Today's Recap - Sunday's Plan

Good Evening Fellow NCTr's:

It was a golden morning out on the trail at Cemex this morning. In fact, as we stood there taking a break and looking around Jake remarked that it was ". . . a field of gold." It was, as in goldenrod, I believe. Acres, and acres, and acres of it between Fletcher Hill Road and the lime kiln near Snake Run Road- quite beautiful in an autumn kind of way. Some photos here: http://outdoors.webshots.com/album/577334854UNgKrW?start=168 starting on the bottom row. Unfortunately, much of that goldenrod was overhanging the North Country Trail between those two roads and as we ran the DR mower through there, pruned, and weedwacked our pathway clear we threw a bunch of that gold stuff into the air, probably raising the pollen count on the allergy index by a good fifty percent. Sorry about that Lawrence County residents. Gesundheit.

My thanks to the crew who came out to help clear that section of trail on a very humid morning. Jim Houk and Bob Cody handled the DR mower duty today, and Jake Erhardt and Lee Fairbanks pruned that multiforal rose and black raspberry to within an inch of its life. We're looking good out there. In fact, within the last two weeks or so the entire Cemex section has been mowed and/or weedwacked, pruned, and all blowdowns have been removed - third time through there this season to give it "the treatment," if you know what I mean. It is 4x8 from River Road to Sankey Hill Road!

Sunday's (Sept 26) plan is to meet at 5:00 PM at the Sterling Road trailhead at Gamelands 285 and work for a couple of hours on digging new trail away from Indian Rock hill and towards the trailhead. We've only about four weeks left to get this section whipped into shape for the community hike. As always, come when you can and stay as long as you want - all help is appreciated.

Thanks for all you do for the NCT,
Dave