I fell a little in love with North Carolina today.

Sunny, warm, clear and spectacular…the weather just begged to be used, to be enjoyed. I sat out on the front porch with coffee and then Michael and I headed out to the American Tobacco Trail (ATT). This is a “rails-to-trails” project which spans over 22 miles through Durham, Chatham and Wake counties. it is a wonderfully flat stretch of trail that is both paved and gravel and has interesting scenery – both in plant and human form.

I had to look up the history and discovered that the ATT is an abandoned railroad bed originally built for the American Tobacco Company. J.B. Duke founded the company in 1890 and the rail lines served his processing plants and warehouses in Durham. They started laying the tracks in 1905 and they were used until the 1970s when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built the Jordon Lake reservoir and the tracks needed to be relocated. It appears that the ATT was developed in 1992 and continues to be expanded. I love local history and I now love the ATT.

We started at the White Church Road lot and biked north for about 5 miles until we ran out of paved surface, (they are finishing a middle section that is currently being regraded), biked back to the lot and then decided to go another 6 miles to the trailhead. That of course meant we needed to come back another 6, totalling 21.8 miles.

http://js.mapmyfitness.com/embed/blogview.html?r=791a2d1dbb43e62cdae7e18d6ce9dcbc&u=e&t=ride

I then spent a portion of the afternoon outside with Iona until I realized my library books were due. So we threw them in the corgi buggy and ran up to the Cameron Village library. I can’t say that Iona was very pleased about the experience, as she hates to share her buggy space.

She chilled a bit after the books were returned and she was able to get petted a few times by strangers. We then collapsed in our hammock after the run. As the sun was disappearing behind the house next door, we finally decided it was OK to go inside. Sigh, good Sunday. Now Sunday is done.