Jordan Lake

The other day, while browsing at the book store, I stumbled on a book in the "local" section called, something like, "Best Dog Walking Trails in North Carolina." You'd think that would have been perfect for someone like me, but (a) it was $20, (b) it contained nothing I couldn't get just as easily on the internet, and (c) it spanned most of the state and the few trails it listed local to me (in the Raleigh/Cary area) B.B. and I have already walked.

One exception, however, was a brief mention of Jordan Lake.

Just a bit of history for those who don't know (or who don't want to click the link above). Jordan Lake is located just west of Cary. It's a large Corps of Engineers project (read: man-made) completed about 40 years ago that covers about 14,000 acres. It supplies water to Cary (among other local communities) and has a lot of park land and recreational areas for camping, swimming and boating. And, apparently, hiking.

I checked the state park website to verify, and sure enough many of the different "areas" of the park have walking/hiking trails. Mostly they were small one-miles trails, but one stood out, the New Hope Overlook trail, which purported to be 5.4 miles total. Right up our alley.

Now, the other thing I gleaned from the website was that this park charges admission. What a bummer. (Don't ask me where my tax money is going instead of maintaining these types of facilities.) Seems like it's $6 a day during the summer (Memorial Day through Labor Day), and the rest of the year it's only $6 a day during the weekends. So here I was, fast approaching Memorial Day, and weather already getting hotter, so I figured this could be our only chance to explore this new trail for a while. I scheduled a last-minute vacation day so I could have Friday off, and planned on taking B.B. down there first thing in the morning.

We got up early and headed out for our usual pre-walk walk a little before 7. Once she'd taken care of business (twice) we headed back to the car and hit the road.

The 30-minute drive down to Jordan Lake was nice. It was not quite 70° and the skies were alternating from partly to fully cloudy. The forecast called for rain, but not until later in the day. We left the windows open, and one of us enjoyed sticking her head out into the wind as much as possible.  (We passed an amusing landscaping truck for a company called The Weed Guys ["We fix your lawn"] carrying two laid-back gents who looked as if they fully understood the irony in name.  Sadly, I didn't get a picture.)  Following a map I'd printed earlier, we found the New Hope parking lot without too much trouble. Looks like it is used for camping and boat launching. Regardless, today it was completely deserted. The trail we wanted was at the far end of the parking lot from the boat ramp so we parked there and locked up the car.

Now, the Jordan Lake website warned that this was a strenuous trail, but obviously that wasn't written by the same people who mapped out the Umstead Park trails. Those guys would have called this "easy." Sure, it had some ups and downs but nothing too crazy. The worst problem I had was with bugs. This late in May and with very humid weather, the flies and whatnots were buzzing all around me in full force. Plus, I don't think this trail had been walked on since (probably) last fall because I walked through a couple dozen spider webs during our nearly two hour walk.

Jordan Lake, itself, is about as remarkable as any other man-made lake, which is to say that it didn't have any natural beach areas, none that I could see on this walk, anyway. It is exactly as you'd expect a place to look if the water were artificially flooded into an area. Trees and vegetation tend to grow right down to the water line.  Call me old fashioned, but I don't find that particularly impressive.  Granted, these days, it's difficult to find a "real" lake anywhere around, so maybe beggars can't be choosers.

The trail wound around to several little inlets or coves where we got close to the water, but it wasn't until we were nearly back to the car that we finally discovered the "overlook" promised on the map. It was actually quite a pretty view. The skies had darkened a bit by the time we got there, so this photo isn't the best, but it does give a glimpse at how big this lake is.  B.B wanted to jump in, but considering the hard time we had down at Umstead a few weeks ago, I decided to keep her dry.

