This month started off with Art Blast on Labor Day weekend in Greensboro an ended with FestiFall in Point Marion. At Art Blast Ryan and I helped to man one of the craft tables for kids and at FestiFall we gave guided hikes throughout the grounds of Friendship Hill National Park. Everything in between involved trail workdays all over the region and Paint Days in California. In Rices Landing we cleaned up sections of the Greene River Trail in preparation for a 5k that would be occurring later in the month there. We also fixed up the stage down at the Rices Landing lock wall by giving it a fresh coat of white paint in preparation for events that they would be holding there at a later time. We also had a workday on the Warrior Trail in Greensboro to help out the Warrior Trail Association who typically handles most of the maintenance with that historic trail. Cat and I painted blazes for the first half of a mile and then got to work with Jenna and Ryan on clearing brush and other vegetation that was over growing portions of the trail. Our other trail day was dedicated to the ones at Friendship Hill in Point Marion to prepare for the guided hikes we gave during FestiFall. My major project this month however was the Paint Days in California. I received word that a grant I submitted earlier in the summer was funded and I had only the month of September to complete the project. Every day that we were not out on a trail I was in California with volunteers restoring the historic caboose next to the California Public Library which is housed in an old train station. Throughout the weeks we had over 20 volunteers come out to prepare the caboose by scraping off all the old paint and rust and to give it a fresh coat of paint. The library board was super excited to have us giving them a helping hand and the project was even covered by the local universities TV station and the local paper. At the end of the month all of the RTOC crew got to go to the Mother Earth News Fair for a weekend to learn about a whole variety of environmentally related topics by attending a bunch of workshops and listening to speakers. It was the perfect end to a busy month. We got a lot accomplished.
