Gambolin’ Man sent me an e-mail asking if I’d ever seen a movie set in Winston-Salem called “Goodbye Solo.” Turns out I’m such a movie geek that I had in fact seen it: the story goes like this: African cab…
Destinations
Places I’ve hiked and you should hike.
Sauratown Trail, Sections 12-13
by tom • February 6, 2010 • 0 Comments
Nobody asked me to document the Sauratown Trail, and I’m sure the last stragglers among my Bay Area readers wish I would move on to sexier terrain, but I feel like this stretch of dirt deserves bloggage. The trail itself…
Sauratown Trail – Sections 14-16
by tom • January 10, 2010 • 0 Comments
Good trail, great idea: Seems some local hikers and horse people decided there was no good reason not to have a trail connecting Pilot Mountain and Hanging Rock state parks, which are, after all, a mere dozen miles apart as…
New Year’s Day stroll at Salem Lake
by tom • January 1, 2010 • 3 Comments
I told a guy on the trail that I always try to get out for a New Year’s Day hike, though the facts don’t back me up: Just two First Day hikes in the past five (2007 and 2005 if…
Early New Year’s Resolution Hike at Pilot Mountain
by tom • December 27, 2009 • 1 Comment
Three weeks of gross lassitude and all-around laziness ended Sunday with a seven-mile hike at Pilot Mountain State Park (site of my first-ever North Carolina hike.)
Winter introduction to Grandfather Mountain
by tom • December 6, 2009 • 17 Comments
Somebody has gotten it into their heads there ought to be winter in the Southern Appalachians. I was not consulted. I was thinking I should have had my head examined when I showed up in autumn apparel at a deep-valley…
Easy hike at Historic Bethabara Park
by tom • November 29, 2009 • 0 Comments
The first settlement of present-day Winston-Salem began in an abandoned trapper’s cabin 20 years before the American Revolution at the site of Historic Bethabara Park, which commemorates the Bethabara settlement of 1753. Most of the park is populated with the…
Mount Mitchell and points north
by tom • November 16, 2009 • 9 Comments
“It ain’t Mount Tam,” the guy tells me in his distinct Carolina brogue. Seems he’d lived in Sacramento awhile and had dirtied his boots on a few Bay Area trails. I had just clambered through the gnarliest mile in recent…
First hike at Linville Gorge Wilderness
by tom • November 8, 2009 • 8 Comments
Linville Gorge Wilderness is high on all the must-hike lists for the southern Appalachians. The terrain is so ragged and remote that there was never much prospect of cutting down the trees and putting up swanky resorts. It’s all protected…