Supposedly this trail is 5.4 miles, but my Nike pedometer said we'd walked 6.73 miles by the time we got back to the car (and I've calibrated it recently, so I know it's pretty accurate). Some of that could be our few jaunts off the beaten path down to see the water, but I doubt that would have added anywhere near a mile and a half to the total. So if you go out looking for a little adventure, be prepared for a longer-than-expected hike. And bring your bug spray. Besides the flies and whatnots, I did find a tick crawling up my leg by the time we got back the car. I did the usual tick-check on B.B. and didn't find anything, but she'd just gotten her monthly Front Line treatment a few days ago so maybe that helped.

I'm not sure this trail is worth a repeat visit. It was very narrow so we had to walk single file most of the way. (B.B. likes to alternate walking in front of me and walking next to me.) And the few areas where we could get down to see the water were marred with litter and trash. I'd read that this was a problem around Jordan Lake, but I hadn't experienced it for myself until now. I might go back in the late fall (if I take another day off so I don't pay the weekend $6 rate) to see what it looks like after the leaves have fallen (I suspect it would be prettier).  And after the bugs have gone into hiding, of course. We'll see.

There are few more little trails around Jordan Lake. One, I think was 3 miles long. The rest were only a mile or so. (Although all bets are off if they were measured by the same people who measured this one.) Maybe I'll check them out one day.

See all the photos I took during our little excursion here.

Getting Hot

It's getting hot around here.

I hate to complain. It's really been a lovely spring. After a seriously cold December and January (with what seemed like more than our fair share of snow and ice) our "winter" ended in February when the temperatures rose enough so light jackets were all we needed to keep comfortable, at most. The darkened skies in the mornings and late afternoons belied what our other senses were telling us, which was that spring should have been in full-bloom. B.B. and I started taking advantage of the nice weather as soon as possible. We bought a couple clip-on lights for her leash and began taking evening walks down High House Road where the street lights do a decent job of keeping us well-lit in the winter's dark evenings. We've been keeping up a good steady routine ever since. But I fear that's about to end.

Last summer we walked steadily through June, but just a little after the July 4th weekend, during a routine trek home from Bond Park (in the middle of Cary and reachable from our house almost exclusively through greenway trails — with the exception of a few side streets needed to get from one trail to another — about six walking miles from where we live) we both got a little over-heated.

Now, B.B. is really not one to complain, which is why I need to be extra careful with her. She's an Alaskan sled dog, after all, and her heavy coat is meant specifically to keep her warm pulling packs across a frozen tundra. She doesn't mind the heat, per se, but I know that it's not good for her. We have a little four foot plastic wading pool (Wal-Mart, $8) that K fills for me when we walk in the summer. She usually has it waiting on the driveway for us when we get home from a particularly hot walk, with maybe 8" of water in it. B.B. just walks right over and lies down in it. She seems to enjoy the soak, and I know it helps regulate her body temperature. I usually soak my feet for a bit and then (as long as she's wet anyway) give her a little shampoo.

But still, we don't walk much past the low 80's. That trek home from Bond Park last July was a little scary. First of all, it got hotter than I realized it would get, and I started feeling overheated. Which is unusual for me. I grew up in the heat, spent my childhood in South Carolina and my teenage (to early-20's) years in Pensacola, Florida, and Alabama. So I'm used to heat and humidity. Granted, after that I spent 10 years living in the Mid-West, so one could argue that my blood thickened while I was away, but I've been back for 5 years and I still enjoy being outside in the heat. (K generally thinks I'm crazy in that regard.)

So a little heat doesn't bother me too much, but there we were, climbing the last big hill of the walk, maybe a half-mile away from home, and I suddenly felt like I needed to rest. Seriously. We found a tree just off the path with plenty of shade and pine straw for us to sit on and we both plopped down. I was close to the road, so I could have called K to come get us, but I just figured we'd rest a bit and move on. B.B., after all, looked just fine. I felt a little cooked, but after 5-10 minutes in the shade, I figured we were good to go. B.B., however, didn't want to get up. And that was a first (probably ever) for her. She was panting, but not more so than usual, and felt hot, but again not more so than usual. We sat for maybe another half hour and cooled off. After that she was fine and ready to go. We schlepped the last half mile and cooled our jets in the kiddie pool. But that was the last walk we took until September. Yep, I took 2 months off, and, boy did I miss it.

