What a Week!

Wow, what a week! What hard work! What fun!

Gary Ruetenik (in the orange shirt) likes to build hiking trails. Gary is a volunteer crew leader or "Wagon Master" who asked if I wanted to help build a section of the Cumberland Trail which will eventually traverse Tennessee from Kentucky to Georgia. About 150 of the 300 miles of trail is finished...all by volunteers. I agreed to help but didn't know how hard the work was...or how much fun.

The fun part was working with 49 great college kids who gave up their spring break time to volunteer and help build the trail. Heck, they came to help Tennessee and they all came from other states. 10-15 students each came from 4 colleges....Longwood University in Virginia, Cazenovia college in NY, Hamilton College in NY, and the University of Wisconsin at River Falls. There were over 100 more students working on another part of the trail. There will be more next week.

I worked all week with the self named "Hard Core Crew" from Longwood University; 9 young women and one young man. They were all hard working, smart, and with the best positive attitudes that you could ask for.

Trust me, it was hard work. The first two days I could hardly get out of the car when I got home. I am not kidding. I either got in better shape or got numb as the week went on because I felt that I worked harder and was less tired each day. But here is an interesting piece of information....my elbow tendonitis and Ray's sore back got better the more we worked.

And how did the trail work go? Well, the guys like Gary who do this regularly said that these were the best crews that they ever had. We completed far more trail than the target for the week and the technical aspects of the trail, such as proper slope, proper drainage, elimination of roots and rocks, safe stone steps, etc., were all perfect.
Here is the whole crew cleaned up and looking good (click on the picture for a larger view).

For more pictures from our week of trail building go to this Picasa Web Album.

There will be many more opportunities to volunteer for this hard work and fun time. Contact me and I will put you in touch with Gary Ruetenik. You can work one day or many, your choice. I can only guarantee that you will feel much better (in many ways) after building trail with a bunch of positive young college students like these.