Walking the Greenville Greenway

We thought this was Kathy's blog entry to draft, but it turned out to be mine.  So there you go.

We had a gorgeous but chilly day to find an outdoor activity today.  We've conquered our water pump challenge, we've cleaned, we've grocery shopped.  We aren't scheduled to visit the Arlingtonians until Saturday.  So we researched our options.  We found a bicycle ride, but opted to do that tomorrow, when it will be warmer.  Today, it was to be a hike.

Greenville, North Carolina has a 7 mile multi-use trail that follows the Tar River.  While it would be suitable to bicycles, we thought it would be more fun to walk it.  Furthermore, Greenville had a brewpub we wanted to visit, and we thought that would fit with a walking afternoon.

So we arrived in downtown Greenville around 11:30 am.  We discovered that it is the county seat of Pitt County, and the home of East Carolina University, a public research university.  Greenville also is the health, entertainment, and educational hub of North Carolina's Tidewater and Coastal Plain.  We found it an attractive town.  In January 2008 and January 2010, Greenville was named one of the nation's "100 Best Communities for Young People" by the America's Promise Alliance. In June 2012, Greenville was ranked in the top ten of the nation's "Best Small Places For Business And Careers" by Forbes magazine. In 2010, Greenville was ranked twenty-fourth in mid-city business growth and development by Forbes Magazine.

As we walked down to the Tar River, we passed the County Courthouse, which is an impressive edifice:

Reaching the river, we found the Town Commons, which had been created in an urban renewal project in the late 1960's.  Unfortunately, it was formed by clearing a thriving African-American community under the guise of "clearing slums."

An entrance gate and flags greet the visitor in the Town Commons: 

We spotted an interesting structure to the west, which we went to investigate.  We found that it is a memorial to the Sycamore Hill Missionary Baptist Church, which was a center of the Black community here and was demolished in connection with the "urban redevelopment" of the community:

Leaving aside its questionable history, the Commons has a beautiful walk along the Tar River, which we enjoyed as we continued our walk:

It wasn't long before we reached a fishing pier located strategically near a boat ramp and paddling put-in where the actual Greenway Trail begins.  Below, David stands at the fishing pier, wishing he had a rod and reel to try it out:

The fishing pier gave a pretty view of the Tar River:

The actual beginning of the Greenway Trail was at this pedestrian bridge: 

Constructed in 1927, the 200 ft. span bridge once served as a crossing over the Tar river and was located on Greene Street. In 2002, it was disassembled into three sections and moved to the Town Commons Park. Re-assembly of the bridge was completed in 2005. It is a Parker Truss Bridge. Only a few existed in North Carolina when it was re-assembled. 

The bridge now serves as an entranceway to the South Tar River Greenway, and we took the opportunity for a selfy at the trailhead:

The Greenway boasts a large number of public sculptures, generally built from cast-off or industrial artifacts.  Here, Kathy mistakes a sculpture for a real bovine and tries, unsuccessfully, to feed it some grass.  A local dog was confused and dismayed at the sight and started barking, then couldn't keep its eyes off of us as we followed it and its master down the trail.

The Greenway trail boasts numerous benches for people to rest and contemplate this naturally muddy river:

Surprisingly enough, we spotted this Knockout Rose blooming along the path!

Local fishermen clearly favor this trail for access to the Tar River.  When we spotted this unique fishing dock, we also spotted a local fisherman casting for who-knows-what-kind-of-fish.  We didn't want to bother him, so this is as close as we got to the dock:

Eventually, we reached our turnaround point -- Mile 1.5 of the 7-mile trail and 2.5 miles into our walk:

While we spent the entire walk out the trail observing and appreciating nature and history, we used the return walk to noodle how best to solve that very-popular word game, Wordle, a simple, web-based game based in the United Kingdom.

Before we knew it, we found ourselves at our ultimate destination, Uptown Brewing Company, one of a couple of breweries in Greenville (what self-respecting college town doesn't have at least one?):

We conducted a scientific tasting of the beers of Uptown that seemed most appealing to us, and finally settled on three of them to take home in Crowlers, along with a sour cranberry beer for our son Matt.  When we tasted, the server offered us a few handfuls of Aunt Ruby's Peanuts, which were so tasty that we decided to pick up a container for our daughter-in-law Weina.  Conveniently, Aunt Ruby's is situated just down the road from our campground, so we'll be able to hop over and pick from a wide selection of local peanuts.

When we got home, our thoughts turned from Aunt Ruby to Kitten Ruby, who was eager for her afternoon walk.  Kathy volunteered to walk Ruby while David conducted our customary weekly dump-and-fill, our first fill of fresh water to use with our newly installed water pump!

Life is good, especially with peanuts and beer.