Not when you love the outdoors and 2023 happens to be Year of the Trail in North Carolina.

As I’ve mentioned over the last couple of months, next year has been deemed Year of the Trail in North Carolina and there’s going to be a lot going on. For starters, the State Legislature in 2022 allocated $29.15 million in funding for the Complete the Trails Fund. That money will fund State Trail projects as well as projects deemed :shovel-ready” — that is, the land has been purchased and the trail designed; all that’s needed now is the money to build it. Expect a lot of “Excuse our Mess” signs out in the woods next year.

Activity-wise, the Great Trails State Coalition, a non-profit created to promote North Carolina trails in 2023 and beyond, hopes to see a trail-related event — hike, bike ride, paddle trip, horseback ride — conducted in all 100 North Carolina counties in 2023. And the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources is working up a full slate of fun as well, including programs through their PATH — or Parks and Trails for Health — program. But it’s another Department of Natural and Cultural Resources program that has me suggesting you get out your 2023 calendar (or buy one in the first place).

Big adventures in smaller places

Hometown Strong is an initiative of Gov. Roy Cooper that works with the state’s 80 rural counties to boost their prosperity. In general, communities identify problems they need help with — from modernizing their websites to overhauling their water treatment systems — and Hometown Strong’s policy analysts work to help them solve those problems, in large part by helping them find available funding. 

Sometimes, though, it works in reverse. In the case of Year of the Trail, Hometown Strong identified 11 communities with unheralded — or underheralded — recreational resources, and is working with those communities to shine a light on said resources. This will take place in 2023 in the form of trail day weekends celebrating these resources with street fairs and guided hikes and trips. This is where you get out your 2023 calendar to jot down the following trail festival dates:

• February 17-19 — Elizabethtown
• March 24-26 — Morganton
• April 22-23 — Eden
• May 12-14 — Sanford
• June 2-4 — Old Fort
• June 2-4 — Elizabeth City
• September 15-17 — Swansboro
• October 15-17 — Robbinsville

Other communities with dates yet to be determined are West Jefferson, Edenton, and Shelby.

With the possible exceptions of Morganton and Old Fort, you may be looking at this list and wondering: I’ve never heard of some of these places. Who on Earth put this list together? 

I did.

Elizabethtown? Eden?

In July, I was brought aboard Hometown Strong as an ecotourism advisor. It’s a dream assignment because in my 30 years of writing about the outdoors in the Southeast, and my 10 years of guiding trips, I’ve been all about uncovering the state’s hidden gems. From the state parks less visited (Medoc Mountain), to the back entrances to popular spots (the Longbottom Access to Doughton Park), to the places you might not think to visit unless you think about the right time to visit (the Great Dismal Swamp, in the dead of winter).

Basically, the places best accessed through the towns Hometown Strong will celebrate in 2023.

But … Elizabethtown? you ask.

You bet, Elizabethtown! (For those of you scratching your head, Elizabethtown is in the Coastal plain, southeast of Fayetteville.)

For starters, the Mountains-to-Sea runs through Elizabethtown. The area is also home to Jones Lake and Singletary Lake state parks, as well as Turnbull Creek Educational State Forest. There’s also Bay Tree Lake State Natural Area, Bladen Lakes State Forest, the Suggs Mill Pond Game Lands. There’s at least 70 miles of hiking in the area, through pine savannah, bay forest and more. On a cool and sunny winter’s day, you can’t find a better place to hike.

And Eden? I don’t even know where that is?

It’s north of Greensboro, near the Virginia line. It’s also where we recently relocated to, in part because of the varied outdoor opportunities. (I can be on the Smith or Dan rivers in less than 10 minutes after getting a hankering to paddle.) And where hikes such as the one in Mayo River State Park take you to surprising finds such as Deshazo Falls, pictured above.

Through the end of this year, I’ll be taking you to the 11 communities we will celebrate in 2023. I’ll provide an overview of the activities and a hint of the event itself (a “hint” because some won’t be fully conceptualized until after the first of the year).

Truly, the Great Trails State

In fact, some of you may even scoff at the notion of North Carolina as the “Great Trails State.”

For starters, there’s the 1,175-mile Mountains-to-Sea Trail, the 300 miles of the Appalachian Trail (some of which we share with Tennessee); The Great Smoky Mountains National Park with its 800 miles of trail (again, we share some with Tennessee), the Blue Ridge Parkway, known for  its scenic pavement but with 369 miles of trail (some of which is in Virginia), the Art Loeb Trail, the Neusiok Trail, the Bartram Trail, the Benton MacKaye Trail, the Foothills Trail … .

