07 July 2013

Stuff

I really need to update this a bit more frequently. I have at least three hikes (and some wineries) to cover and another post more in line with the historical tenor of this blog. Some may ask what it is exactly I'm thinking of doing with the current incarnation of this site. For example, I've asked myself that. The rest of you I don't know about.

I blogged a lot more when I was single than after I got married. Now that I'm not married I thought maybe I'd blog more because I don't have anyone to share stuff with. That hasn't happened. Maybe I don't need to share as much anymore. I try not to think too much about that sort of thing.

But I do have a thing in mind here, see. I want to hike every trail in the Triangle before I start school next year, and I want to put at least some comment about each one of them here. I always wanted something like that when I lived in Greenville, or Tampa, or, really, every place I've ever lived. You can look for a list of Triangle Hikes, and there are many such, but I saw no site at all that mentioned every trail in the area. Indeed, some of the trails I've found aren't really mentioned on any hiking site.

That's not entirely a criticism; I mean, if you're looking to put together a list of Triangle-area hikes, you start with Umstead and Eno River and after you get about ten trails or so, you figure you're done. It's good enough to get the best or most popular trails because that's what people are really looking for. But I want all the trails. So that's what I'm working toward here.

The problem here is that every time I look for a hike, I find new places I didn't know about before. There must be 120 discrete trails in the area depending on how big "The Triangle" is (I haven't really decided myself yet). So the project is getting bigger faster than I'm actually completing it. And now that I'll be working (yaay, by the way) all week I'll only have at most two days to hike. So it's going to be interesting to see whether I actually get through this, but it's fun to try. At least you can hike in all seasons here.

How to define the Triangle, though? Obviously it has to include Wake, Durham, and Orange counties (Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill). I've done at least two hikes in Chatham County already, but that is a big damned county and I'm not going to try to do the whole thing. Johnston county doesn't seem to have any hiking trails at all so I'm including it because it's easy to do. It does have four wineries, though. I figure if I can cover every trail in the three core counties, and maybe in eastern Chatham and in Johnston counties, then I can just look out at the counties farther out and do whatever trails strike my fancy. I'm still torn about this. Every trail in the three core counties is definite. But the other counties I guess it depends on how much time I have. Maybe I should sit down and actually try to find every trail... Anyway, if you have any suggestions for trails or how to define the Triangle, please say so. Also if you know how I can create and post a map of the region with a pin at every trail that links to the review post, I want to do that but I'm not sure how.