All Play and No Work

My Mom always used to tell me that "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy", and I always took that to heart. But, once in a while, if you want to play..... there has to be a little work involved. In this case, the art of trail building. A duo of clubs and a few individuals are helping to carve a new mountain bike trail out of the wilderness on land donated for the effort by the local Episcopal Church, who happens to own about 700 acres for a retreat east of Seminole. I like to do a little mountain biking in the winter months when you are protected from the cold wind by the trees somewhat, and if I want to use this trail, I felt it only right that I contribute my labor toward helping to build it as well. On the day I went out there, it was windy, and not too pleasant for riding on the road, so a perfect day for volunteering to help build trail. As you can see by the road going into the site, it IS rather isolated.....

Finally, after finding some vehicles, I got out, grabbed my tools and started hiking in looking for fresh trail builders. It took me a while because, while it's a fairly new trail, they have about a mile and one half built already. Finally, here they were.......

I decided they had enough help doing what they were doing, so I went on ahead and found a few more workers cutting a new section of trail . Pitching in, we managed to clear about another 500-600 feet of new trail by mid afternoon, and by that time, this old guy had about enough. I did, however, grab my leaf rake and set about walking the trail and raking leaves away so you could actually see it as I explored what they had built already. The scenery was outstanding.

This picture is of one of a couple of small lakes on the property. The trail goes down along the shore before climbing back up the slope back to the start. Very heavily wooded, and very scenic all over the entire length of it.

Eventually, the trail is designed to go entirely around the lakes and start and end at the buildings of the retreat.  It will be around 14 miles altogether. All the labor on this trail is done by the riders who will be using it. Some of the rock formations are quite interesting..... like this rock formation we dubbed "Whose Fault"......  Whose,  Indeed!

This is a Bald Eagle nesting area, and I was so hoping to be able to get a shot or two of an eagle in the wild, but it wasn't the day for it I guess as I never saw one.
After making the loop on the trail, and clearing it of leaves and debris, I rejoined our little group of builders who were discussing how we should build one of many little jumps ....

And of course, after we got it built, we had to test it out a bit........

And, it looked like it passed with flying colors. You didn't expect this was all going to be about work did you? A little fun was had by all. The rider got a lot of razzing about not having a helmet, and he really should have had, but it was a work day, and he had left it in the car..... yeah....
After riding a part of it on a borrowed bike (I didn't have a helmet either, not even a bike), I decided that this was going to be a very fun trail, and I'll be out here from time to time.