A Little More Swag

I found a couple more things I bought on the North Dakota trip- another North Dakota patch and a stick medallion from Fort Abercrombie.

Also, if you give a monetary gift to the NCTA in September, you can get the patch on the right. Those of us who love patches therefore have no choice!

I worked on many of my projects today including writing a bit on Vacation. That's up to 40,964 words. I'm beginning to get a feel for how to get to the ending. This is always the hardest part for me. I have a clear story line for about 2/3 of the plot. I have an ending. But connecting the two is often difficult.

My tooth still doesn't hurt, but it's very sharp. I bought a sports mouth guard and fitted a small piece of it to cover that section of my teeth. Annoying, but it keeps me from cutting my tongue to ribbons, and constantly poking at it.

I managed to work a bit on a number of projects, but I'm feeling highly unmotivated this evening.

See Hiking Swag for 2025

Hiking Swag for 2025

It's possible I'd find something else to do this year to get more patches, but probably not. There are hiking challenges you can do that you pay for, and part of the porceeds go to various charities. It's a great concept, but I can't pay $25 for a patch.

There are two categories of swag I got this year: stuff I earned and stuff I bought.

These are earned. The certificate, round patch and NCT sticker are for the Hike 100 Challenge. I finished that on June 12, in the Adirondacks. My NCT mileage for this year is now at 221.3. Not bad. Not great.

The other patch and sticker are for a challenge created by the Cadillac Area Land Trust. 30 miles for 30 years. You can still get this until the end of the year. Go to their website.

On the right is a sheet of paper with a wooden nickel and a ribbon. This was a scavenger hunt quest you could to at the Hike Fest. There were 12 questions you had to answer. The coordinates were given and the answers were mostly on interpretive signs. It was a fun game!

I also bought some cool stuff at Lake Sakakwea State Park. The patch has the name of the park on a knapsack. The hiking stick medalion has the NCT terminus sign.

The other two are stickers they had for sale.

I felt better today. Not hugely energetic, but I managed to keep moving and worked on putting things away and doing various small jobs that needed to be finished up. Still chicken and corn to eat. Yum! Diane and now Marie are both home safely. I guess that means this adventure is really finished.

And, yikes! August is nearly finished too. Where has the summer gone?

See Hiking Swag for 2024

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

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!

Just in case you didn't know... I like patches.

In other news, I worked on a lot of projects that needed doing today.

See Hiking Patches 2023 See Hiking Patches 2022

$0,000 Pyramid Game

 Remember the game show, $X,000 Pyramid? (It started at $10K, but went up to $100K before it died.) I liked it. Contestants had to name things that fit in a category and their partner had to guess the category. For example, the one player might say, "lasso, boots, spurs, horse." If the partner said "Things a cowboy would use," then they won that round and went on.

So here are your clues. You get $0,000 for winning.

First is: How to Hike the North Country Trail: not quite a Guide. These will be available starting at the Celebration, Aug 21. Cost $25.

Second Clue: NCT 8-state sampler patches. These will be available starting at the Celebration, Aug 21. You must have hiked some piece of trail in each of the eight NCT states. Honor system. Suggested minimum- one mile, but not a firm requirement. Cost $2 each.

Third Clue: Marie stained the wall beside her deck the same color as the deck and sent me a picture. Looks great!

Fourth Clue: my trip.

OK, that's all the clues I have. Sorry.

The category? Things that are finished! OK, I'm lying. The book still has some typos and technically will never be finished due to updates, but I wanted to be sure I had books for the Celebration, so there will an immediate update in about a month.

I mostly rested, but Cathy and I went for a short walk on the NCT because I needed to get a location of a particular place that needs work.

Miles hiked so far in 2024: 354.2. NCT miles hiked 109.3.

North Country Trail, Lake Co, MI. Timber Creek north 1.5 miles and back

See Sneak Peek

Salamonie Bloodroot Trail

  When I was in college in Indiana, we would occasionally go to the Salamonie Reservoir for picnics. My recollection is that they didn't really have hiking trails. But that has changed.

The Salamonie and Mississiniwa Dams/Reservoirs were built for flood control. They are both tributaries of the Wabash River which drains most of Indiana and flows southwest to the Ohio. The Salamonie is the middle of the three on this stylized map, and I was hiking on the south side of the lake.

I hiked part of the Bloodroot Trail which documentation says is a 13 mile loop, but the ranger said it's only 11. Either way, I did not have time to hike it all today. There were many places to cut across from one side to the other, and my loop was 6.6 miles. The ranger said the other end is prettier, but I didn't want to spend the time to drive there. I just hiked the west half. I'll come back sometime to do the other half. Hopefully in a prettier season.

It was mostly flat (it's northern Indiana), but not entirely. You can see some topography here. The first half was pretty muddy, and included edges of fields. However the return was higher and drier with more woods.