Perhaps even more impressive is everything that’s to come. There’s the 159 trail projects identified by the Great Trails State Coalition as waiting to come out of the ground. There’s the Fonta Flora State Trail, which is seemingly growing by the month and will one day link Morganton and Asheville. There’s the 40-mile Northern Peaks State Trail, the northern terminus for which will likely break ground in 2023 on Paddy Mountain near West Jefferson. There’s footbridge construction in the works that will result in a 12-mile continuous stretch of the MST near Elizabethtown, resulting in one of the longest completed stretches of the MST east of Smithfield. 

Trails are in demand in North Carolina and the money to build them is becoming available. That’s thanks in part to the State Legislature and its visionary Complete the Trails Fund. But also to the communities, especially the smaller ones, willing to allocate often sparse resources to create trails. Those communities are the ones we will celebrate in 2023.

So, again, mark your calendars.

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Resources

• Great Trails State Coalition. You can find additional information on Year of the Trail here; you’ll find even more when it posts its calendar listing all events planned for the year.
• Parks and Trails for Health. This program through the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources is a new initiative intended to promote physical activity in the state’s parks, greenways and other outdoor spaces. Find information about those activities and, in 2023, Year of the Trail events here.

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Then the Triangle Greenways Council came up with the Circle the Triangle Trail concept.  Circle the Triangle basically called for linking these disparate stretches of trail to create a trail network linking the Triangle’s various communities. Roughly 15 years later, the Triangle has more than 180 miles of greenway comprising a system — a true system — where it will soon be possible to, for instance, ride a bike from Clayton in Johnston County to Raleigh, to Umstead State Park, to Cary, to Chatham County and on to downtown Durham. Amazing what a little focus can accomplish.

In 2005, the Charlotte area found itself where the Triangle was 15 years earlier, with a mile or so of greenway here and there. Wouldn’t it be great, 40 or so regional leaders brought together by the Foundation For The Carolinas thought, if we could have an extensive network of trails — paved, natural surface, wet — linking communities in 15 counties representing 2.3 million people? A “green interstate system,” as it were? Two years later, in 2007, the Charlotte area’s version of Circle the Triangle was launched.

The Carolina Thread Trail, “rooted in a region with a rich heritage of weaving fabric,” is the region’s carrot for developing a secondary, non-motorized transportation network. It’s an aggressive effort that has since raised $16.8 million in cash donations, $3.77 million in land donations and $17.8 million in committed public funds. It’s goal: blaze at least 1,200 miles of trail to link its communities. (“At least” 1,200 miles, says Amanda Anderson, CTC’s grants and volunteer coordinator, because that’s how many miles are covered in the trail master plans approved by 12 of the 15 Thread counties. The total will grow when the remaining three counties adopt their master plans.)

Most of those 1,200-plus miles of trail will be built by local municipalities, counties, parks & recs — the various public agencies that typically do such things. The Carolina Thread Trail brings two crucial elements to the table.  One, that most crucial of elements, money to build the trails. To complete the Thread Trail will require an estimated $150 million. By serving as coordinator/cheerleader, the CTT has been able to attract significant financial support: chipping in $1 million or more are The Bank of America Foundation, C. D. Spangler Foundation  Duke Energy The Duke Energy Foundation, Foundation For The Carolinas, John S. & James L. Knight Foundation, Turner Family Foundation, The Wachovia Wells Fargo Foundation and the Clean Water Management Trust Fund.

Significantly, too, the Carolina Thread Trail brings a sense of unified vision to trail efforts in the 15 member counties. In the Triangle in the mid-1990s, Circle The Triangle prompted local greenway and trail planners to take note of what their neighbors were doing. That  focused efforts that helped one municipality’s 5-mile trail become part of a much larger network. In Raleigh, for example, where it is now possible to hop on a greenway in the southeast part of town, ride up through the N.C. State and Meredith College campuses, continue on to Umstead State Park, ride through the park to Cary’s Black Creek Greenway, which hooks up with the town’s White Oak Creek Greenway, which — with a brief road connection — links to the American Tobacco Trail into Chatham County and Durham — a roughly 50-mile ride through six jurisdictions.

