the bluff overlooking the mile-wide Neuse River, the boggy areas traveled (mostly) by boardwalk. It can also be hiked in sections, the most diverse of which is the northernmost 6.8 miles, from Pine Cliffs south and east to NC 306. Read more here.

• Weetock Trail, 11 miles, Croatan National Forest, Maysville. Such a tease, the Weetock. From its northern trailhead of N.C. 58 south of Maysville, it’s an open book for the first 6 miles. Maybe there’s a time or two where it plays coy and becomes discrete. But for the most part, no secrets. Then, right when you think you’ve got it understood, it crosses the gravel Jones Landing Road and spends the rest of its way trying to ditch you. This part of the Croatan has been ravaged by numerous hurricanes, the downfall covering large swaths of trail. Seemingly important swaths, because the only clues the trail shares from here on out are the unique metal-strip blazes (old newspaper printing plates) that catch the sun here and there. A challenge, but hey, who doesn’t love a good mystery? Read more here.

Easy beach hikes

Just as we love a good novel to read at the beach, so, too, do we love an easy winter hike — easy in the sense that it’s simple to follow but has a compelling plot. Some of our favorites:

• 

  Carolina Beach State Park, 9 trails, 9 miles, Carolina Beach. Carolina Beach is the Reader’s Digest condensed version of exploring the coast: in just 761 acres nestled between the Cape Fear River and Atlantic Ocean you’ll hike over forested dunes, through forests of turkey oak and live oak, around pocosins, past cypress swamps and through a carpet of carnivorous plants. The ecological sampling here is not to be matched. Learn more here.

• Fort Fisher Hermit Trail (a k a Basin Trail), 2 miles, Fort Fisher State Recreation Area, Kure Beach. Just down the road from Carolina Beach is a trail that exposes you to one of the more unique views in the state: water in nearly every direction. At the midpoint, the trail passes a World War II bunker, a sturdy concrete structure that, after housing ordnance in WW II, housed Robert E. Harrill, the Fort Fisher hermit who fled here in 1956 and stayed until his unexplained death in 1972. More info here.

• 

  Cedar Point Tideland Trail, Croatan National Forest, Cedar Point, 1.3 miles. No need to get your shoes mucky—an elevated boardwalk traverses much of the 1.3-mile Cedar Point Tideland Trail, in the wetlands where Dibbling and Boathouse creeks dissolve into the White Oak River (then, shortly, into Bogue Sound). In addition to keeping you dry, the boardwalk gives you get a bird’s-eye view of the fiddler crabs and other marsh life below. It is also an especially good spot for birding. More info here.

• Nags Head Woods Ecological Preserve, 4 miles, Kill Devil Hills. At 1,100 acres, Nags Head Woods wrote the book on maritime forests. It’s one of the best examples of such along the East Coast, hence the reason The Nature Conservancy elected to save it beginning in the 1970s. Nearly four miles of trail take you through densely vegetated terrain that includes 11 separate species of oak alone. Also calling the preserve home are 5 species of salamander, 14  species of frogs and toads, at least 50 nesting birds, assorted turtles, lizards and snakes. More info here.
• Patsy Pond Nature Trail, 4.5 miles, Newport. Before the European invasion, about 90 million acres of the Southeast were covered with longleaf pines. Today, that number is closer to 3.3 million. Which makes walking the Patsy Pond Nature Trail like diving into a good history book. A good history in that the forest isn’t just about the longleaf, but also about its supporting characters, including the red-cockaded woodpecker, Carolina gopher frog, bladderwort, sundew and a cast, literally, of thousands. Learn more here.

Coastal plain 

There’s nothing plain about these hikes, other than their coastal plain setting.

• 

  Jones Lake State Park, 4 miles, Elizabethtown. Every time I’ve hiked here it’s been: 1) in winter, 2) 40 degrees, 3) under cloudless skies. In short, perfect. Such a great experience has hiking the 4-mile Bay Trail been that I go back every couple of years to experience the open pine forest on the west side of Jones Lake, the dense bay forest on the east side. A Jekyll and Hyde hike with a total elevation gain of 3 feet. And if I’m hungry for more I can hop across the road (N.C. 242) and continue hiking at Turnbull State Educational Forest. Learn more here.