It does come close to the Salamonie Reservoir on the return side. On a sunny day, this would be beautiful.

"Salamonie" comes from the Miami Indian word for bloodroot, or the juice of the bloodroot which they used to paint their faces.

At the interpretive center, they have various displays and educational information. This is a stuffed albino raccoon.

I also liked this carving showing the relative sizes of several birds.

And... they have a patch for the Bloodroot Trail. Yippie!

I'm surprisingly tired. Trail acquaintances took me in tonight. Ester has Covid. One more hike tomorrow, then home! I've learned of several more places with a good number of trail miles in northern Indiana. There's a good chance I might check some of those out in the future.

Total miles hiked in 2024: 71.3 of which 1.2 is North Country Trail.

Bloodroot Trail, Salamonie Reservoir, IN. Western half. 6.6 miles

See David, and Koteewi

More Hiking Patches

One of these patches overlaps with the 2022 collection linked below, but it belongs in this set, so I've included it.

I did not even know that three of these existed! Here they are from left to right: Patch for hiking all the NCT in New York State. Not many people have this yet because of the issues of hiking through the Adirondacks. Mostly that's because of following the route.

Finger Lakes Trail Hike 50 patch. I applied for this one after doing 50 miles this year. Fortunately, the miles can be on a branch trail as well as the main trail. Marie and I did 57 miles of the Conservation Trail in September. I've gotten this patch for 4 years straight. That makes me pretty happy because I have to work at it to get to NY to hike that many miles there.

Pennsylvania Hike 50 patch. I did not know this existed either, but when I found out, I applied for it.

Then we skip to Michigan where the Chief Noonday Chapter gave me their patch. I'm not sure this is for hiking all their miles or not. However I did get the patch for doing that in 2021, when I went through on the big hike.

Next is the Jordan Valley 45o Chapter patch, and that specifically says that I've hiked all their 80 miles of trail.

On the right side is the Dakota Challenge Finisher patch which is for hiking all the miles in North Dakota. I may have showed you that one before.

Finishing this collection is the 2023 Hike 100 Challenge patch. Can't wait for the 2024 one!

And for my final "trick" here are a couple of fun pictures. This is Irene and me in our patch jackets in maybe 2002.

So, when I saw that Randall had also filled a jacket, the pose had to be recreated, right? This is last month in the Adirondacks.

There is one more VERY cool set that I have completed the requirements for, but haven't turned it in yet. You can be sure I'll show you when I receive them.

I edited. I took advantage of a nice weather day and did laundry and worked in the gardens. I actually got the hoses put away this year on a day when it was warm enough that they weren't stiff and impossible to coil. A few more decent October days would be great. If I can get the rock garden weeded one more time, I'll share. It's looking pretty good.

See Hiking Patches 2022

Hiking Patches for 2022

  I never showed you the collection of patches I got last year for various hiking accomplishments. I did show you the Chief Noonday set, but I actually completed that in 2021.

The others are NCT Hike 100, PA Hike 50, and FLT Hike 60 (usually 50, but they went with 60 in recognition of their 60th anniversary.)

Some of you know that I collect embroidered patches. My jacket is FULL, and I've figured out how I'd like to display the others, but that's sure not on my high priority list. Meanwhile, here are all the Hike 100 patches since they launched this in 2016. The little one was an extra in 2018 for 50 miles because it was also the 50th anniversary of the National Trails System.

In other news: blah, blah, all the regular projects, plus I got groceries. But I did purchase a train ticket for part of the trip east for the flower show. That was a lot harder than it should have been, but the cost is much cheaper than the drive would have been, and all I would do would be to park my car at Marie's for a week anyway. So that's settled!

Answers to the quiz:
A-3- Green ash, also called Pennsylvania or white ash. Fraxinus americana. The key feature is how the bark breaks into diamonds.

B-2- Shagbark hickory, Carya ovata. The key feature is those shaggy strips of peeling bark.

C-1- Eastern hemlock, Tsuga canadensis. I think this was the trickiest one I showed you, only because the bark is just flat rectangular plates. But the fact that it's an evergreen will give you lots more information when you encounter the actual tree.

D-3- Red pine, Pinus resinosa. The bark is scaly and reddish.

E-2- Honey locust, Gleditsia triacanthos. I can always tell this from black locust because the name is so ironic. Honey sounds so sweet, but it has those terrible thorns.

F-3- Hackberry, Celtis occidentalis. The bark is so totally weird on these trees. It starts out with small ridges that develop into lumpy ridges and then into these totally whacko corky ridges.

G-1- American beech, Fagus grandifolia. The smooth gray bark is the key feature. Some maples are this smooth and gray when they are small, but at about 6 inches in diameter they start to break into furrows.

Thanks for playing!