I don't really have any pictures of our short walk to share,
but this little guy had to wait outside while his owner went
in to get bagels. Collectively, everybody now: "Awww..."

To bring my rambling full circle, I'm dreading the "dog days" of summer when we will either forgo our walks altogether or at the very most limit them to the earliest hours of the morning. The days are getting hotter, and the last half of May certainly seems to have leap-frogged the warm mid-spring temperatures directly into the heat of summer. I've got a number of walking/hiking goals with B.B. that I want to achieve (more on that later) but I fear we may have to wait for fall.

So today, we decided to keep it simple. K and I went to Panera Bread for breakfast, about 4 miles from home, took B.B. with us, and after our little breakfast sandwiches and coffee (and B.B.'s cup of ice for crunching), K drove off and B.B. and I walked home. One of my goals is to walk across Cary. I've got a path all drawn up that will take us from one side to the other (about 12 miles) mostly through trails and greenways. But Cary itself is actually quite a nice place to walk just along the sidewalks. We walked down Cary Blvd to High House and then west to home. It was warm, but not too hot. B.B. did just fine. She plopped down on one of the A/C vents when we got home, but that hour-long walk didn't do much to curb her energy levels later in the day.

Our History at Umstead

It has literally been one of those days. One of those inexplicably bad days where nothing actually happened, nothing out of the ordinary, yet I wallowed through the day as if someone had just run over my dog. (Bad expression, I know.) I was indiscernibly and irrationally blue. The world was a glass that could only be described as half empty. At best.

I was in a funk. Can't explain why. I just was.

So I came home from work, picked up B.B. and took her down to my favorite set of walking trails around here: down at Umstead State Park. It was warm without being too hot, and the park was practically deserted. There was a small cadre of moms and kids having a picnic near the entrance, and a couple casual walkers that we passed on our way in, but that was it. Come here on a weekend, and we may meet/greet several dozen other hikers. Today, I think we passed two (one of whom had a group of four nervous dogs on leashes and was kind enough to pull them way back off the trail as we passed).

The trail from the Harrison Ave. parking lot goes basically in two directions: north to the Company Mill Trail or east down Loblolly Trail. The Company Mill Trail is my favorite, probably because that's the first trail B.B. and I ever walked down in this park. We came here for the first time back in the fall of 2009. She was still quite the puppy, about 10 months old, but devilish in her desire to explore new places. I'd never been before, although K and I had scouted it out several months earlier and picked up a map. So one Saturday morning, B.B. and I headed down there to check it out. The map showed the Company Mill Trail at just under 6 miles (which was, at the time, about the distance we'd been walking 3-4 times a week) so I headed in that direction.

The thing to know about this trail is it starts from the elevation of the parking lot and immediately descends down switch backs to one of the lowest points in the park, down by a river (using that term loosely) which, I guess, is Reedy Creek. (It's not well labelled on the map, but it does flow into Reedy Creek Lake, so that might be a clue.) At that point, about a mile down, you cross the river over a narrow bridge (maybe 30' long) and you can then follow the Company Mill Trail left or right. Either way, it makes a big, 4-mile loop. It climbs up and down in several places and winds around until you end up right back where you started, at that bridge, and then you have to then scale your way back up those switch backs to the parking lot. It's strenuous for a casual walk, but if you're prepared for a hike, it's a lot of fun.

But I digress...

The first time B.B. and I went there, back in the fall of 2009, probably late November, it was cool, but not cold, there weren't too many people there, and the leaves were almost completely gone from the trees. The thing about these trails is they are very easy to follow and see most of the year, but that time of year, just after all the leaves have fallen, it's a little difficult in some places to tell where the trail goes. Sure, there are markers on trees every 100' or so, and mostly the woods are thick enough to dissuade you from accidentally stepping off the beaten path, but there were a few places where the trees opened up and with a fresh blanket of leaves all over everything, the trail literally could have gone in a dozen different directions. There were a couple times where I had to stop and think about it.

