When I get lost on a hike, the first thing I like to do when I get home is dig out the appropriate USGS map and figure where I went wrong. I call the exercise a topopsy. Similarly, after a race I like to take a few minutes to figure out what went right and what didn’t. Thus, a few minutes looking back at Saturday’s River Bound 15K at the National Whitewater Center in Charlotte.
Make a mini raft (then ride the real thing), beat the heat with a nighttime search for Saturn, race on mountain trails. That’s what tops our list of thrills this weekend in North Carolina.
Coast
All spring, my stepson and his buddies spent their weekends building a raft — a raft they planned to ride for 35 miles on the Cape Fear River. Having paddled the Cape Fear I was a tad skeptical, what with the seemingly non-raft-friendly Class I-II drops along the way. But these guys being bright and well versed in the engineering arts, I kept my thoughts to myself: They’ll be fine. And after their three-day trip this past weekend, they were.