Best Hiking Photos of 2020

Cheryl and I love hiking, and love exploration even more. While we do spend time on popular, heavily trafficked trails, we also love veering off off trail when we spot a trace of old road that might lead to an abandoned homesite. Biking can take us swiftly to destinations that have amazing scenery, but when we hike we tend to notice that any given patch of ground we're standing on is full of wonderful things. Hiking rewards taking things slow and noticing the small wonders that line the path to the big, photogenic vistas. 

A dragonfly on the path to Old Quarry Road in Duke Forest.

We hiked the Appalachian Trail! Part of it, at least. 

Travel tip: You don't actually need a ticket to hike at Occaneechee Speedway.  

The Mountain to Sea Trail is a great place to hunt for abandoned structures. 

Brumley Forest as we realize we'll never get back to the car before it gets dark. 

I think this is from Eno State Park. Maybe? We photograph a lot of butterflies. 

And we snap a lot of bee pics. I think this is from the Confluence.

Definitely from a Confluence trail. 

Paw paw flowers at the Confluence. Apparently these are really common in NC, but somehow we'd managed never to see them before this hike. 

A seldom trafficked trail through Duke Forest's Hillsborough division. 

Anole on the Uwharrie Trail.

Also on the Uwharrie. 

An even more obscure Duke Forest Trail in Alamance County. 

A Hen of the Woods in Duke Forest. I spotted this hiking with Calvin Powers, then hiked three miles back to it the next day to show it to Cheryl. Any mushroom big enough to be a destination is a pretty good mushroom. 

I honestly have no idea where we took this!

For security reasons, I can't reveal the location of this berry patch. 

Sunflower on the Hillsborough River Walk.

Another flower that could be anywhere.

Duke Forest, Hillsborough Division.

Guilford Farms, also part of the Mountain to Sea Trail. 

I went way off trail looking for a possible old homesite I'd spotted on Google Earth. I found it. This tree once shaded it. When you spot huge trees standing solo among plainly younger trees, it's a hint it might once have been a shade tree near a house or in a field.  

McCafee Knob. Cheryl's not posing dramatically just to be photographed. She's bracing against a ferocious wind. 

I think this is a Duke Forest thistle, but it might be an Eno River thistle. It was a big year for thistles. 

Hemlock Bluffs Nature Preserve.

Pilot Mountain.

A place you aren't supposed to hike to in Brumley. 

A place you probably shouldn't hike to near Duke Forest. 

This is probably from Duke Forest. 

From a hiking trail in Little River park. What's funny about this photo is that ten minutes earlier I actually said, "I guess it's too cold for mushrooms now." Then Cheryl went on to spot, like, 100 mushrooms, and took what has to be her best mushroom photo of the year. 

 

Biking the Neuse River Trail Greenway

• Date Biked: May 25, 2020
• Posted length: Neuse River Trail:  27.5 miles.  Clayton Riverwalk + Sam's Branch Greenway: 5.25
• Total miles Tracked: 68 miles 
• Type of Trail: paved greenway
• Conveniences: Parking lots
• Best Features: Only two road crossings the whole length. Plenty of access points. 
• Worst Features: Very few bathrooms or water stations near the trail, especially the southern portion. Sometimes crowded. 
• Wildlife spotted: It's common to see deer, rabbits, herons, snakes, turkeys and turtles. 
• Vegetation: Hardwood forests, overgrown briers, wildflowers
• Associated Website: https://raleighnc.gov/places/neuse-river-greenway-trail
• Primary Author: James

The Neuse River Trail is, in our opinion, the best overall greenway you can bike in North Carolina. It's the longest continuous greenway in the state at 27.5 miles, and flows seamlessly onto the Clayton Riverwalk, which connects to the Sam's Branch Greenway, for very close to 33 miles of trail. It was designed like a bike interstate; there are underpasses and overpasses to get you past intersecting roads, so that on the whole length you only have two roads where you might encounter cars. There's a short bit of road that takes you into Anderson Point Park, and you also cross Brownfields Road, where I can't recall ever encountering a single vehicle. If you enjoy riding without once worrying about traffic, this is as good as it gets. 

