- Date Biked: April 25, 2020
- Posted length: Dunn Erwin Rail Trail: 5.3 miles; Buffalo Creek Greenway: ~ 3 miles
- Total miles Tracked: 14.9 miles (Dunn-Erwin) and 5.9 miles (Buffalo Creek)
- Type of Trail: Rail trail and Greenway
- Conveniences: In non-Covid times, there are bathrooms at the Cape Fear parking lot and at the terminus of the Buffalo Creek Greenway in Smithfield
- Best Features: Great scenery, small town access
- Worst Features: Poor road markings between the Dunn-Erwin Trail and the Cape Fear Trail
- Wildlife spotted: None
- Vegetation: Pines and hardwoods, wildflowers
- Additional Information: Met the Mayor of Erwin
- Associated Website: http://www.harnett.org/parkrec/dunnerwin-rail-trail.asp and https://www.smithfield-nc.com/page/srac_buffalo_creek
- Primary Author: James
North Carolina has a nice, long continuous segment of the East Coast Greenway. You can start riding in downtown Durham and stay on connecting greenways all the way to Clayton. After that, the next little section of completed greenway is less than an hour's drive away, the Dunn-Erwin Rail Trail. We actually went looking for this trail once driving back from Myrtle Beach. We made the mistake of going to the Dunn end. There was no trailhead parking lot, and what trail we could locate was overgrown and sketchy looking, so we gave up.
This April, in the interest of biking every last segment of greenway available to us in North Carolina, we took another stab at it, this time starting in Erwin. What a difference! The trail goes right through the center of the small town, ending at a small park with a gazebo. Covid19 had shut the town down, but there were small restaurants and shops that looked like pleasant places to visit post ride in more normal times. There was a nice large sign with a trail map at the start of the trail. If you plan to ride this trail, this is definitely the place to start.
When we arrived, I discovered that one of my tires was flat. We sat at a bench to change tubes, and an SUV with two women pulled up. They got out and picked up the bench next to us and started loading it into their vehicle. One of the women explained it was okay, they weren't stealing it. She was, in fact, the mayor of Erwin. We aren't often greeted by the mayors of the small towns we bike through, so this was a nice bonus. She also told us to make sure we biked the Cape Fear River Trail while we were in town. This wasn't a trail that showed on Google maps, but she said that the connector had just recently been finished. We told her we'd check it out and we parted ways. We had trails to explore and she had someplace in urgent need of a bench, apparently.
It's about five miles to Dunn, and it may well be the easiest five miles of biking on the planet. There is zero question that you're on a former rail bed. The path is very flat and very straight. It crosses a few roads, but most weren't particularly busy. The path is crushed gravel, but it's firmly packed and not at all difficult until you get to about a mile from Dunn, where it starts getting a bit grassy and rutty. Still, you don't need a mountain bike for this, a road bike would handle the surface fine. I would also imagine this would be a good trail for kids. It wasn't crowded at all, and unlike some rail trails there were hardly any embankments. Kids losing control of bikes and rolling down steep embankments is something we've seen more than once on our adventures. This wouldn't be a problem here.
The one tiny thing that might be a problem are the embedded milestones in the middle of the trail. Fortunately, these don't extend the full length of the trail, and I'm sure that the most raised of them on rose about an inch above the road bed, but the trail is otherwise so flat the seemed more like obstacles and helpful information.
Don't let the fact that this trail has no elevation gain or loss and only one real curve lead you to believe it's boring to ride. Once you get out of Erwin, you're passing mainly through farmlands and the occasional wetlands. It's quite peaceful, with plenty of wildflowers.
Of course, a ten mile round trip even on a nice greenway doesn't justify packing up the bikes and driving over an hour to get there. Luckily, we had two bonus trails! The first is the one the mayor told us about, the Cape Fear River Trail. This is a fairly short trail next to the river, in theory. The trees are pretty thick along the trail, so there's only a few places to catch glimpses of the river itself. The trail ends at a park with bathrooms and a gate leading to a kayak/canoe access. It's definitely worth tacking on when you ride the Dunn-Erwin Trail, giving you a few more miles of biking. Make sure you take a picture of the map! To reach the Cape Fear Trail, you're riding on roads through a neighborhood. Traffic is no problem, but not all the turns you'll need to make were particularly well marked. The trail turns off just past a water treatment plant and it's easy to miss, leaving you biking down a dead end road wondering what went wrong. Also, unlike the rail trail, reaching the river involves some serious downhills and uphills. Fortunately, it's worth the ride.
But wait! There's more! As long as we were in the area, we drove about twenty minutes to downtown Smithfield, to ride the Buffalo Creek Greenway. This is a short trail, only three miles. It's a paved trail next to the Neuse, and it's quite lovely. Mile zero has a graveyard on one side of the trail and a playground on the other, so it's a good place to remind you of how fun it is to play outside, and also that one day, you'll die. With thoughts of your own mortality to spur you onward, you swoop down a winding path to the river. In less than a mile you're riding past the downtown. Again, everything was closed due to Covid, but there are restaurants and shops and historic sites right off the path that we'd want to check out if we ever return.
Honestly, the only real drawback to the greenway in Smithfield is its brevity. I can only hope that one day it will wind up connecting the Neuse River Trail, which really isn't that far upstream. Being able to bike from Durham to Smithfield, then maybe on to Erwin and Dunn, without worrying about cars would be amazing. For now, I don't know that we'd make a special trip to bike the Buffalo Creek Greenway again, but we'd definitely walk it if we were ever back in the area.
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