See Hike 100 for Parkinsons

Hike Like a Girl- Day 78

  OK, sure, there are those of you who may hike faster (younger bodies, longer legs), but I'm doing all right in the stamina department!

New hiker friend, Roxanna, gave Denali and me these patches today which were designed by her Girl Scout Troop. The girls decided we should each have one.

We started with 5.8 miles of off-road trail. It was pretty tough going. Lots of trees down in this section. I think it would be a nice section to walk if we hadn't had to work so hard.

Then we did some road walk, and saw this caboose at Murray City. Some of you know I'm a railfan, but I was not familiar with this line. It was a branch of the Hocking Valley RR. This was a huge coal area in the 1800s and early 1900s. In fact, some of what we walked today is area that was previously strip mined. The Snow Fork Line roughly follows Snow Fork (creek) north of Athens.

Murray City's other claim to fame or infamy is that it is where one of the perpetually burning underground fires is found. The coal seam will continue to burn until it is depleted. This fire has undermined buildings and roads, and vents foul-smelling smoke through cracks in the earth. We did not pass one that we know of.

We ended the day with two animal encounters. This beautiful horse really wanted us to come pay it some attention.

And then we saw this deer at the far edge of a small field. It was not moving a muscle. In fact, I had decided it was a target practice dummy because it stood still for so long. Then it bounded off into the woods!

Didn't break 1000, but we worked really hard for what we did get.

Miles today: 12.2. Total miles so far: 999.1.

Tomorrow we are moving the trailer to a new place, and not hiking. It's supposed to rain all day long. We've sure enjoyed our time here with Jeff and Kathy.

See BTA HQ

Bailiwick- Chipmunk to Counselor

  Tonight we'll go back to Girl Scout Camp Bailiwick. To be specific, at the time I was involved, this was the camp associated with Brownies- younger girl scouts.

You know that I love and collect embroidered patches. I have these. I suspect I was able to purchase them at the camp store at Comstock. I don't know how I got those year rockers. Those are definitely from my Bailiwick years. Perhaps the patches were discontinued. Perhaps my mother got these patches. Read on for why I think that is possible.

The central patch is for our Girl Scout Council. This no longer exists. Councils have been expanded and rearranged as Scouting waned in popularity and communications and travel became easier. Anyway... I won't moan about all that. I will tell you that Tiotomca is a made-up word representing the three counties in the council. Tioga, Tompkins, and Seneca. Not all of Seneca county was in this council. The important thing to remember is that my village, Interlaken, was the northernmost community in the council. That will come into the narrative several posts later.

So, Bailiwick was strictly a day camp. Brownies were not considered old enough to have overnight camping. And I managed to be a participant at Bailiwick from the age of 4. You ask, "How on earth did you manage that?" Most people know that pre-schoolers aren't Brownies. Back then, there weren't Daisy Scouts (Kindergarten and 1st Grade), but even now, not preschoolers. However, my mother worked as a counselor at the camp for a few summers. There was a "Unit" called the Chipmunks that was actually just daycare for children of counselors. So there you go... I was a Chipmunk. Since Mom was a counselor, perhaps she came into posession of these patches. I sure wish I could find more of those year rockers that go with it. But, without the central patch, even if someone had some, they wouldn't even know what they went with.

And then I was a Brownie, and was attending day camp sessions at Bailiwick. I have no pictures at all from the Bailiwick years. I did not have a camera, and I guess Mom didn't take any pictures.

Here's a little tidbit of info. Just uphill from the lodge was a campfire area, and that's where the Chipmunk Unit was located. I suppose it was there because of the ease of dropping off and picking up the little kids.

Remember, this camp is on a very steep hill that descends to the lake. The regular Units march down that hill. The older the campers, the farther down the hill they had to walk. There is no road to the lake on the Bailiwick side. The latrines were at the top of the hill near the lodge.

There was a waterfront at the lake with a changing building and a "buddy board." We did have swimming, and there were strict rules. Everyone was issued a numbered tag from the board. Each tag had a big safety pin. We pinned these to our suits, and we chose a buddy for each swim session. If a signal was given (I think maybe two blasts on a whistle) we had to stop whatever we were doing, find our buddy, grab her hand and hold our clasped hands high. This was a fast way for the counselors to check on the swimmers- to be sure no one was missing. I guess in theory, a set of buddies could go missing until the numbers were returned to the board at the end, but the probability of that happening is low.

I no longer remember if Bailiwick sessions were one or two weeks. But I know I was a Chipmunk or a camper there every summer from 1952 until 1957. We had age-appropriate activities, did crafts, played games, learned woods-craft, had campfires, learned campfire cooking, etc. It seemed as if the walk down to the lake was miles long, and even longer coming back uphill. Little-girl campers rarely went in that beautiful lodge (pic at link below). It was a magical place reserved for counselors and other grownups! I remember that I did get to go inside it once as a Brownie and it seemed huge!

