This weekend: Go fly a kite (or watch someone who really knows how), paddle through 2,000-year-old trees, take a hike on top of the state.
Coast
This weekend, Saturday and Sunday, it’s theKitty Hawk Kites Annual Outer Banks Stunt Kite Competition. This is competitive kite flying at its best, on the Eastern League Circuit (were you aware there was an Eastern League Circuit for sport kite flying?) and sanctioned by the American Kiting Association (ditto?). While the spectating promises to be swell, amateur kite flyers can get in on workshops, demonstrations and kite making for kids. Stuff to watch for: kite ballet competitions set to music and fast-paced team flying that blend a both kite control and speed.read more
Wilderness areas shouldn’t be the private domain of only the most intrepid swashbuckling types who have no compunction about pushing through where the trail disappears, about fording waist-deep streams, about scrambling through rhododendron hells ever-so-deserving of the name. They shouldn’t be their private playground and they needn’t be. Provided you know how to get in the back door.read more
It wasn’t so much the five hours of rain they endured, nor the nearly 3,000 foot of vertical climbing in three miles to start the day (there would be 17,000 total feet of up-and-down during their 11 hour and 10 minute ordeal). It wasn’t getting lost at Butler Gap, nor the “quad-shredding” descent down Pilot Mountain. Rather, it was the need for a good sugar fix after running 27 miles straight on the Art Loeb Trail, which runs 31 miles through the rugged Pisgah National Forest (including the Shining Rock Wilderness) in western North Carolina.read more