But B.B. knew exactly where to go. Of course she did. She was following the scent of thousands of shoes and boots that had walked there in the past, so she just marked on and led the way. I wasn't too worried about getting lost. I grew up in the woods and have a decent sense of direction and space, but it was charming to see her constantly turn where the trail turned, zig where it zigged, zag where it zagged. That was a spectacular day. We made it back to the car about an hour and a half later exhausted and exhilarated, all at the same time. We've been back dozens (not quite hundreds) of times since and we've explored many of the trails (most of them in the lower, Reedy Creek section), but that is still my favorite.

So today I decided to walk our old favorite. We hit the trail head and headed down the switch backs and ended up at the river soon enough. Today, though, we were alone. Usually we see lots of people down by the river bank playing on the rocks. I usually just say "Hi" and walk by, leaving them alone, but I've always thought it sure looked like fun to sit on a rock and enjoy the smells and sounds of the water rushing by. As a kid, we used to take trips up to the mountains in western North Carolina (or eastern Tennessee) and we'd invariably find a river or stream to explore. The most fun I had as a child during those little adventures was navigating my way from one bank across to the other by hopping from stone to stone. This river (or creek, whatever) doesn't have nearly enough stones to make it across, but there are a number of good boulders lined down the sides for sitting. So we sat.

Which is to say, I sat and B.B. plopped down and proceeded to squirm her way right into the water. I let her jump around a bit (she loves to swim) and explore to the length of our 6' leash until we realized that the algae-covered rocks made it difficult for her to get back up. After a few failed attempts, furry paws comically churning on the green rock surface to no avail, she sort of stood/sat in the water and just looked at me as if to say, "Well, I'm stumped. You're going to have to come and get me."

So I did. We tried again, with me pulling on the leash just to get her within reach, and then I grabbed the considerable scruff around her neck (she has handfuls of extra skin underneath all of that fur) and pulled her up until I could reach her arms. By then she was on solid (and non-slippery) ground. She shook most of the river water right onto me and settled down. We sat for about 15 minutes just soaking up the nature. Funny, but that's all it took to reset the world's cup to being half full again.

With B.B. still a damp mess, we picked ourselves up and walked down the trail, opting to head down to Reedy Creek Lake and up the bike trail back to the car instead of navigating those switch backs again. I wish I'd gotten some shots of B.B. in the water, but it's hard enough to hang onto a leash with a swimming dog at the other end (the current is pretty intense right there and I didn't dare let go) without having to pull a cell phone out of my pocket and work the camera. Maybe I could have gotten a shot post-swim, but if you've seen one wet and bedraggled dog, you've seen them all.

Funny. I was the sopping mess going into the park. B.B. was the mess coming out. She unburdened me, like she always does, then shook it off and marched on. As a metaphor, she really inspires.

Umstead to Quail Ridge

Okay, so one of the reasons why I started this blog is because there are a few big walks that I have been planning that I'm quite excited about.  Need to tell someone, so what better plan than to write them all down and toss them into the electronic ether?

One of the first I'd planned was a walk through Umstead State Park south (and pretty much just see how far we could go).  I'd never been down there and wanted to check it out.  Honestly I didn't think it would be this soon.  We had a lousy day forecast for Sunday.  It was drizzling in the morning and was supposed to have thunderstorms all afternoon.  But then, unexpectedly, the skies cleared to bright blue sunshine, mid-70's, light breeze, beautiful.  So B.B. tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Hey paw, what do you think?"  (She's chatty that way.)

We got kind of a late start.  It was almost 4:00 when I realized it wasn't going to rain all afternoon, so we hopped in the car and drove down to Umstead.  We live in Cary so (for those of you familiar with the area) naturally we use the entrance off of Harrison Ave.

