North Carolina’s Research Triangle Offers Delightful Exploration

Located in the heart of Duke University, the stunning Sarah P. Duke Gardens offers 55 acres to explore.

Courtesy Bower

Durham

College towns are always full of surprises — cosmopolitan refuges that entice talented people to innovate well beyond the laboratory. They also tend to possess great brunch spots, and Durham’s Guglhupf Bakery, Café & Biergarten is an example of this alchemy. The vision of Durham transplant Claudia Kemmet-Cooper, Guglhupf is the kind of establishment where I could loiter for hours, perhaps moving with book and journal from the leafy terrace to the indoor mezzanine as the day progresses. However, there’s a Duke University visit and bike ride on my calendar today, so I drive to the nearby university and park at the Sarah P. Duke Gardens.

I’ve visited exceptional university botanical gardens all over North America, but I’m still unprepared for these breathtaking gardens, part of the esteemed university’s campus. Landscape architect Ellen Biddle Shipman redesigned these sumptuous plantings in the 1930s, which consist of 55 acres that include reflecting pools, historic and native  sections as well as the Asiatic Arboretum. Taken altogether, the Duke Gardens provide an ideal layout for meandering with no one save your musings for company.

I depart the gardens via the Memorial Gate that opens directly onto campus toward the Duke University Chapel. Rising above the sylvan campus, the 90-year-old gothic chapel was chiefly designed by Julian Abele, an African-American architect from Philadelphia.

The 8,600+ acre Duke campus is beautiful, and I find it hard to leave. I do save time to visit the Nasher Museum of Art, where I admire the colorful abstractions in “Roy Lichtenstein: History in the Making, 1948–1960,” a visual chronicle of the pop artist’s formative years.

I then rent a bike from Durham’s Bullseye Bicycle, and bisect an expanding downtown core on my way to the American Tobacco Trail.

This 22.2-mile ATT, a rails-to-trails project that begins at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park, is part of the East Coast Greenway, the 3,000-mile trail system that stretches from Maine to Florida. I pedal for 10 miles or so along a paved, tree-lined, mostly flat section that cuts through the surrounding neighborhoods before turning back toward downtown Durham. That evening, I check out Dram & Draught, which offers hand-crafted cocktails, wine, regional beers and more than 300 varieties of whiskey.

Raleigh

I wake the next morning excited to travel to the NC State campus to play golf at the Lonnie Poole Golf Course, the only collegiate track in America designed by gold legend Arnold Palmer. As much as I love Palmer’s designs, I’m more intrigued by Lonnie Poole’s status as an Audubon International Signature Golf Sanctuary. In addition to bluebird boxes and managed wetlands along the course, volunteers have planted more than 1,000 milkweed specimens to establish a critical monarch butterfly habitat.

My next stop is the outdoor North Carolina Museum of Art. I expect a pleasant set of courtyard sculptures, but what I discover astounds me: 164 acres of meadow, pond and woodland transected by 4.7 miles of mostly paved trails. I learn that the area is connected to the Capital Area Greenway, Raleigh’s impressive nonmotorized artery with more than 100 miles of paved and gravel trails. A quick survey of the greenway map illustrates the entire city is transected by these trails.

One of my favorite elements of walking through a sculpture park is the blend of art and utilitarian design. For example, the sculpture “Benches and Bicycle Racks” by Alvin Frega clearly serves two purposes. There’s also an unidentified red platform that hovers above a ravine in the wooded section that may or may not be a work of art, though it certainly is as beautiful as it is functional.

Chris Drury’s “Cloud Chamber for the Trees and Sky” looks like a simple small stone hut, until I read the description and learn the environmental artist has constructed a living camera obscura, a pinhole aperture that casts the sky and clouds on the interior floor. This peaceful visual effect, in tandem with the silence within the stone enclosure, makes it challenging to exit the chamber and return to the outer world. That is until I remember my dinner finale: North Carolina barbecue.

I love barbecue and even though the caloric intake can be difficult to justify, I’m in North Carolina, so I’m not leaving without some. I head to Sam Jones BBQ and order a Jones Family Original BBQ Tray, which means heaps of pulled pork, potato salad, baked beans and cornbread. After sampling this combination of flavors, and taking in the rich cultural and horticultural offerings of the Tar Heel State, I depart from my Southern sojourn more than satisfied.