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State Park
Pilot Mountain State Park in North Carolina is a popular place for hikers and runners, and is one of my favorite spots. It is close to Winston-Salem and has a very distinctive profile that lends it nicely as a landmark for navigation, and can be easily seen from some places in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
It's a bit of a drive out to the land of pine and sandhills and brackish water where the Pamlico River meets the ocean, but it was a beautiful day for a hike under the loblollies while buzzards flew above the treetops, the sun rimming their broad wings with tips of gold. We'd driven to Washington, NC - just a couple miles outside historic Bath, NC - to explore Goose Creek State Park, a swampy park with boardwalks, Spanish moss, and scrub pines.
Umstead State Park is not an escape. Let's just go ahead and get that cleared up. You're not going to Umstead State Park to get away, to find yourself in some remote place or discover some backcountry route. But that being said, Umstead State Park is a good place to get away.
The heat and humidity sulked over Kentucky like an unwelcome heavy blanket. In the Red River Gorge it lay so thick that the Kentucky bass could have risen from the water and thrived on the land gulping down swallows of wet air. Horseflies the size of fingers sliced through the haze with their glittering wings and left welts on sticky skin from their careening flights and sharp bites. At the campsite on the edge of Middle Fork Red River I melted. I slipped into the cool creek and watched crawdads dart from under polished stones.
Sometimes the best adventures aren't the ones with the biggest summits, the longest miles, or the hardest obstacles. Sometimes the best adventures are simply based on the company that you keep.
On Friday morning when a friend of mine asked me if I wanted to help clean up a state park on Saturday morning, I of course said "yes!" It's so easy to take for granted green areas and watersheds, whether they are tucked away from most of civilization in a wilderness area or just down the street from cities and homes.