Now, even though it's not accurately reflected on this map (which has us taking the bike trail down past Reedy Creek Lake, we actually took Loblolly Trail through the woods to the multi-use bike trail that goes through Umstead.  Loblolly adds another mile (or so) to the length and lots of ups and downs, but it really is a beautiful walk.  It's got several bridges and one place where you have to hop over a small stream.  B.B. seems to like that jump for some reason.

Once we got to the bike trail, it was a straight shot out of Umstead.  That trail becomes the Reedy Creek Trail system.  From there we lost most of our shade, but luckily it wasn't too hot.  (One of the reasons I may have jumped the gun a little and tried this walk earlier than I expected was the fact that summer is fast approaching.  Last year, we pretty much stopped walking altogether in July and August because of the heat.  B.B. can't take too much with her heavy fur coat and we had numerous days in the upper 90's and even triple digits.)

The walk down the trail to Edwards Mill Road was lovely.  Woods on the right (mostly) and pasture on the left.  We walked past the entrance to Schenck Forest but the signs all said they don't allow dogs, so these trails are officially dead to me.

Across Edwards Mill Road (and I notice there's a bike tunnel under so bicyclists don't have to wait at the light... although we took that opportunity to have a bit of a rest, having walked about 5 miles at that point, and didn't mind waiting) you get into some slightly more industrial looking area.  Still seems like pasture/farmland but there were some large building to the right and to the left, one nasty looking wrought-iron fence around one, and some NC State facilities.  About a mile later we got to the NC Art Museum.

This is where it got beautiful again, and I do want to go back and explore the museum grounds some more (although, once again, it has a few areas that don't allow dogs, something that annoys me to no end... not so much the rule, which I guess I understand, but the fact that some people—obnoxious dog owners—clearly have set a bad enough example for these places to set these rules, just ruins it for the rest of us).  The park around the museum has some large exhibits out-doors which make it interesting.  We'll have to go back and see the rest some day.

The trail from the museum forks off to the right and heads down south to I-440.  This is interesting because I've driven 440 many times, and I've seen this walking path over it, but I never really knew where it came from or where it went.  Today I found out.  The trail winds through some more woods south of the museum (down a steep hill to a bridge across a stream and then back up) to this bridge which spans the length of 440.

Across the bridge, I was really in uncharted territory.  I knew where I was spatially since I've driven down there many times.  In fact, one of our favorite local independent bookstores (Quail Ridge Books) is right there (somewhere) next to a Whole Foods, a one-two shopping combination that often makes for a very enjoyable weekend morning for us.  But the trail turned away from that direction and went under Wade Avenue, where they are clearly doing some construction, and into Meredith College (which Google tells me is the largest private women's college in the south-east, interesting).

Reedy Creek Trail (yes, we're still on that same trail system) winds around the outside edge of the college grounds and is just a beautiful as some of the other places we'd been.  As we were walking counter-clockwise, the college building were to our left and they really looked beautiful.  Made me miss my own college days (not so far back that I can't remember).

And then the trail ended, right there on Hillsborough Street.  At that point I did know where I was and we walked back down to Wade and stopped, finally right outside the bookstore.

Now, I'm very lucky, in that K has agreed to come pick us up if we wanted to take walks like this.  Previously I'd limited us to circular walks, either from home in a big loop, or from places like Umstead such that we always ended up back at the car.  K doesn't really want to take these long walks with us, but she is more than willing to help out like this, which expands our opportunities greatly.  I called her about a half hour before I figured we'd reach the bookstore (which I know for a fact she has programmed in her car's GPS) and she got there about 4 minutes after we finally sat down to rest.  Amazing timing.

B.B. was a machine, just trotting along.  She loves going new places.  It's funny but if we're walking a trail or sidewalk for the first time, she's on high-alert, sniffing everything, watching everything, inspecting, examining.  But the second time we go there, she's much calmer.  She knows this place.  Been there, done that.  It's routine.  Smarter than I am, that dog.

