My Quality Day: Hiking Swag for 2024

I've been wanting to do this post for quite a while, but I was waiting for one of the awards to come in the mail. While I was waiting for that, Pat Long, from Ohio, sent me some additional ones. Also, I found one that I should have shown you last year, and one set I earned in 2022/23, but didn't get around to submitting it until this year. Here's the entire collection.

Start at the top left and go down the left column. These are four patches that I earned in other years. I don't think you actually have to earn one of them, but I've been to the location several times, so it's all good.

Buckeye Trail: Ohio River Chapter Hikes. The BTA has divided their trail into sections supported by chapters. The Ohio River Chapter covers the Loveland and Williamsburg sections, which is pretty much the greater Cincinnati area, and the spur into Eden Park. Pat Long, one of their members, has created several patches for completing their area. This patch covers their chapter miles

Buckeye Trail: "The Junction" patch. This sign is located in Milford, Ohio. Eight trails converge there, and this sign was the brainchild of Brent Anslinger and Steve Boller. Supposedly, there is no other place where that many trails converge. See a picture of Denali at the actual sign in 2022, just below the patches.

Buckeye Trail: This patch is for the southern terminus of the spur into Cincinnati that ends at Eden Park. You can see me at that actual sign.

Wampum Chapter: This one I earned in 2002, but misplaced it. It's from the NCTA Wampum Chapter which has miles in both Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Denali at "The Junction" in 2022 Trail Junction sign in Milford Ohio

Now for the middle row, top to bottom. That colorful card probably doesn't mean anything, but since all you got for a lot of activity was the sticker below it, I am keeping the card. New York State Park Centennial Challenge. More about that below

NCT 8-State Sampler Patch: "We" (NCT Long-Distance Hiker Recognition) just brought this patch out this year. Of course I'd earned it previously.

Bottom row: Wegman's Passport Finger Lakes Trail patch set. More about that below.

Right column top to bottom: NCT 2024 Hike 100. This is the 9th year of the Hike 100 Challenge. I wonder if they'll do something extra cool for the 10th Anniversary.

Finger Lakes Trail 2024 50-mile patch and sticker

Finger Lakes Branch Trail End-to-End. More about that below

Under that is the NCT Adirondack Challenge. More on that below.

Now for the ones I want to showcase.

First will be the New York State Park Centennial Challenge. I really think they could have sprung for more than a sticker, but I'll take it.

After Marie and I finished our "big hike" of this year, we visited a state park. There we found the flyer for this challenge. There was a long list of options, and you had to do 25 of them in the year 2024. Well! Of course I started counting, and we'd already done 12 of them by "accident" on our other hike. So we got our motivation together and did 13 more before I had to leave New York. Most of the adventures we did between July 21-28 counted toward this. I sent our completed forms before I even left New York, but the sticker just came this week.

There were many varied activities, but they all had to be at a state park- picnics, learning things from interpretive signs, hiking, paddling, reading a book under a tree, watching the night sky. Lots of choices, and you could do any 25. We actually ended up with 27 because we were able to do several at the George Washington headquarters.

The Finger Lakes Branch Trails is the set of trails that Marie and I finished this summer. You must hike all of the branches: Onondaga (also NCT), Crystal Hills, Interloken, Letchworth, Bristol Hill, and Conservation Trail. Since we started the Onondaga Branch in 1996, I guess you have to conclude that we are slow. Haha! You can find almost all of those hikes on the blog if you care. Conservation Trail 2024, 2023. Letchworth and Crystal Hills September 2021. Interloken and Bristol July and August 2020. The Onondaga was completed long before, and the intervening years we were finishing the rest of the main FLT and the rest of the Buckeye Trail loops and spurs.

This one is very cool! It was also created just this year, and I'm pretty sure I'm the first person to get one (well, Mary Coffin certainly qualified before they even made the patch!), but you can get one too! Of course, as soon as I saw the requirements, I immediately figured out that I'd done enough of them the previous year or earlier. There are 17 options, and I've done 16 of them! If you went to the 2023 Celebration, you MAY have done two. You don't have to do the entire trail, just spend either an hour or hike a mile on each choise. Here is a link to the NCT Adirondack Challenge form.

Now for the one I've coveted for quite a while. It's actually three patches that form a panorama. Along the Finger Lakes Trail there are posts with a metal plaque where you are supposed to make a rubbing. The three patches represent the Western, Central, and Eastern sections of the FLT.

This program was created with Wegman's (huge NY grocery chain), and is called the Passport series. You have to get 4 rubbings from posts in each section. There are plenty of posts to choose from, nevertheless, it took me forever to collect 12 of them from the right places. I passed up lots of posts on earlier hikes. At first I didn't realize you could get patches. I knew they were to motivate families (lots of the posts are reached by easy hikes from trailheads). Then I just wasn't focused on that goal.

Then I got serious. There is a booklet for each section where you can make the rubbings. It has a guide to each post. There are supposed to be booklets and crayons at each post, but you know things sometimes don't get maintained. Anyway, I had a couple of rubbings before the E2E hike, but I wanted to get the rest of what I needed on that hike. First two posts I came to, no booklets, no crayons. All I had with me was a pen. I tried getting the image to transfer to the back of my map, but it was basically unreadable.

Finally, I got a booklet. Got 2 from the west section, all the middle and east ones. Still needed two west ones, right?

Last year, on the Conservation branch, I got my last two western rubbings. Finally collected all the stuff and sent it in this year. I LOVE this. You also get entered in a drawing for groceries, but hey, all I want is the patches!