Fast-forward to 1966. I had just finished my freshman year of college, and what could be more logical than to return to Bailiwick as a counselor? Of course, that's what I did. For two summers, 1966 and 1967. I became familiar with the inside of the lodge. I spent a fair amount of time scrubbing that latrine building with Clorox water. I herded groups of noisy, energetic little girls.

A pavilion- just a concrete slab with a roof- had been constructed uphill of the lodge where the girls could gather while waiting for the transportation buses. It was also a space large enough to protect all the campers when it rained. There were no buildings at the units.

Some small number of you might have heard me say of my singing voice that "it's best use is for camp songs." Well, somehow, I got the reputation as a counselor for being the one who could lead songs. Probably part of that was due to the fact that I could remember all the words to all the verses of some very very long songs. These are of paramount importance when there is a scary thunderstorm, or the buses ran late. I could keep a hundred little girls singing for an hour or more. I got reasonably good at bringing in the various groups to do songs as rounds. Anyway, I remember a lot more about leading songs until we were all totally hoarse than I do about planning campfire stew or teaching knots!

There is just one more piece to the Bailiwick saga. I guess I should end with another C word- Consultant. That steep hillside with hundreds of girls descending and climbing the pathway for 60 years had led to some serious erosion problems. For a college class in Ecology, I wrote a report about that with suggested ways to fix the problems and restore the vegetation. A copy was sent to the Council, but I don't know if they ever took it to heart.

Actually, there is one tiny but important Bailiwick story that I will save until the very end of this series. It's not a very happy ending, but it is what it is.

In other news: I did a bunch of boring paperwork and more house cleaning. Ho hum.

See Comstock and Bailiwick- Setting the Stage

Patch Jacket Update

 
I am with Chuck and Sylvia tonight, on my way to the Quiet Adventure Symposium tomorrow in Lansing. I decided it would be an appropriate venue to wear my patch jacket, but there were several important ones I hadn't sewn on yet.



Got a few on at home last night, and did a few more here, this evening. I think it will do for this time. New ones added are for completion of the Buckeye Trail, Midland to Mackinac Trail, a New York Trail Supporter patch, Kekakabic Trail, the original NCT End-to-End Patch, Forest Service Partner in Service award, one of the annual conference patches I had missed, and an historic mileage bar that I managed to find.



There are some really special ones. Maybe some day I'll give you a tour. Of course, here is the "best." You've seen this set before- for completion of the North Country Trail.



All the news today was about getting out the door, and I made it. Lansing tomorrow, then... stay tuned.

See Hike 100 and a Fun Surprise

In the Mail - Hike 100 Patches and a Fun Surprise

 
Two very fun things came in the mail today- my Hike 100 Challenge patch and certificate from the North Country Trail Association for 2019 is the first.

I'm happy to say I will not be out there hiking on December 13th this year, trying to finish up my miles!



The second thing that arrived in the mail was totally unexpected, and is even more fun than the author realized.

Remember that two weekends ago I led a hike as part of the Michigan Outdoor Writers Association conference? Well, the key word in that phrase is "writers." I should have suspected, when Andy said he had something to mail me, but I didn't at all. Andy Duffy, along with Mandy his wife, were the two who came on the hike. Andy sort of decided at the last minute. In fact, in this article he says that to him "hiking feels so pointless" without a shotgun or rifle. But apparently, he was surprised to discover that he had a good time. So he wrote about it in his outdoor column in the Cadillac News.

Of course, I'm delighted! And he made me smile even more. I'm sure he has no clue that weaving part of a poem, "The Merry Guide," by A.E. Housman, into the narrative is drop-dead perfect. Some of you readers know that I was raised in a virtual bath of poetry from this era, thanks to my Granny. Although I wasn't familiar with this particular poem, I do know another of Housman's, which begins, "Loveliest of trees, the cherry now/ is hung with bloom along the bough,/ and stands above the woodland ride/ wearing white for Eastertide.

Anyway... he had a good time. I had a good time. I'm sincerely happy to call Andy and Mandy my friends, not just conference acquaintances.



He quoted from "The Merry Guide," "By valley-guarded granges/ and silver waters wide,/ content at heart I followed/ with my delightful guide." What fun!

By the way... Andy also took home a MOWA award for a story about hunting a black bear.

	See Another 100 See Hike with Andy and Mandy
if you like this blog, click

Buckeye Trail Patch

 
It is late and I am tired. I'm going to do a quickie post to show you that I finally received my patch for completing the entire Buckeye Trail (finished in May 2017).

I love patches!



In other news: It was a busy day. I worked on the book in the morning, and on Long Distance Hiker recognition in the afternoon. Then I walked 3 miles, had writers' group and did grocery shopping. I'm ready for bed.

	See Buckeye Trail- Last Day
if you like this blog, click the +1   or