Here’s a large flotilla of kayakers leaving the dock.

These are the trail alternatives. Each blue spot is a different trail.

I guess I should have expected that the Carvins Cove parking lot would look like Walmart on Black Friday yesterday at noon, but I was still taken aback that there were no parking places left. Not one. I had to improvise and take a chance on getting towed.

The Cove’s staffers had about half the parking lot blocked to parking, I suppose to keep the number of people at a workable level.

This was mostly boaters taking advantage of a gorgeous spring Saturday, high water, enough wind to make the water choppy and a generally upbeat attitude at being allowed out of the house for a couple of hours. That didn’t make it any less dangerous, but I saw most of the people observing the “safe” six-foot social distance.

Fortunately, Carvins Cove is large enough to accommodate all those boats without any crowding (except near the dock) and its 34 trails give hikers plenty of options for solitude–if they can find parking. Here’s what it looked like.

The crowded parking lot: The little yellow Bug, parked where there is no marked space, is mine.

Kayakers spread out over the lake.

Here is the entrance to one of the trails, just off the picnic area, which is closed.

Here’s the old man ready to walk to Happy Valley.

Some walkers didn’t worry about social distance.

Redbud. All you need to know about beauty.

The old logging road, which is now a hiking trail, has a nice panorama.

I got tired just watching these dudes climb the hill.

I found my redhead of the day (on the left). Really pretty hair on a teen-ager.

Mom and pop fishing from the pier.

Lots of activity at the docks.

This couple pumped up a whitewater raft for a lake appearance.

Want boats? We got boats.

And, of course, we have plenty of redbud.

Carvins Cove is always a breath of fresh water.

The Cove from the trail.

Since every paved greenway or hiking trail in the Roanoke Valley is now too crowded to walk (and Roanoke City has said don’t walk on those trails), I’m finding marvelous, woodsy, harder-to-get-to alternatives for my daily exercise and it has a lovely side-benefit. The trails are nearly empty.

Today, I hiked one of Carvins Cove’s 38 trails for about an hour and 15 minutes and found it peaceful, nearly lonely and quite beautiful. Even the redbuds on the way out to the cove said “WELCOME!”

Because of the virus pandemic, normal costs to hike, bike or boat at the lake are suspended. I might also mention that the water is quite high and today it had white-caps from the heavy wind.

Here’s what it looked like.

This little violet sat on top of a stream.

Pampa in color and the woods in black and white.

Kayak launch dock nearly under water.

High water at the boat launch.

Almost an island off the boat launch.

A few people have discovered the Cove this early-spring.

The brilliant redbuds greet the visitor on the way to the Cove.

Identifying the sources was the first step. Separating the packaging the second …

Keeping busy these days is as difficult these days as it is important, but there are ways.

I’m on this Keto diet thingy, which requires jettisoning carbohydrates (among others foods) and this morning was my second round of tossing out the scourge of the belly. Boxes and bags of flour, breakfast cereals, corn meal, corn starch, crackers, chips and just about any snack food worth its salt (and grain) is now in the garbage. Its packaging is in the recycle bin.

… and tossing out the carbs was the third step.

Took about 30 minutes to search and destroy in all my kitchen cabinets (and on top of the cabinets and the ‘fridge). I threw out enough good food–good meaning you could eat it, not that it’s good for you)–to feed a large elementary school class for a week.

This wasn’t just search and destroy, either. It meant separating the food from the paper and plastic, which took some time and effort–not to mention a certain amount of guilt. I grew up poor, so throwing out food is very nearly akin to murder for my conscience.

But it’s done. Now my cabinets have room for the stuff I can–and damn well should–eat. And I’ve used a nice portion of the day in a fruitful (or vegetableful, or even meatful) way. Yay, me.

That’s Christina with me (center) and Paul Lancaster getting ready to record Nightline.

My goodness! Look what I found.

This is a photo of my future bride, Christina Koomen, Public TV Niightline Host Paul Lancaster and me as Christina and I promoted the book Turning the Century, a look at the Roanoke Valley as we changed the millennium.

Christina was one of several writers I recruited to help write the large-format book which featured a lot of photos and our observations as the century changed and the earth didn’t explode–as some imagined it might. I had met Christina when she heard one of my Public Radio essays (about Friday 13, as I recall) and called her mom to set up an introduction.

