My first route of the Summer Camp Smart Commute Challenge is the longest – 5.25 miles from Old West Durham to West Point on the Eno Park. The route utilizes West Ellerbee Creek Trail, neighborhood streets, and a short sidewalk segment in front of the new Northern High School.
Here is the course route for your Garmin GPS and Google Maps. Also, James Nishimuta led a RAD ride from Duke which used this route and more.
Schoolhouse of Wonder has camps in Durham, Wake, and Orange counties. In Durham, they have a locations at Eno River State Park at Cole Mill Access and at West Point on the Eno Park. With the recent construction of Northern High School on N Roxboro St., West Point on the Eno Park is now reachable by bike for a lot of Durham! To get there you can use either segment of the Ellerbee Creek Trail to get north of I-85, and then you get on neighborhood streets from the new bike facilities along Stadium Dr.
The keys are a new stoplight across N Roxboro St. at Wellington Dr. and a new sidewalk along the east side of Roxboro at the edge of the Northern High School Property. While I don’t normally recommend riding on the sidewalk, Roxboro is too fast of a street. This sidewalk really should have been an off-street multi-use path.
So, as pledged, I will try this out on June 12th, 2024, and update this post if necessary. Is this this a place you’d bike to? Let me know in the comments.
Update: Complete!
While it’s fresh, here are the sketchy bits:
- Ellerbee Creek Trail at Guess rd. has a HAWK signal, which confuses drivers and can be deadly, but wasn’t busy at 7:45a. Might be bad in evening rush hour?
Birmingham and Winston had nice traffic calming speed bumps! - Carver – unsignalized crossing / unmarked crosswalk.
- Horton – similar to Carver
- Holt School rd. – narrow lanes, no shoulder, has a hill. I recommend the sidewalk on the west side of the road
- Wellington light to cross Roxboro – has car and bike detector loops and beg buttons.
- Use the sidewalk at the edge of Northern High School as the key to linking up to Old Farm rd. and Seven Oaks rd. (Do not use Argonne or Chateau)
