Indian Rock - Connection!*

Good Morning Fellow NCTr's:

On the morning of September 23rd, as five thursday-morning trail crew guys fought their way through the underbrush, exploring a proposed route from the base of Indian Rock hill back out to the Game Commission double track to get out to Sterling Rd., some clown (who had been out plotting and planning with his GPS and marking flags) remarked, "It's only about 500 feet from here to there," in an attempt to sell the idea of the ease and simplicity of building this particular little piece of connecting trail. "We'll run the DR mower out as far as possible, then it's just a little bit of sidehill work to get back up to where we need to connect," he proclaimed. The other four looked skeptical. They were right to be.

However . . . three weeks and approximately forty-five labor hours later, we got it - we're connected as of yesterday morning when Lee and I headed out and finished off the last 40 yards of sidehill. We have a followable, walkable trail from the beginning to the end. The digging team of Fairbanks and Brewer were pretty efficient (probably not as good as Fairbanks and Fairbanks who were out on Sunday afternoon - but we're darn good diggers if I say so myself) in knocking out that last bit on a beautiful, sunny morning. The blazes from the double track to the base of the hill also got painted yesterday. There's a map here of how the whole thing ended up:
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=108657039929755040265.00048dac38585c56e767d&ll=40.793401,-80.474505&spn=0.002262,0.004812&t=h&z=18

"Details" (like taking out toe grabbers, end-of-the-section connection grubbing, installing some Carsonite posts, etc) left to do. Piece of cake.

Tomorrow morning we'll head back out to Gamelands 285, Sterling Road trailhead, at 9:00 to work those "details". We missed eating at Jata's in Wampum this week so we thought we'd try out "Rick's Place" in Darlington (on Darlington Road) for breakfast around 8:00 tomorrow and then head for the gamelands. Join us at least for breakfast if you can't make it for the whole morning.

Lastly, if you don't receive the NCTA Blue Blaze Bulletin in your email, here's a link to the issue just sent yesterday http://myemail.constantcontact.com/Blue-Blaze-Bulletin-from-the-North-Country-Trail-Association.html?soid=1101552208337&aid=NKEkWxGkmGc

Hope to see you tomorrow at GL285 - Thanks for all you do for the trail!

Dave Brewer
* Note - That's the 500th time I've sent the words "Indian Rock" out to you all this year. Whew!