• 

  Merchants Millpond State Park, 9 miles, Gatesville. Every time I visit I think of the 1950s schlock sci-fi flick, “Creature from the Black Lagoon.” Although there might be alligators here, there have been no confirmed Gill-Man sightings at Merchants Millpond, despite the eerie similarity in swampy surroundings. The park may be known for canoeing on its 760-acre millpond, but the hiking here exposes you to some of the same treats, including bay woods and cypress and tupelo gum swamps. A great day trip. Learn more here.

• Pettrigrew State Park, 4.2 miles. Creswell,. When it comes to hiking you can go for distance or you can go to be awed. At Pettigrew State Park on the shores of Lake Phelps, the Morotoc Trail will certainly awe you with a collection of some of the oldest and largest trees of their kind in the state. Among the ancient oddities are various bay trees, sweet gums, persimmons, and pawpaws; the trunks of some bald cypress trees measure up to 10 feet in diameter; and, poplar trunks exceed six feet. “Vines as wide as human thighs wind their ways up trees as tall as 130 feet.” You’ll also see Atlantic white cedars that reach heights of 100 feet. Prepare for the slowest 2.8 miles of hiking in your life. Learn more here.

*  * *

Explore with us!

We’re starting 2022 off with three January adventures at the coast:

• GetHiking! New Year’s on the Weetock Trail, Sunday, Jan. 2, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.. Technically, it’s the day after New Year’s Day, but a true first-of-the-year adventure all the same. Read the trail description above, then go here to learn more and to sign up.
• GetBackpacking! Winter Series: Neusiok Trail, Friday, January 14 to Sunday, January 16. This 2-night, 22-mile trip is the ideal way to start fulfilling your 2022 backpacking goals. The flat course make these early season miles doable. Learn more and sign up here.
• GetHiking! Winter Weekend Escape to Jones Lake, Friday, Jan. 28 to Sunday, Jan. 30. Jones Lake State Park, Elizabethtown. Two days of hiking and two nights of stargazing in minimally light-polluted skies of the coastal plain. Learn more and sign up here.

The post Coastal trails beckon for winter hiking appeared first on GetGoing NC!.

My senior year in high school I went to a new school. In football, we went 0-9, in basketball, 0-18. I always wondered how our cheerleaders could muster the enthusiasm, the optimism, to encourage us to push on. 

I find myself in a similar situation, facing a rainy weekend, wondering how to encourage y’all to put on a happy face and head out the door for a weekend of adventure. So … well, grab your rain gear and let’s head out! Some options …

• Discovery Hike, Saturday, 10 a.m., Jones Lake State Park, Elizabethtown. We love the loop hike around Jones Lake because it’s so diverse. Start at the lake, a Carolina bay whose shallow, tanic waters resemble sweet tea, continue through a pine savannah, then round the far end of the lake and enter a dense, coastal forest. Your ranger guide describes what’s going on. Learn more and sign up here. 
• Spring Hike, Saturday, 11 a.m., Dismal Swamp State Park, South Mills. If your chances of finding spring anywhere this early in this rainy end of winter, it’s at Dismal Swamp, about as coastal as it gets in North Carolina’s state park system. A little spring, a few stills (retired) — sounds like a hike to us! Learn more and sign up here.
• Amateur Photography Hike, Sunday, 2 p.m., Carvers Creek State Park. Wish your photos even remotely resembled what you see in the wild? This class won’t solve all your problems, but it should help you figure out what to look for in your shots and how to frame them. Learn more and sign up here.

As always, you can find more opportunities this weekend here:

• North Carolina State Parks have a variety of adventures planned for the weekend. Check those options here.
• North Carolina Environmental Education Centers has an extensive calendar of what’s happening at its affiliates; check it out here.
• You can also find more adventures right here, at GetGoingNC.com

GetHiking! this weekend

What are we up to this weekend? 

• GetBackpacking! Intro to Backpacking. For starters, we’ll be graduating a class of backpackers at South Mountains State Park through our GetBackpacking! Intro to Backpacking program. While it’s too late to matriculate with this group, we have another class starting April 13. Learn more about that class and sign up here. 
• GetHiking! Winter Wild Off-Trail Adventure to the Birkhead Mountain Wilderness. This trip is full, but there’s still time to get in on our next Winter Wild adventure, at Raven Rock State Park. Learn more about that March 16 trip and sign up here.