Here we all are again. (Note: My beard is still red, not even salt and paprika yet.)

We got married and stayed that way until 2012. She’s my favorite ex and the best writer among them all.

My pals Lindsay and Trinity.

My two favorite redheads–Lindsay McKinnon and her daughter, Trinity–decided to get rid of the shut-in blues today and drive up to Roaring Run in Botetourt County for a little hike and a hearty lunch.

I put together a lunch of bbq, potato salad, coleslaw, and deviled eggs, which was popular.

Lindsay is a former nationally-ranked gymnast who is in superb physical condition and strong as a Sherpa guide, but I was still taken aback when she put on the big, stuffed backpack (including Trinity) like it weighed about as much as a wallet. The trail at Roaring Run can be wet and slippery and has a few long, high steps on the way up, but my worry about Lindsay was totally wasted. She was like a high wire walker, tiptoeing through the tulips.

Trinity loved her ride.

And, of course, Trinity, whose constant smile and good cheer would make an old codger’s heart melt, was loving every step and babbling in a baby language she was in the process of inventing.

I’m not around tiny kids much any more so this was a special treat, though not being able to touch Trinity was especially difficult–especially since she’s a dare-devil who wants to climb everything. We all maintained our safe distances.

A lovelier day in the midst of an epidemic, I could not have imagined. Here are some photos of our trek on a golden spring day.

Here’s the payoff: Mother Smith’s World Famous Barbecue with lemon/poppyseed coleslaw.

My dad used to cook barbecue all night over a pit, constantly tending the large chunk of pork (often a whole pig) for clubs and organizations. I heard men talk about the barbecue in glowing terms, but never got the recipe because Dad died when I was 13. It was one of the many topics I wanted to discuss with him, I discovered later.

This is Big Meat, fresh from the oven and ready to shred.

Though I didn’t get Dad’s recipe, I developed my own over the years and it has become something of a point of pride. My son took the same path, creating a dry-rubbed barbecue that is quite different from my more traditional North Carolina-style recipe, but quite good.

Mine is a rich, hearty, calorie-filled dish to serve these days, given our current circumstances. It has the added advantage of being versatile enough to be naked on a plate or snuggled in a bun with a lively lemon-poppy-seed cole slaw and simple potato salad on the side. Additionally, a 4.5-pound roast is rarely eaten in a single sitting, so you’ll have leftovers.

Here’s how I do it.

• 1 4.5-pound Boston butt pork roast (I love the packages that read: Boston Butt Whole)
• ½ cup maple syrup
• 1 teaspoon black pepper
• 2 teaspoons paprika
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon hot pepper sauce
• 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
• 1/2 cup chicken stock
• 1 cup chopped sweet onion
• 1 tablespoon chopped garlic
• 1/2 cup crushed tomatoes
• 1/4 cup apple vinegar
• 1 tablespoon canola oil

The leftovers go into the ‘fridge for later humming.

Combine the pepper, paprika, cumin, hot sauce, coriander and maple syrup in a bowl and reserve two tablespoons of it to the side. Rub what’s left evenly over the roast. Heat the canola oil in a large pan over medium heat and add the pork to the pan when the oil is hot. Cook it for 15 minutes, browning it on all sides.

Put the roast into a large slow cooker. (You should always put the pork into the cooker first-thing, to make sure it fits. This roast nearly didn’t and I had to cut a bit off.)

After removing the roast, add the onion and garlic to the hot pan with the remaining oil and sauté it for three minutes. Add the stock and take the pan off the heat. Stir in the two tablespoons of the spice mixture with vinegar and pour it all over the roast in the crockpot. Cook it for eight hours until it is tender.

Remove the pork from the pot and let it cool for 20 minutes, then skim the fat from the liquid it was cooked in. Or you can simply refrigerate it and more easily take the chilled fat off the top. Reserve a cup of the liquid. Shred the pork and discard the bone and fat. Add enough of the cooking liquid to keep it moist and toss it with the shredded meat.

You can eat the barbecue this way or top it with your own mustard- or tomato-based sauce.

You can’t tell it from this photo, but Valley View Mall is open. Most stores aren’t, however.

Since it was raining and chilly around “walk time,” I thought I’d go over to Valley View Mall, Roanoke’s biggest and a popular place for old farts like me to walk on dingy days. I found pretty much what I expected after going online and discovering the mall is open.

