The January Scramble

The last 3 weeks of January have seen the Trail Crew in a number of places across the state. Our second week at Green Valley was a busy one, in which we cleared out the vast majority of the material in the basement, as well as the trash and recyclables in the 3 outbuildings. This was a major undertaking, as our only means of accomplishing it was to manually load our flatbed truck and drive to the nearby landfill and scrapyard. A fully refurbished site is now within reach and hopefully more progress will be made in the near future, but for now Trail Crew's attention is being demanded elsewhere, within the park at Green Valley as well as outside of it.


Delilah takes out her frustrations on a (now vaporized) ornament found amongst the trash in the outbuildings.


While shoveling trash out of the outbuildings, this plaque was uncovered. The text reads: "My house is clean enough to be healthy, and dirty enough to be happy".

The third week of January began with our Martin Luther King Jr. service day. Trail Crew, along with many other members of the Keepers of the Land program, spent this day in our state's capitol. There we toured the capitol and met with a representative of the Governor, as well as some of our local legislators, in order to promote awareness of our programs. Afterward we broke into groups and spent several hours at local soup kitchens, homeless shelters and the Ronald McDonald House, assisting the staff with projects that needed attention. This brought us out of our routine duties, and allowed us to have more diverse public service experiences.

Unfortunately, the rest of the week was full of horrible weather, and the Trail Crew was restricted to working at the Shop. Undeterred, we decided to tackle one of the most dreaded Shop projects: scrubbing and sealing the tile floors. Built three years ago, the Shop never had sealed floors, and so the dirt and grime we inevitably tracked in worked itself securely into the floor. We therefore spent the remainder of the week on our hands and knees scrubbing it clean tile by tile. A tedious task, it nevertheless gave us at least a minor sense of accomplishment, as our headquarters is now significantly cleaner and more presentable.


Adam works hard to seal the freshly scrubbed floors.

Our final week in January was initially spent at the shop (again due to unfavorable weather), but we were eventually able to reach Green Valley where we demolished several of the outbuildings and cleared out some remaining trash and hazardous waste. Several more potential projects were presented to us there, but before committing to them, we felt obligated to tie up the loose ends we'd left at Waubonsie State Park. Thus we spent our last two days of the month at Waubonsie, organizing and preparing tools and materials so that we could finish our work on the two tent pads we'd refurbished, as well begin working on the third pad. Hopefully our first week in February will see favorable weather so that we can devote as much time as possible to finishing what we started there.


Adam and Ceith work together to demolish one of the outbuildings as neatly as possible.

Green Valley is the place to be!

After a short winter hiatus, Trail Crew met back up in January to begin a mostly indoor project that would keep us out of the weather for a while near Green Valley State Park, just outside the town of Creston, IA.  The park recently accumulated some adjacent land which includes a house and some outbuildings.  The house still had some belongings in it, and during its vacancy it seemed to have become a refuge to all sorts of six- and eight-legged creatures trying to get out of the weather.  Trail Crew started cleaning right away--many vacuumfuls of Asian Lady Beetles later, the house was suitable for us to stay overnight in, and we spent most of the week cleaning the bedrooms, kitchen and bathroom, and starting to clear out the basement/garage area.  We found all sorts of goodies, including a mounted Amazon parrot, an operational Pirate and Traveler board game, lighting kits, mason jars, an old wallpaper sample book, army clothing, vintage apple crates, countless old books, and much, much more.  Far from finished, we plan to re-use many of these things (particularly tools and crates), and what is still in good shape that we can't use we plan to donate to D.A.V. stores, Habitat for Humanity Re-Stores, and other charitable organizations.

Ceith and Adam cleaning the kitchen

One truckload down...

Hey, all work and no play makes Adam and Ewan dull boys...

We will be returning next week to continue to clear out/repair the house, and we will be able to use the house as a great base station when working on projects in the surrounding area--so expect to see lots of Trail Crew in Green Valley for some time!