Wrapping up 09 Season

Our travels have been gradually winding us back toward Colorado. Over the last few days, we have spent time in Minnesota and Nebraska as the Subaru/Leave No Trace Traveling Trainer Season '09 begins to wind down.

Amidst enjoying the fun outdoor recreational activities that Minneapolis has to offer, mainly disc golf and bike riding, we toured the campus of Minnesota State University.  We provided an Awareness Workshop to the students in the Programming for Outdoor Settings course.  As they learned the skills and ethics that drive the Leave No Trace program, they also picked up a little bag of tricks on how to teach this information to groups they will lead in the future.

 

Onto Ralston, Nebraska for an evening with over 50 cub scouts for their den meeting.  These 6-9 year old boys learned ways to Leave No Trace through an energetic  game of What Principle Am I?, an activity available in the PEAK Pack.  The boys and their families took home education, as well as their very own Subaru/Leave No Trace tote bag.  The totes were a BIG hit with Halloween right around the corner!  For us, back to Colorful Colorado...

Sate travels...Kate and Tracy

Picture of the Week: Happy Halloween!!!

What better way to celebrate Halloween than a spooky hike in a remote locale?

We thought we'd do just that when we visited Goblin Valley State Park in Southern Utah earlier this week! We didn't see any goblins, but the erie rock formations and eroded cliffs didn't disappoint! Hope you all have a Happy Halloween and if you happen to be in Utah...keep an eye out for goblins!

Impromptu Awareness Workshop

Typically an Awareness Workshop with the Traveling Trainers is set up months in advance. The host contacts our Outreach Manager, Dave Winter. Dave puts the workshop on the calendar. We contact the event host and work out all the logistics well in advance. This is not a story about one of those Awareness Workshops.

Over the weekend we headed to Malibu Creek State Park for an event sponsored by Subaru. The evening before the event we showed up at the park's campground in hopes of finding a place to camp. As we drove around the campground loop we noticed that we seemed to be drawing more attention than usual (if you've ever seen the Leave No Trace Subaru, then you know it has potential to draw a modest amount of attention). As we commented to each other about all the staring, one camper waved us down for a quick photo (of the Subaru, not us). We pulled over and jumped out to chat while several people began photographing the car. As we chatted to the photographers we discovered that they were all part of the same recreation class at a local university. We also found out that this was their first camping trip as a class and that they had recently taken a test that focused on Leave No Trace...talk about perfect timing!

We got the whole group to take the Bigfoot Challenge! What a great group and the perfect opportunity for some impromptu Leave No Trace talk.

If you are interested in setting up an Awareness Workshop with the Subaru/Leave No Trace Traveling Trainers for the 2010 season (and don't want to take the chance that we'll just happen to show up at the perfect time) please submit an online request.

350 at The North Face Endurance Challenge

Saturday we joined Kevin from The North Face and over 1,500 runners and fans at the Kettle Moraine State Park in Eagle, WI for fourth stop of The North Face Endurance Challenge!  After a chilly start to the day, the sun came out and warmed the trails for all of the athletes.  It was a perfect day for a race!
October 24th was also the International Day of Climate Action orchestrated by 350.org.  Currently the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere is at 390 parts per million(ppm) .  In an attempt to bring that number to a healthy level of 350 ppm and to help spread awareness of the dangerous levels of carbon in the atmosphere, we collected 350 signatures on our poster about the Bigfoot Challenge.  The big guy was honored to help us take action and be a part of one of the over 4,000 events going on world-wide.  All of these events are meant to encourage world leaders at the United Nations to re-think policies at the final meeting of the Climate Change Conference in Copehagen, Denmark this December.
It was an honor to be a small link in such a huge chain of events.  World leaders will be unable to ignore this grassroots effort to let the people be heard.  We are one COMMUNITY! 

Safe travels...Kate and Tracy

Picture of the Week 10/23/09

ONLY 8 MORE DAYS TO TAKE THE BIGFOOT CHALLENGE!

GSUSA Trainer Course in Mississippi

This past weekend marked the final trainer course in the 2009 season for Team East.  Held at Camp Wahi in Brandon, MS, the participants on the course were a dynamic group of girl scout leaders and volunteers from across the state.  We spent our time exploring the skills and ethics of Leave No Trace, while experiencing no shortage of fun and laughter!  All of the women on the course were enthusiastic about taking their new knowledge back to their councils to share with their fellow staff and scouts.  A special thanks to Vera for coordinating this event and to Colleen for hosting us at the beautiful Camp Wahi!

Safe travels...Kate and Tracy

Geocaching 101: Part Deux

This morning we said our goodbyes to our recent travel companion, Wolfgang Von Pitterpat. As promised in our earlier post Geocaching 101…We Need Your Help, we dropped Wolfgang off at the first suggested location, the Travel Bug Hotel (N 36° 30.306 W 104° 55.241) in Cimarron, New Mexico. Before dropping Wolfgang off we tagged him with our newest ethics reference card on geocaching*. This being our first adventure into the world of geocaching, we weren’t sure what to expect. Turns out we had a lot of fun and finally took the time to learn how to use the GPS unit that has been sitting in our glove box for over a year! Here is a brief retrospective of our geocaching adventure...enjoy!

We found Wolfgang at the top of Boundary Peak in Nevada and decided to make him an honorary Traveling Trainer!

Wolfgang perched on the Subaru on our way to Cimarron.

JD and Wolfgang figuring out how to use our GPS unit.

We found the "Travel Bug Hotel" right next to the historic St. James Hotel, which is supposedly haunted!

*No Travel Bugs were harmed in the tagging process.