Taking you above and below existing roads, you can bike for miles without worrying about cars. 

At least, you don't have to worry about cars. Foot traffic and bike traffic are a different issue. The trail is fairly wide for a greenway, but bikes share the path with runners and walkers, and sections of the trail can be downright congested, especially on Saturday mornings. 

But, even on a crowded Saturday, one of the best parts about riding the Neuse is that it's not just bikers that enjoy the absence of traffic. Ride for any distance at all, especially early morning or later in the evening, and it's almost a guarantee you'll see wildlife. Deer are abundant, rabbits are pretty common, and herons are easy to spot during the summer. Wild turkeys tend to show up on the southern sections. There's enough wildlife that, when we took a picture of some wild turkeys in a fields, they got photobombed by a deer. The trail also makes snakes feel at home, so keep your eyes open for copperheads. 

There are so many deer along this trail they sometimes turn up in photos uninvited! 

We ride the Neuse frequently. Given its length, it offers several convenient rides. Out and back the full length is certainly doable during the spring and fall. Things get a bit trickier in the full heat of summer because one area where the Neuse falls short is in water stations. There are bathrooms and fountains at Anderson Point Park, which is located between miles 17 and 18. There's also bathrooms and a fountain at mile 0, at the Falls Lake Dam. And in between... nothing, at least not directly on the trail. There's a few spots where you can detour away and reach a good breaking area in less than a mile between the dam and the park. One of our favorites is a spur at Trailhead Lane. You can follow this to an apartment complex, and next to that there's a Sheetz. South of Anderson Point Park, alas, is a journey for people with strong bladders. There are zero restrooms along the trail. There are, however, miles and miles of rolling landscape that make you feel far removed from the large city only a few miles distant. 

Come for the bathrooms, stay for the birdhouses! 

Usually, we park at Anderson Point Park and ride either the northern section or the southern section, and add it little connecting greenways to get in about 40 miles of riding. North of Anderson Point Park, you encounter the Mingo Creek Trail, the Smith Creek Greenway, and the Abbotts Creek Trail. The Mingo Creek is the longest, at just over 3 miles, and has some nice boardwalks through wetlands. The Smith Creek Greenway looks like it's planned to eventually connect to a longer greenway, and has an impressive bridge to ride across, but is mainly just a mile through backyards of recently built houses. Abbotts Creek Creek is only about a mile before it hits Falls River Avenue, and is one of the most wildlife rich places you can ride. Your odds of seeing deer here are very high, and even if the deer aren't around the boardwalks will take you over wetlands full of wildflowers. 

Also some truly enormous butterflies.

Speaking of wildflowers, around mile 15, near the site of the old Milburnie Dam, there's was an impressive display when we biked in May, and there are fields south of Anderson Point Park brimming with flowers. In Anderson Point Park itself there's a large meadow, and numerous magnolia trees. Anderson Point Park is also the start of the Crabtree Creek Greenway. Currently, you can bike out about 6 miles before it's shut for maintenance. Two miles south of Anderson Point, you'll encounter the Walnut Creek Greenway, which is over ten miles long, but shows it's age after the first three or four miles. Still, between the Neuse and the connecting greenways, it really wouldn't be difficult to put together 100+ miles of biking without hardly any road crossings. 

A final note is that the Neuse is a segment of two larger trails. The full length is part of North Carolina's Mountain to Sea Trail. South of Walnut Creek, the Neuse is also part of the East Coast Greenway, which will one day be a series of greenways from Maine to Florida. North Carolina has one of the longest continuous segments, allowing you to bike from the center of Durham all the way to Clayton with nearly all of the distance on greenways or park roads. 

Cheryl and I feel very lucky to have a greenway with such a great length and design less than an hour from our house. The Neuse wasn't completely finished when we first started biking, and, much like the American Tobacco Trail, the the trail kept getting longer which pushed us to keep biking further. The fact that both trails are now fully linked up by connecting trails makes the Triangle one of the best places you could want to live if you enjoy biking.