Might Oughta Should: Chapel Hill to Durham one-way

I occasionally hold keys down for an organ tuner, and we were working on an organ in Chapel Hill last Monday. Afterward, we headed to Trader Joe's, because that's what we always do after tuning this particular organ, and then I walked home.

Ta da! 12.9 somewhat meandering miles.

My route began in a part of Chapel Hill that had sidewalks on both sides of the street--so many choices!

Although like Durham, many places in Chapel Hill don't have sidewalks.

My route leaving town put me right behind the new Wegmans. I did not go in.

My plan was to take Old Durham Road (which is what it's called in Chapel Hill) / Old Chapel Hill Road (which is what it's called in Durham), but as soon as I turned right at Wegmans, I thought my plan might be foiled by construction.

I usually make it a rule to walk facing traffic, so I can make eye-contact with drivers before they run me over, but large construction equipment and no shoulder prohibited that. Instead, I walked east on the south side of the road, where to my relief, desire paths awaited.

Further down the road, the Pickard subdivision offered a few yards of closed sidewalk. This is because people are allowed to walk to the edge of the subdivision, but NO FARTHER.

Yet still I found a desire path--evidence that people indeed wanted to walk on this sidewalk-less road. Why might that be?

Aha--up ahead! It's a bus stop with no sidewalk access. At least there were traffic drums, thanks to this being one long construction zone.

Ah, at last! Sidewalk! But only a few yards of it, because of that rule about never leaving a subdivision on foot....

It turns out those few yards of sidewalk were closed, which I would have known had I attempted to escape the adjacent subdivision on foot.

I forgot to get a photo when the road was still Old Durham Road, so I took a photo of Old Chapel Hill Road instead.

Now this is more like it! A roundabout, with clearly marked zebra stripes to reward rebellious walkers who manage to make it this far!

Lo, Durham city limit! And a bridge with a very very very narrow shoulder. (The bike path here is the widest it gets, and then it narrows on the bridge. Cars first, safety second!) I actually crossed the road in an attempt to walk facing oncoming traffic, then ditched that idea in favor of walking in the same direction as traffic. The shoulder was equally narrow on both sides, but more people seemed to be driving from Durham to Chapel Hill than from Chapel Hill to Durham.

I-40, vroom vroom. I was grateful that the fence would keep my body from being flung over the bridge if I got hit by a car. And yes, I waited for a gap in bridge traffic before relaxing enough to take this photo.

Roundabout on the other side of the bridge has sidewalks too--and even has a sidewalk in the circle in the center--not that anyone in their right mind would have any reason to cross over to it.

Here, I had to hand it to Durham: the section of Old Chapel Hill Road, from I-40 continuing at least all the way to Garrett Road, has sidewalks--sometimes on both sides of the street.

Sherwood Githens Jr. Middle School was named after a physics professor who once owned the land on which the school was built.

Old Chapel Hill Road Park:

Another bridge; this one is over New Hope Creek, and has shoulders ample enough that kids can bike to the middle school without getting squished.

New Hope Creek, viewed through the fence on the bridge.

Concrete drainage pipe flowing into New Hope Creek. (Exciting, I know, but read on...)

Seeing the drainage pipe reminded me of the time I was channel surfing after school as a kid--my siblings and I would walk home from school, and during the years that we were latchkey kids, we'd sometimes attempt to rot our brains watching TV until our parents came home and made dinner--a good 2-3 hours--even though afternoon TV programming wasn't all that great back then. We mostly watched re-runs of The Brady Bunch, The Munsters, The Addams Family, and Gilligan's Island, and occasionally the boring WCIA "Early Show" movie if we were desperate. One day after school when I was channel surfing--and it's worth mentioning that "channel surfing" back then meant turning a knob on the TV through a number of channels that you could count on one hand--I landed in the middle of a Lassie re-run, at the point when a lost little girl has fallen into a concrete aquaduct in a field in the middle of nowhere, and has been knocked out, and then the aquaduct starts filling with water, and it's up to Lassie to find help--but will help come in time???? That little snippet scared the bejeezus out of me, so I either flipped to a different channel or turned off the TV, and to this day, I don't know if Lassie succeeded or if the little girl drowned. That's the memory that came rushing back, 45 years later, when I saw this drainage pipe along New Hope Creek.

Futher up the road was this big new house, on this nicely paved government-maintained road, with one of Durham's nicest and longest stretches of government-maintained sidewalk, flying a "Don't Tread on Me" flag. I don't know who lives in this house, and I don't know how they've been trodden upon thus far in life, but the flag struck me as a little...what...overly indignant? pouty?...given the surrounding decor.

I turned left onto Garrett Road, with the aim of eventually hitting Sandy Creek Park. Look, there's a sidewalk-less bus stop on the other side of the five-lane road:

Once the sidewalk started up again, though, I was surprised to learn that it runs all the way up to Hwy 15-501. Here's a desire path at the start of the sidewalk, because walkers clearly prefer walking on the sidewalk to walking along the road:

The intersection at Garrett Road and 15-501 is heavily trafficked, but crossing safely is manageable. Only three of the streets have crosswalks, though, which I didn't realize at first, so it took me four light changes to get across instead of two.

New subdivisions are going up by leaps and bounds on Garrett Road north of 15-501.

I accessed Sandy Creek Park through a trail extension behind Church of the Good Shepherd on Garrett Road.

I see that this Sandy Creek Park dog-poop can is full, and I appreciate that the dog poop baggies aren't strewn all over the trails, but I continue to be amazed that dog walkers can't brainstorm better solutions than this:

A huge heron, photographed from afar with an inadequate cell phone camera:

Can you find the lost soccer ball?

Eggs!

Lots of eggs!

I emerged from Sandy Creek Park onto Coachman's Way and then onto Pickett Road, where I appreciated this record of an exuberant dog:

Pickett Road crosses over I-40 with a fine view of the green weenie.

I then took a left onto the I-40 bypass road, because it would spit me out near Duke Forest's Al Buhler Trail. I was lured onto the bypass road because it had sidewalks--until, after a while, it didn't anymore. On the down side, I was walking in the same direction as the traffic was flowing; on the bright side, more traffic was coming toward me than was coming from behind me. Eventually, the sidewalk returned...