Trail Blazing Bunny - Part 1

Kirkachu had talked Wendy and I into going with him on a trailbuilding project with the VOC (Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado). So for a Saturday, we were up pretty early.


I navigated, of course.


We were building trails at the Cherokee Ranch and Castle, and it was really beautiful. But I didn't see a castle.


I did see a wild turkey. But no castle.


Until, one more bend in the road and...


There it was!


Cherokee Castle!!


The Cherokee Castle is really something to see. It was originally called the Charlford Castle and it took two years to build, from 1924 to 1926, and that's just the beginning of its amazing history. They said we'd get a tour after the trails were all built, and I was really looking forward to that.


But first we had to figure out what to do with all of this trail building stuff (called crusher fines). This ALREADY looked like hard work, and we hadn't even started yet.


We wandered over to the picnic area where they were setting up to check in the volunteers and where all the crew leaders were meeting.


There's a beautiful view of the castle from the picnic area.


The views up here were breathtaking.


The VOC had provided lots of water for the volunteers. VERY important stuff up here, doing such hard work in the mountains.


There was a crew leader walkthrough, and Wendy and I followed Kirkachu (who was like a crew leader caterpillar that day - almost there, about to turn into a beautiful crew leading butterfly. Hmm... rereading this I think maybe I shouldn't do blog entries so late at night. -Gage) Anyway...



All of the crew leaders were assigned their parts of the trail. There was the main trail, a loop, and a couple of "stubs" that were all going to be done in one day!


Some parts of where the trail was going to be looked a lot more difficult to clear than others.


But, there was already a pack of school kids coming on Monday to hike the trails we were building on Saturday! And looking at the view, it seemed to me that if it opened this up so kids could come up and see this, it was worth it.


Back to the picnic, where more people were starting to gather.


A bunny and his drinking water. I agreed to share with Wendy.



A lot of families come and get involved with the VOC, which is a really wonderful thing to see. They even had a special project specifically for the littler kids. The smaller kids got to plant trees by the pond. At the end of the day they looked like they had a really great time at it.


Up next, everyone had to be put into a crew to start working on their part of the trail.


Super big tools, but Wendy said she thought I'd be able to help anyway. If we're going to keep this up, I might have to invest in a set of tools of my own. We'll see.


We got to be on Kirkachu's team. Standing next to Kirkachu is Steve Austin. No, not the bionic man, the guy who was mentoring Kirkachu on how to be a crew leader. He was incredible. Steve knows a LOT about building a trail, and it made me tired just WATCHING him. The guy's got a lot of energy.



Everyone kept saying that our part of the trail was pretty difficult, and it certainly was a LOT of hard work. But we got it done! And our reward...


Another section of trail to do. But this one wasn't quite as difficult.


We pretty much finished it up just before lunch, which is a great stopping point for this already super long blog entry.

My trail blazing blog entry will continue on Saturday the 16th! Check back! I got to see the Castle!!!