Northwoods Training Facility

 

North Woods Training Facility

Presque Isle, WI

11/22/12 to 11/26/12

44 to 40 Days to Africa

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.  This year we are giving thanks for our family, friends, co-workers, acquaintances, and total strangers.  Without all of you, our fundraising and teaching and learning supply drive efforts would not be nearly as fruitful.  We also wouldn’t have the benefit of all your words of encouragement behind us continually driving us forward in our preparations for our journey.  Please keep your stories, insights and support coming our direction in the weeks to come.  We will continue to share our training and other experiences with you related to our charitable adventure.  We are extremely excited to share with you the impact that all of our efforts will have on the people of Tanzania.

For the Thanksgiving holiday, Deb and Greg made a trek to our north woods training facility at Deb’s parent’s home.  Nestled in with our car load of items was a bag full of easy to transport work out items, and we tossed in our weighted Hula Hoop for good measure.  During the day hours, Greg helped his father-in-law cut a new path through the woods.  The work was laborious but enjoyable, and the company was good.  The two worked in tandem cutting trees with their chainsaws, and stacking the wood into burn piles or future firewood piles depending upon variety and condition.  A Thanksgiving night snow fall of approximately three inches made it safe to light the burn piles ablaze on Friday and left the newly created path well groomed.    

In addition to the outdoor work-outs that Greg undertook, there were also evening workouts with Deb in the basement of the family home.  Deb did a great job of designing a workout program that took 45 minutes to an hour to complete and utilized a variety of muscle groups.  Despite several mock whining looks and comments, Greg found the workout to be a definite challenge. 

Meanwhile, in her downtime, Deb read through 83 pages worth of travel advice and other information provided by the travel clinic that is pertinent to our trip.  She learned about the hazards and potential side effects of some of the medications that we will be bringing as well as practical advice pertaining to our time in Tanzania and our brief stop over in Kenya.  We are trying hard to be as prepared as possible in order to successfully climb to the top of the mountain. 

William O'Brien State Park

 

William O'Brien State Park

11/18/12

5 hours, 13 miles

48 Days to Africa

Situated just 34 miles from our home and a little over 10 miles north of Stillwater, MN along the St. Croix River, William O’Brien State Park was land that we thought we’d traversed before but quickly learned it was new to us.  The park featured a steep incline from Lake Alice up to the visitor’s center.  From there we had our choice of a number of routes along trails that are well suited to cross country skiing, but also quite serviceable as hiking routes. 

 

 

What struck us as most beautiful about the hike were the rolling hills and the multitude of different settings that our course took us through.  We hiked in areas with wetlands, hardwood stands, prairie lands, beaver ponds, hillsides and lowlands.  The park was well visited on the day of our trek, but felt far from busy or crowded.  As we hiked, we had a chance to talk about life, our goals, our likes, and our dislikes.  In typical fashion, we also spent a significant portion of the hike talking about Tanzania, Kilimanjaro, and our fundraising efforts.  We are getting closer to our departure date, and the excitement for our journey mounts.

 

During our preparations, we are finding that we are not the first to be undergoing this trek.  We know several people amongst our friends, co-workers, or acquaintances who have climbed Kilimanjaro themselves or know someone who has done the climb.  There seems to be a sense of wonder, awe, and reverence for the mountain and the people who live and work in its close proximity.  We have received sage pieces of advice and been provided plenty of food for thought as we prepare to make our own go at the mountain’s great heights. 

 

After our hike, we made a different kind of trek to a location that we have become quite familiar with, REI.  We haven’t named an official outfitter for our journey, but if we did REI would certainly be a leading candidate.  During this visit, Deb picked up a pair of trail running shoes for light hiking and use in camp.  Greg managed to get $35 off of a pair of trail runners that he had actually purchased a month earlier that had recently gone on sale.  Unfortunately, Deb had already spent what Greg had recouped and more so REI was still the winner that day.  

 

Oh Deer!

Oh Deer !

Fort Snelling State Park

St. Paul, MN

11/11/12

1hr 45min, around 5 miles

For this past weekend's excursion, we decided to stay extra close to home.  Initially, we had plans to head southwest for a hike along the Minnesota River Valley, but time did not permit since we slept longer than anticipated in the morning and Deb had a noon soccer game in Minneapolis.  Once we chose Fort Snelling State Park as our destination, we set out to explore an area we have driven past several times for more than ten years but neither of us has taken an opportunity to explore.  

 

 

The park sits below the grounds of Fort Snelling and consists of 3,400 acres.  Due to our time crunch, we focused on one particular area of the park - Pike Island.  We can summarize our experience in this area in a couple of words....  Oh deer!  At least twenty of them in fact.  There were so many deer on the island that they almost seemed like squirrels or chipmunks.  We rarely went more than five or ten minutes while hiking without seeing at least one deer, if not a group of three or four.  We saw little deer (no fawns though), big deer, medium deer, bucks, does, two pointers and eight pointers.  The deer were neither aggressive nor timid; they appeared to go about their business and were content to let us go about ours.  We did see three hunters while hiking in the park, but they were armed only with expensive looking cameras and an apparent interest in capturing the activities of the local residents.

 

 

 

The landscape for our trek was not particularly diverse, but did offer some unique perspectives on our view of the local park and recreation areas.  Driving into the park, we were greeted by a fly-by from a large airplane landing at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.   At the parking lot, we were looking up at one of the many bridges in the area that take highway travelers from one destination to another without much thought of the land below.  We have ten years of experience on the roads above so we found our two hours down below to be a refreshing change of pace.  Once we were on the trail, we were exposed to the deer in droves and the sounds of trains passing in the not so distant distance.  The trail also at times captured the beauty of the meandering waterways that provided transportation for many people before trains, planes and automobiles existed.

