I love it when a plan doesn’t work out. Last week at Stone Mountain was only mildly colorful at 2,300 feet, so this week I surmised the woods would be blazing around 3,500. I woke at an absurdly early hour…
This is a surprisingly vigorous 3.2-mile hike from the city park of Blowing Rock, North Carolina, to the base of Glen Burney Falls. The town itself is mainly a tourist destination named for the legendary Blowing Rock, a crag where…
These days you have to take the back door into Doughton Park, which is next door to Stone Mountain State Park on the east edge of the Blue Ridge Escarpment. I found that out the hard way when I tried…
You don’t come to Moses Cone to hike. The trails are all fat, gentle, and free of the roots and boulders that bring such pleasure across the Blue Ridge. Leaf Season weekends bring out altogether too many people and just…
Got back to the mountains this weekend to check out a couple trails near a tourist-heavy stretch of the Blue Ridge Parkway. Where I ended up: Julian Price Memorial Park, just up the road from Grandfather Mountain. The Parkway splits…