“We have two community coordinators who work with the counties to keep track of what’s going on,” says Anderson of the CTT’s effort to make similar connections. “They know each county and what’s expected to come on line in the near future.”

Anderson says the Carolina Thread Trail plans to launch construction of 2 miles of trail at Long Creek in October, and that the entire network should grow by 10 to 12 miles by February, putting it near the 90-mile mark.

A backhanded positive of this growth: No printed trail map exists for the Carolina Thread Trail.

“By the time we’d put one out,” says Anderson, “it would be out-of-date.”

For now, you can find a quick rundown — including name, location, length and suitable recreational activities — of the 26 trails in the Carolina Thread Trail network below. You can find additional details on each property at the Carolina Thread Trail site.

* * *

Current members of the Carolina Thread Trail

Baxter Village Trail
Fort Mill, S.C.
2.25 miles
Natural surface
Mountain biking, running, walking

Bakers Creek Greenway
Kannapolis
2.0 miles
Paved
Walking, running, paved surface bicycling, rollerblading, skateboarding

Blue Star Trail
Fort Mill, S.C.
1.0 miles
Natural surface/gravel
Hiking, walking

Broad River Greenway
Shelby
3.0 miles (adjoining 17 additional miles)
Natural surface
Walking, running, biking, horseback riding, fishing, canoeing

Catawba Creek Greenway
Gastonia
1.8 miles
Paved
Walking, running, paved surface biking, skateboarding

Catawba River Greenway at Tuckaseege Park
Mt. Holly
1.0 mile
Paved
Walking, running, paved surface bicycling, rollerblading, skateboarding, fishing

Highland Rail Trail
Gastonia
1.5 miles
Paved
Walking, running, paved surface bicycling, rollerblading, skateboarding

Irwin Creek/Stewart Creek Greenway
Charlotte
2.1 miles
Paved/gravel mix
Walking, jogging, biking

Kings Mountain Gateway Trail
Kings Mountain
2.26 miles
Paved/gravel mix
Walking, running, biking, rollerblading, skateboarding

Landsford Canal
Chester, S.C.
0.75 miles
Crush-and-run gravel
Paddling, running, walking

Little Sugar Creek Greenway
Charlotte

— Cordelia Park to Alexander Street Park
0.7 miles
Asphalt/sidewalk
Walking, running, biking

— Freedom Park (Morehead Street to Brandywine/Westfield Road)
2.6 miles
Paved
Skateboarding, running

— Huntingtowne Park
0.8 miles
Paved
Skateboarding, running

— Morehead Street to Brandywine/Westfield Road
2.2 miles
Paved
Walking, running, paved surface bicycling, rollerblading, skateboarding

Lower McAlpine Creek/Campbell Creek
Charlotte
4.1 miles
Paved
Walking, running, biking
Detailed information also at GetGoingNC.com

Mallard Creek/Toby Creek Greenway
Charlotte
8.5 miles
Paved
Walking, running, paved bicycling, skateboarding
Detailed information also at GetGoingNC.com

Manchester Meadows Trail
Rock Hill, S.C.
1.1 mi.
Paved
Walking, running, biking

Marcia H. Cloninger Rail-Trail
Lincolnton
1.1 mi.
Paved
Walking, running, paved surface biking

McDowell Creek Greenway
Huntersville
1.5 mi.
Paved
Walking, jogging, biking

McEachern Greenway
Concord
1.42 mi.
Paved
Walking, running, biking, dog walking
Rollerblading, skateboarding

Nation Ford Greenway /Springfield Section
Fort Mill/York, S.C.
2.1 mi.
Natural surface single track
Mountain biking, running, walking

Riverside Greenway
Cramerton
1.2 mi.
Paved
Walking, running, paved surface bicycling, paddling, fishing

Rocky Creek Trail
Great Falls, S.C.
2.4 mi.
Natural/gravel
Walking, running, biking, paddling

Southeast Greenway
Davidson
2.3 mi.
Paved
Walking, running, biking, skateboarding, rollerblading

Spencer Mountain/R.Y. McAden blueway
Spencer Mountain
5.5 mi.
River
Paddling

Torrence Creek Greenway
Huntersville
0.8 mi.
Paved
Walking, running, biking,

Wylie Walking and Biking Trail
Chester, S.C.
1.0 mi.
Paved
Walking, running, paved surface bicycling

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