So, to wrap up... not all of our walks are going to be this epic.  This was clearly one of the big ones that I'd been wanting to take.  We've got lots of routine favorites that we'll hit more often and I'm sure I'll be blogging about (if, for nothing else, to fill out this travelogue of our adventures).  I'm sure I won't be taking pictures of all of them.  But for the really fun ones, I'll do so and write it up in these pages.

Thanks for coming along.

Rules #1

Just to keep the record straight, I'm going to add a couple administrative, house-keeping notes in here about dog walking in general. The number 1 rule is obviously to keep your dog in check and under your command so you don't pose any sort of threat or concern to other walkers. B.B. is a wonderfully sweet girl who loves to walk up to complete strangers and greet (read: lick) them, but (a) not everybody likes that sort of attention and (b) not everybody is comfortable with a 70 lb. dog approaching them in the first place. So if you pass me and I keep her in a gentle-yet-firm "heel" position on my right side, it's not because I'm rude. I'm just working under the assumption that if you wanted a healthy dose of slobber on you, you'd ask. And I generally appreciate it if other dog walkers do the same. If I'm approaching another dog walker who has stopped and is making eye contact, that's usually a good sign that he/she would like to let our two dogs meet each other. Even then I usually ask if it's okay. I think that's only polite.

The second most important rule (ironically named rule #2 here) is to pick up after your dog. Nobody wants to step in anything left behind. If you know what I mean. (Seriously, I hope I don't need to spell it out.) We pass by countless deposits from other dogs (on the side of trails, on sidewalks, in people's yards, etc.) and every time I just hope nobody thinks that's me.

Now, on the 300+ walks B.B. and I have been on in the past 2 years, I will confess to not picking up maybe 3 of her piles (once because she was sick and it was so runny that I wasn't sure I could pick anything up, and twice because I ran out of bags), and first of all I don't think 1% is a bad ratio. Second none of those were anywhere near a yard or even where someone might walk. I always bring bags with me (at least 2) and if I'm going to walk somewhere that doesn't have easy access to trashcans I will often do a pre-walk down to the trail through our neighborhood (which has a trash can on either end) just to get the poop out of her before we go. Even then, I will usually take some "just in case" bags with me, you know, just in case. Seriously, I never knew how much my life would begin to revolve around my dog's bowel movements or how much happier we'd both be if she was regular. But here we are.

I'm sure there are more rules that I'll think of later, but these two, as important as they are, I thought I'd put in up front to get them out of the way.

Introduction

Let me sum up my life from just a couple years ago:  mid-thirties, office job (i.e., staring at a computer 9 hours a day), come home and either watch TV with my wife and/or stare at another computer all evening.  Sleep, work, eat, sit.  Those seemed to be the verbs that defined my life.

BB, looking out across Lake Crabtree

Don't get me wrong, it's not that I was (or am) complaining.  The job was stressful (at times) and though I found enough enjoyment to keep me there (for instance, I work with some really good people who make the job fun) I'd often come home after some interesting/challenging days feeling tired.  We (K and I) have always enjoyed TV and movies, so that's what we'd do in the evenings.

Not to say that's all we did, mind you, but there was certainly a pattern to our lives.

Then, in March of 2009, our dog B.B. arrived.  I could re-tell the story of how we came about owning our first dog, an Alaskan Malamute, but I've already done so here on my main blog.  (You can certainly refer to that site if you want more information.)  Our lives haven't been the same since.

Today she is almost two-and-a-half years old and quite a bundle of energy... if left unchecked.  K takes her to the Cary dog park almost every morning during the week.  And I walk her on the weekends (and as often as I can during the week as well, weather and other priorities permitting).

This blog is just about that:  my walks with B.B.  (Whose name may or may not include the periods, depending on how fast I'm typing, but it's pronounced the same way.)  I'll bore you with details you probably don't care about, unless you're a dog lover, a Malamute lover, a dog walking lover, a Cary (NC) resident (who may or may not be a walker, with/without dogs) or an Alaskan Malamute owner who lives in Cary and also love to walk your dog.  NB: if you fall into that last category, please drop me a note as we clearly have a lot in common.