A joining of the TrACS, ILMO 4/25 - 4/30

Our final week of work here on the Shawnee National Forest started off a bit wet. Relentless rain for several days straight gave us a chance to spend some time working on final reporting and summarizing our work over the past 12 weeks. We jumped at the opportunity to check out more of the local sights in Southern Illinois. We visited the Superman Museum in Metropolis, IL. It's home to the worlds largest Superman Statue and he stands guard over the county courthouse.

www.supermuseum.com [1]

We visited Fort Massac State Park, a site on the Ohio river controlled by the French, British, and Americans throughout it's history. It was cool to climb up to the top of the fort and look out over the Ohio just as the soldiers did hundreds of years ago.

http://www.dnr.state.il.us/lands/landmgt/parks/r5/frmindex.htm [2]

We were able to dodge rain drops for the last couple days of the week and made it out to Horse Creek and Ripple Hollow. The trails were completely saturated in the low areas but held up to the rain surprisingly well on higher ground. It was hard to believe that our last survey of the season was over.

We said our goodbye's to our Forest Service Friends on Friday. There was a very productive meeting between all the folks we had worked with on the Shawnee National Forest over the past 8 weeks and feedback was given and recieved by all. After a lunchbreak and some final goodbyes we headed for Missouri and the Ozark Trail Association's Mega Volunteer Event.

We reunited with the Missouri TrACS crew and had a great weekend hanging out together, sharing stories, building some trail, and having a good time. Over 200 volunteers show up for this event and the level of coordination and organization was impressive. Every volunteer had a team assignment with a specific project to work on. It made for a great day and we got tons of work done.
A cookout and bonfire followed, and the sounds of the bluegrass band playing made the day just about perfect.

www.ozarktrail.com [3]

It's been an amazing season and it's hard to believe that it's already over. Nobody likes goodbye's and we all made sure to say "see you later" as folks went home one by one. As they say, the end of one journey is the start of another, and the next one has already begun.