- If your travels take you towards the coast, check out the longest hiking trail east of the triangle.

As producer Clay Johnson shows us, the Neusiok Trail offers a variety of terrain, plants and animals.

- I started walking the Neusiok Trail in 1989.

It's a beautiful place to walk most of the year except maybe in mid-July after a big storm and it and it rains and there's a lot of little flying biting things.

You see all kinds of things.

You never know what you're gonna see.

You know, it might be a flying squirrel, it might be some birds, might be some all kinds of flowers.

And you see 'em at different times of year.

Sometimes you'll see bear tracks that you know are fresh and you never see the bear.

- [Narrator] The 22 mile long Neusiok Trail is in the Croatan National Forest and runs from the Neus River near Havelock south to the Newport River.

It's just about the only place in eastern North Carolina that's long enough to do an overnight backpacking trip.

- [Narrator] The southern end of the trail is flat and offers views of the Newport River and salt marshes while the northern end is a little hillier winding through hardwood forest to the Neus River.

- And then intermingled in all that is cypress gum swamps with long boardwalks that cross 'em and it's beautiful in some way.

It has a very different feel to it.

It's very primordial feeling and you'll hear birds but you never see 'em.

Those are probably my favorite places in the world.

It's a scenic place and it has a lot of diversity of plants.

I mean, there's carnivorous plants on the trail if you know where to look.

There's some endangered plants on here if you know what you're looking at.

There's a lot of things if you're looking around and you keep your eyes open, that things to see that are neat to see.

- [Narrator] Members of the Carteret County Wildlife Club pitched the idea of a trail to the US Forest Service back in the late 1960s.

- So the Forest Service gave permission and it got hacked out of the wilderness, literally.

- [Narrator] Volunteers started hacking in 1971 and worked for 30 years to build the trail and three and a half miles of boardwalks.

- [Roger] The Forest Service often would bring in piles of timber on one of their off-road vehicles.

On one instance, the Marine Corps actually dropped a giant pallet of timber into the woods.

A lot of times it was just a lot of people carrying a piece of wood at a time in and out.

- [Narrator] Volunteers continue to maintain the trail.

These are members of the Mountain to Sea Trail Organization.

The Neusiok Trail represents a major section of the MST.

- This is one of the most important recreational assets for all of Eastern North Carolina.

- I volunteer for this 'cause I enjoy it.

I love being in the outdoors.

We're out here every week doing this, gotta trim up the sides, keep 'em clear, and we just provide a good clean path for all the hikers and bikers that come through.

- [Roger] It takes a lot of hours.

I think last year we had somewhere around 2,500 hours total of volunteer time and it's all volunteer help.

- [Narrator] Volunteers help the trail recover from Hurricane Florence in 2018.

- [Roger] After Florence, we cleared 300 trees.

- [Narrator] And that changed the trail.

- [Roger] The canopy is open more than it used to be, so there's a lot more light getting to the forest floor.

And so there's a lot more grasses, flowering shrubs than there used to be.

- [Narrator] There are several trail access points with parking and there are a few amenities.

Oyster Point Campground at the southern end of the Trail and Pine Cliff Recreation Area at the northern end.

There's primitive camping with a few shelters in between, but mostly it's just wilderness and that may be the most important amenity of all.

- People grow up inside now.

And being in green space helps you appreciate and learn about how the world works outside of a building.

The green space is where the oxygen is made so we can breathe and where the pollinators come from that keep our crops growing so that we can eat and just the mix of creatures that are out here is, you know, it's beautiful.

I mean it's the world that we were given.

And I'd like to keep.

[soft music] - For more information on the Neusiok Trail, go to the Carteret County Wildlife Club website at carteretwildlifeclub.org.