Live the video

Indeed, this week’s video was shot last weekend, just as the sun was poking out after that week’s long run of rain. Maybe there’s hope for this weekend. If so, we highly recommend exploring the Horton Grove Nature Preserve, a Triangle Land Conservancy property in northern Durham County. Learn more here.

The post GetGoing! Your Nudge for Weekend Adventure appeared first on GetGoing NC!.

North Carolina

1. Jones Lake State Park

Bay Trail, 4 miles

Easy

Elizabethtown

Hiking clockwise from the Visitor Center: On a particularly cold but sunny day you’ll love the first part of this loop around the lake as it passes through an exposed pine savannah, where lots of warming sunlight bounces off the forest’s sandy floor. By the time the trail reaches the midpoint and loops back, you’ll be warm enough not to mind that the sun has been blocked by a dense sea of bay trees and pond cypress.

More info here.

2. Nags Head Woods Ecological Preserve

Blueberry Ridge Trail, 3.75 miles

Moderate

Nags Head

This 420-acre preserve was spared in 1992 by The Nature Conservancy and the Town of Nags Head, thus saving one of the largest remaining maritime forests along the East Coast. A favorite way to explore the preserve and get a sense of its more than 550 plant species (including oaks more than 500 years old) and 50 known species of butterflies, is on the 3.75-mile Blueberry Ridge Trail.

More info here.

3. Carolina Beach State Park

Sugarloaf Trail, 3 miles

Easy

Carolina Beach

How much eco-diversity can a person take on one 3-mile hike? Carolina Beach puts that question to the test, starting you off from the marina trailhead with a hike along the tidal marsh banks of the Cape Fear River, then through a coastal evergreen forest, a coastal fringe sandhills forest, a longleaf pine savannah and to the top of 60-foot-high Sugarloaf Dune, which is forested now but once proved an excellent spy tower for spotting Union ships sneaking into Wilmington.

More info here.

4. Fort Fisher State Recreation Area

Basin Trail (a k a Hermit Trail), 2.2 miles

Easy

Kure Beach

It’s 2.2 miles roundtrip and it features an abandoned WW II bunker. Of course it’s abandoned, you say — the war ended more than 70 years ago. In fact, it’s only been abandoned since the early 1970s; before that, it was occupied for several years by the Fort Fisher Hermit, a recluse who took up residence in the bunker for more than a decade. And that’s just one reason to hike this trail. The other is at trail’s end: a sweeping view of where the Cape Fear River blends into the Atlantic Ocean amid the Zeke’s Island reserve.

More info here.

5. Merchants Millpond State Park

Lassiter Trail, 6 miles

Moderate

Gatesville

Six miles, you fret, that might be a little long. Or it might not, for two reasons. One, this meandering trail navigates a swamp (the wetter sections are elevated by boardwalk), and nothing makes a hike zip by like the prospect of running into the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Truly, there’s something enchanting and weird about hiking along ponds carpeted in duckweed and harboring bald cypress and tupelo gum dripping with Spanish moss, and through a bevy of other aquatic plants Seussian in nature. So much to see, even in winter.

More info here.

Virginia

1. First Landing State Park

Cape Henry Trail, 6.1 miles

Moderate

Virginia Beach

Hard to believe a popular trail in a popular state park can offer seclusion, but this one does, as it encompasses stretches of dense forest, marsh and swamp. And, because the trail is wide and generally smooth, you can pay attention to these great features along the way rather than having to watch where you step. Good for either a peppy aerobic jaunt or an easy saunter to take in nature.

More info here.

2. York River State Park

Taskinas Trail, 2 miles

Easy

Williamsburg

You might think that an estuary where salt and fresh water combine to create a habitat rich in marine and plant life would be a paddler’s paradise, and it is. But with 30 miles of trail, it’s also a great place to explore on foot, to learn about the rich natural and cultural history (the park houses fossil beds and Colonial and Native American artifacts) and to experience the quiet of a coastal winter. The Taskinas Trail offers a good introduction.

