This weekend, Kevin and I went up to Waycross to do some volunteer work while Lewis stayed back at our house with Kevin's parents. It sounds like they had a good time (despite him giving them a very early morning wake-up Sunday), and we had a good time. (Thanks again, J&S!)
There were three crews of volunteers on Saturday--one cleaned the retreat house at Hickory Hill, one cleaned the Lodge (and lifejackets and paddles), and then one (the one Kevin and I were on) helped with clearing out the woods for a new trail that is being built. When it is completed, it will be for hikers, mountain bikers, and will be ADA certified (wheelchair accessible). We got a pretty good section cleared out on Saturday in some cold rain (and even a few minutes of hail!), but there is still a loooong way to go as it will be a very long trail out to the outer boundaries of camp (near the Tecumseh Trail, Yellowwood State Forest, etc.) that normally don't get utilized. It will have no more than a 5% grade, so it should end up being a very nice trail for all once it is completed. I have a feeling when we return for the spring work weekend, we will be tackling it again. :)
Our motley crew, heading out into the woods
The 'Before' shot, first thing Saturday morning.
The guys had just started hacking away at the small trees. The trailbuilders/ visionaries/whatever have flagged out the trail, so we followed their flags with a tree removal crew, then a raking crew to clear out the leaves, then a digging crew to actually start digging into the hillside and creating a shelf which will be the trail. It has to be a certain width and have a certain slope to a) be certified and b) not erode as badly.
The 'In Progress' shot of that section.
Trees out, leaves raked, but hillside hasn't yet been cut into.
And the 'After' shot at the end of Saturday.
This section still isn't finished, but it is getting there.
We all did a little bit of everything (raking, cutting trees, digging out the hillside) and just kind of leap-frogged each other along the trail. Speaking of frogs...
Anne with her tree frog
She thought she killed him with the rake, but he just wasn't moving much in the cold weather, thank goodness.
Letting her know he was, indeed, alive by releasing bodily fluids on her glove. :)
What up?
It was raining when we woke up Saturday morning but let up in time for work to begin. Sometime between breakfast and lunch, it started sprinkling, then raining, then hailing! I grabbed my coat and ran under a tree (with no leaves) to try to get some cover (which, thinking back, was probably dumb...that's how people get struck by lightning). :) Anyway, it only lasted a few minutes, but it left us very cold and soggy and muddy.
Here were a few pictures I took while it was coming down:
I guess it's hard to tell what's going on in the pictures.
Anyway, we also found quite a few salamanders as we were working:
Alan's
Anne's
Tony's and Anne's, together :)
And we had a canine friend out helping us--one of the director's dogs, Maya. Here, she was supervising Alan. :) I might have accidentally lightly tapped her on the head with a tool as she darted in the path of it while I was swinging it. :( I felt so bad--I totally saw her coming and was able to slow my swing, thankfully. She is a good (and smelly) dog.
After lunch, we had some thunder but no more rain, thankfully. We crossed a creek and cleared out another decent-sized chunk of trail. It's pretty steep so will require a lot of cutting into the hillside. We didn't focus on that aspect of this section just yet--just cleared trees and raked the leaves away.
This was the view I had in the afternoon from the 'new' section of trail we were clearing, looking across the woods to the 'old' section we'd cleared that morning.
I'm excited to see what it will look like once it is finished! Kevin went back out Sunday morning to clear a small section at the head of the trail while I did some gardening. It was really cold Sunday morning and motivation was riding pretty low. :)
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