You can’t close a cookie store. It would be heresy.

It was nearly empty. Probably 80 percent of the businesses were closed at 1:30 p.m. and those that were open primarily dealt with food, nutrition, sports shoes or clothes, a book store, a couple of kiosks and a salon that weaves your eyebrows. OK, no I don’t know what that’s about, but a woman was sitting in a chair reading, awaiting customers.

I suspect this scene is typical for all the malls in the Valley, though the outside buildings seemed a little busier. A little.

And we’re nowhere near the vacancies we will see in a couple of weeks.

Barnes & Noble was open, but I didn’t see anybody buying books. Not a soul.

Here it is in all its emptiness.

It was a lot easier than I thought. I’ve been considering upending the basement in order to find some latex medical exam gloves I knew I had, but have put it off and put it off and put …

Today, after updating my bedroom drawers,  inventing a new upper-body workout and going with it, cleaning out the ‘fridge, putting in a load of laundry and doing various other busywork, I thought I’d at least visit the basement. First place I went, I moved an empty box (I keep boxes because I mail a lot of stuff) and voila! there they were.

Now, I can put my hands anywhere I want and I can scratch my butt, which has needed a good scratching for some time now.

That’s me working on my shoulders.

I’ve been missing my daily workouts at the gym since mine closed (and yours, too, no doubt), but a few minutes ago I had a brainstorm, initiated by an internet ad, of all things.

This is an upper body workout that requires a stretchy band of the type gyms use and something to attach it to the top of the door. I used a lanyard, tied to the center of the band and with the bulk of the lanyard inserted at the top of the door.

When the door is closed on the lanyard on the backside, it provides a stable connection and you can lift the “weights.”

This is an easy/cheap answer to lifting weights. You can buy the band at just about any big-box retailer or sports equipment store for probably $5 or less (I have a whole bag of them, coming in different strengths). Then you gotta do the work (and not just write about it, I told myself).

I ran into some interesting commentary yesterday while rooting around trying to get the details of the most recent drama events at Roanoke’s daily newspaper. There seems to be a good bit of speculation at the paper–both positive and negative–with Lee Enterprises’ purchase (for $149 million) of The Times from Warren Buffett’s BH Media, which is not and never has been a newspaper company, apparently.

One former reporter who remains close to the drama summed it up thusly:

“BH was a made-up company. Basically the Omaha newspaper executives were put in charge of a whole company overnight [and] they were out of their depth. [They had] no vision. Sometimes a bad plan is better than no plan. Lee seems to have a plan. It may turn out to be a bad plan, but at least it’s a plan. Lee is big on trying to create a digital future while extending the life of print as long as possible.”

Reporter Amy Friedenberger, who is with the group trying to form a guild (professionals in a union), tweeted this: “A metaphor for this newsroom [is that] our interim publisher (I’ve never met him and I don’t know where he lives, but his name is John Jordan) wasn’t in his office to accept our letter informing him we’re forming a union. Empty office. That shows his level of interest in local journalism.”

The former reporter I chatted with predicts that “someday [the paper] will all be online. Every day consumer preference dictates that. Online readership was far higher than print. Add them together and they nearly equal [the paper’s] old print readership. But online produces little revenue. Can Lee change that? We’ll see. By all accounts, they’re cheap … but at least they’re cheap [managers] with a plan.

“Here’s what to keep an eye on: the day Lee bought BH, the dreaded Alden hedge fund bought a small interest in Lee. Alden is the devil. Will [it] own enough to make a difference? I hope not but it’s not a good sign. Alden’s stake in the Tribune company has ruined the Norfolk.” [It has led to the sale of downtown offices, buyouts and a move to Newport News.)

“I was feeling great about the change to Lee until the Alden news. About 5 percent. …  [Alden owns] about a third of the Tribune.

“The Lee execs … have all said the right things about the value of local news. [It] may all be rhetoric but I never heard BH say that or anything [else about the value of local news]. Also the interim publisher is a former reporter” in Raleigh.

Lee Enterprises bought these Virginia papers from BH Media: The Roanoke Times, The Daily Progress in Charlottesville, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the Bristol Herald Courier, The News & Advance in Lynchburg, the Martinsville Bulletin, The Danville Register & Bee, The Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, the Culpeper Star-Exponent, and The News Virginian in Waynesboro.