More info here.

3. Great Dismal Swamp

Various canal trails

Easy

Suffolk

The fan of short hikes will like this trail for the same reason the long hiker likes it: how far you go is up to you. Hike 30 minutes out from the refuge office, or from Jericho Lane, or Big Entry Ditch, then turn and hike back. This is hiking for the mind: long passages of quiet, flat trail with minimal distraction.

More info here.

Check out our GetHiking! and GetExploring! hikes at the coast:

• GetHiking! Virginia Beach: Northwest River Park, 5.5 miles on the Indian Creek Trail, Otter Point Trail and the Molly Mitchell Trail., Southeastern Chesapeake. Sunday, Feb. 4, 10 a.m. More info and sign up here.
• GetExploring Greenville: Trailblaze Challenge Training Hike at A Time for Science, 6 miles, Grifton. Saturday, Feb. 10, 10 a.m. Open to all hikers. More info and sign up here.
• For more coastal hikes in North Carolina, consult “100 Classic Hikes in North Carolina” (2007, Mountaineers), here.

Happy trails,

Joe

The post As winter plugs along, hike the coast appeared first on GetGoing NC!.

Coast | coastal plain

One of the most popular courses we offer through our Get! programs is GetOriented!, a three-hour class that gets explorers comfortable with map and compass and thus, more comfortable exploring the outdoors, especially on their own. So far, however, we only offer the course in the Triangle and the Triad. So when we find a good opportunity to feel more comfortable in the woods that’s outside our current range, we’re only too happy to share it with you.

Thus, our recommendation of Saturday’s Compass Course at Jones Lake State Park in Elizabeth town. You’ll learn basic map and compass skills, then head out into the park’s compass course to test those skills. Compasses provided.

Logistics: Compass Course, Saturday, Feb. 4, 10 a.m., Jones Lake State Park, Elizabethtown. More info and sign up (it’s free, but space is limited), here.

Saturday forecast: Sunny, high of 50.

* * *

Looking ahead: Island Nature Tour, Sunday, Feb. 19, 9 a.m. – 11 a.m., Bald Head Island, Bald Head Island Conservancy. More into here.

Piedmont

We challenge ourselves in many ways: physically, mentally, emotionally, gastrointestinally. And sometimes, on rare occasion, we test ourselves in all four ways simultaneously.

Such is the case with the Krispy Kreme Challenge. As the promotional material for this iconic and wildly successful fundraiser benefitting the North Carolina Children’s Hospital (nearly $1.2 million has been raised over 11 years) succinctly puts it: “2400 calories, 12 doughnuts, 5 miles, 1 hour.” More specifically, run 2.5 miles from the Bell Tower at N.C. State to the Krispy Kreme on Peace Street, eat at down donuts, run back. Only those able to keep the dozen donuts onboard across the finish line are considered true “Challengers.”

Even if you don’t participate, it is a sight to behold (provided you don’t have a strong gag reflex).

Logistics: Krispy Kreme Challenge, Saturday, Feb. 4, 10 a.m., N.C. State University. $50. More info here.

Saturday forecast: Mostly sunny, high of 47.

* * *

Looking ahead: Eno River Sunday Hikes, every Sunday through spring, 2 p.m. Various locations throughout the Eno River Valley. Find a calendar here.

Mountains

It’s a cold, winter day where you live, a light rain falls. You wonder: What’s the weather like atop one of our mountains? How much colder is it? Is it snowing? Is it windy? Do I have the gear to survive.

Find the answer to these questions of summit climate and more Saturday, when a ranger leads you to the summit of 4,683-foot Mount Jefferson to examine the N.C. Climate Office data collection tower. You that tower has some great weather tales to tell; let the ranger act as your interpreter.

Logistics: Mount Jefferson Climate Tower Hike, Saturday, Feb. 4, 2 p.m., Mount Jefferson State Natural Area, West Jefferson. More info here.

Sunday forecast: High of 42, chance of rain.

* * *

Looking ahead: Flight of the American Woodcock, Saturday, Feb. 25, 6 p.m., Mount Jefferson State Natural Area, West Jefferson. More info here.

* * *

Those are our thoughts on the weekend. Find more options at the sources listed below. 

Coast

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