 

 

 

 

The weather added its own unique touch, and for the first time during our training hikes in Minnesota we found ourselves hiking in precipitation.  It rained or sleeted lightly as we trekked around the park.  Although it offered a gentle test for some of our equipment, it posed no real threat to our comfort.  It was also relatively cool compared to other recent hikes, and yet out equipment continued to provide sufficient warmth combined with adequate breathability. 

 

 

Fort Snelling was well worth the visit.  The park offers ample mountain bike trails and sufficient hiking trails to keep most folks occupied.  It had an understated beauty to it and likely that beauty is enhanced when the trees are in bloom, during the fall color change, or once the snow has covered the ground.  On a rainy, dreary Sunday morning, it still held enough interest to capture the eyes of a couple of first timers and its proximity to the heart of the metro area make its presence and preservation all the more impressive.  Fort Snelling was the home and visiting place for many animals and people for hundreds or thousands of years before Europeans encroached upon the land, and the fact that it remains undeveloped (or returned to nature in the case of some areas) speaks well to efforts to conserve some slice of this planet where we are guests not residents.    

Support Team RE/MAX Results

 

Support Team RE/MAX Results

Fundraising Efforts go High Tech

11/8/12

58 Days to Africa

The RE/MAX Results trekking team invites you to view the following video.  The video outlines some of the many motivations that our group has for taking on the Kilimanjaro Challenge.  It also provides valuable information about the ways in which our fundraising efforts will have a positive impact on the community we will be visiting.  We appreciate your continued support and interest in our adventure, and we invite you to consider making a financial contribution to help us reach our fundraising goal of $20,000. 

http://youtu.be/0_RfjHGxpRU

Nomads in Frontenac State Park

 

Nomads in Frontenac State Park

Frontenac, MN

11/4/12

5 hours, 10.3 miles

 

62 days to Africa

 

 

Inspired by the previous week's adventure, Deb and Greg hit the road and headed back to southern Minnesota for another round of hiking.  This week, we chose Frontenac State Park.  The park came highly recommended by our friends Paul and Karensa and featured a challenging hike down and up a steep bluff along the impressive shores of the Mississippi River.

 

 

The portion of the Mississippi River that touches Frontenac State Park is also known as Lake Pepin.  The area was a high end steamboat stop in the years immediately following the Civil War and drew visitors for New Orleans, St. Louis and St. Paul.  The arrival of the railroad to southern Minnesota in 1870 ended the town's heyday but did little to subtract from the areas natural beauty.

 

 

 

We began our hike by descending the bluff down towards the river.  There were steps, a few more steps, a steep slope with rocks and roots along the trail and then a few more steps.  After descending perhaps 300 feet, we followed a meandering trail for about a mile below the bluffs before re-encountering stairs, steps, upwards slopes with rocks and roots and then some more stairs.  We ended up seeing three deer along the trail and when we reached the top of the bluff we saw a herd (gaggle, crew, posse, or whatever you call a group) of turkeys.

 

 

The remainder of the hike was fairly gentle in its terrain, but scenic nonetheless.  We crossed prairie lands, walked through hard wood forest areas, and had a chance to observe areas of the park that had recently undergone a controlled burn.  The charred landscape still had the scent of being burned, and we even saw one pile of sticks still smoldering. 

 

 

As we hiked, we had a great chance to visit with each other and unwind from the hectic week we had just finished.  We talked about our fundraising efforts and the great opportunity we have to make a difference in the lives of people we have never met.  It has been a powerful experience to have found support from those we know well, as well as from folks who we do not really know. 

 

 

We also talked about how cool it has been to use our training as a way to explore new areas of Minnesota that we have yet to see since moving here ten years ago.  We have been very fortunate to have the chance to travel to a wide variety of places throughout the world, but taking time to see more of the local geology and topography has been a fun way to spend some of our weekends. 

 

 

The goal of our trek was to log some significant hours on our feet, and we certainly accomplished that goal.  By the time we returned to our car to head back to St. Paul, we had gone over 10 miles. 

 

The Tin Man Event

The Tin Man Event

St. Paul, MN

10/28/12

5.52 miles

69 Days to Africa

 

Deb and Greg followed up their Saturday hike in southern Minnesota with the inaugural Tin Man event on Sunday.  Essentially, the Tin Man is an extremely abbreviated Ironman style event in which participants take a swim under a gallon of water, ride their bikes for nearly three miles around stunning Lake Como and then make a slightly shorter return trip around the lake by foot.

 

 

Thirteen additional participants joined us for the event, and we are proud to say that all appeared to have a good time.  The weather was quite pleasant for a late October afternoon.  We had decent sun, low wind, and a temperature comfortably in the upper 40s or low 50s.  Our generous friends pitched in hot apple cider and still others brought delicious warm roast beef sandwiches for everyone to snack on after the race.  The warming house featured a fire in the wood burning stove, and seating for the crowd as well as the famished athletes.

 

The event was a blast and provided a chance to raise some funds for our effort to support TAFCOM's work in Tanzania.  Between t-shirt sales and sponsorship from caring and supportive friends who were not able to attend the event, the Tin Man event raised over $550 dollars for TAFCOM.  Deb and Greg are extremely thankful to all who participated in the event and/or supported the event in any fashion.  The success of this year's event solidified Greg's comittment to organizing a Tin Man in 2013.