Category: Area walks

How To Conduct A Successful Border-Crossing Volksmarch

Our Grand Island correspondent, Jim McGahan, tells us in words and pictures how to put on a successful traditional event that will pull in walkers from across the country. This event was held July 11th. This was a 9 hour round-trip drive for most of the walkers from our club, and the event pulled in folks from much farther away!

Hope you will enjoy reading all about Big Stone City! We loved one of the photos so much, that we added it to our list of header images that appear on each of the pages in this website.

June news

We welcome travelers on their way to and from the 2016 AVA Biennial Convention being held in Salem, Oregon! We also wish our club members and friends on their way to the convention safe journeys and great walks.

Our next event is the National Trails Day event, being held between 8:30 and 10:00 a.m. at the Chalco Hills Recreation Area Visitor’s Center just off of Giles Road at 154th St. The Papio-Missouri River NRD is opening the building just for us during those times, so that folks can register and start walking at their own pace during that time. We’re borrowing the stamp from the Chalco Hills YRE Walk Box during that time and we’ll have a special 5K route that starts from the Visitor’s Center.

Also on hand will be our new luggage tags for $5, free samples courtesy of the National Trails Day folks, and a great free selection of older awards. Those wanting AVA/IVV credit for the walk pay $3 – everyone else is free! Come join us and celebrate walking while in a great natural setting.

Finally, Jim McGahan has put together a pictorial plethora of pleasures in PDF from the last week of the Grand Island YRE, which has been in operation for the past 20 years. Jim adds that our walking friend Charlie Gentile should be in these photos, but missed that opportunity by just hours.  Check it out here: The Final Four

More showers, more walks!

May has been a pretty rainy month so far this year, but that hasn’t stopped our club from taking part in events. The May 9th walk at Standing Bear Lake brought out 67 walkers to walk a quickly re-routed walk around the flooded lake. Here are pictures of two groups of walkers:

Boy Scouts, leaders, family and friends at the checkpoint
Boy Scouts, leaders, family and friends at the checkpoint
Following the rules is important!
Following the rules is important!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The YRE in Grand Island is now closed, but a steady stream of folks went to walk with Jim and Martha McGahan during the past week.  Words are insufficient to express our gratitude for their years of service!

The last 13 folks to ever walk this sanctioned walk, assembled outside the now-closed Skagway store.
The last 13 folks to ever walk this sanctioned walk, assembled outside the now-closed Skagway store.
Butch Spaulding takes the Grand Island YRE walk box from Jim and Martha McGahan
Butch Spaulding takes the Grand Island YRE walk box from Jim and Martha McGahan

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You don’t have to be an AVA member to walk our walks (or even a club member), but one of the benefits of membership is receiving their publication, The American Wanderer.  Long-time contributor Jim Goeltz submitted club news to TAW, and featured our very own club secretary, Tricia Abel! What a nice write-up for a nice lady. See June TAW article on NWFT and Tricia Abel. (Sorry, had to cut up the newsprint article to make it fit onto a single page!)

But, what about walking???

  • Remember we have the National Trails Day event coming up at the Chalco Hills Visitor Center on Saturday, June 6th between 8:30 and 10:00 a.m.  We’ll be borrowing the box from its normal Start Point for the duration, but promise to get it back promptly!
  • Our YREs are still waiting for you! Check out our interactive Map to find a walk in Nebraska, visit AVA Interactive YRE Map to find walks around the country and of course, the GDMVA’s special walks (see GDMVA 30th Anniversary article in TAW) are available until June 30th!