CLUB PRESIDENT's VIEWS and NEWS

NEW!  The club donated the following book to the Blount County Library:  "Starting point 2013: the AVA guide to 1,850+ sanctioned walking trails in America."  If you are taking a trip, check out the book in the reference section to find interesting places to walk.

Congratulations!  Members who have completed AVA books are listed at Kudos.html.

Looking for something good to eat?  Check out the Progressive Picnic Recipes at Recipes.html.

Read the article about our club written by the club president and published in "The American Wanderer" at AVANews.html.

January 29, 2012

Well, it has been quite a while since I made the time to put some words "on paper" in blog fashion, but I'm pleased to be able to take a few minutes and talk to you about our club and walking. We have an exciting year lined up with 14 Fun Walks, 7 Club Walks, and 3 Regular Events. Just to ensure this terminology is clear to everyone. We hope all of our walks are "fun," but a "Fun Walk" is a walk that is not sanctioned (i.e., you can't get an AVA/IVV stamp in your book for these), but it might be a precursor to a future sanctioned event. A "Club Walk" is a planned group walk of a Year Round Event (YRE) . We now have 6 YREs and will be walking each of them once this year. Of course, you can go out and walk them any time you want (hint, hint). The seventh Club Walk will be the Asheville Amblers' Knoxville YRE. A "Regular Event" is AVA-sanctioned walk that is held on a fixed date or dates. Our three Regular Events will each be held on a single Saturday and will continue our State Park Challenge with walks at Frozen Head State Park (a repeat, allowing new members to pick up this park walk), Panther Creek State Park, and Cove Lake State Park. I just submitted the sanction request for Frozen Head and Panther Creek, and both were approved. Now I have to get to work on all that goes into conducting a successful Regular Event. I'll need help; so, we'll talk more about these another day. 

In addition to these walks, we have a number of Special Events that our Special Events Chair has organized. We have a marathon team who will be walking the Knoxville Marathon on April 1st. It isn't too late to join the team or plan to come downtown to cheer us on. Mindy and I did a training walk today of 11 miles, and that's my excuse if there are any typos in this message. Our club also has a team who will be doing the Relay for Life on June 1st and 2nd to honor cancer survivors and remember people we have lost, but also to raise funds and awareness to help save lives. We will have our shelter set up and have information about the club for any of the walkers who are interested. Of course, we will have one of the team members on the course throughout the night. Again, you can join the team, make a donation, or just come out to cheer the walkers on. Finally on the special event list is our booth at the Secret City Festival. We will have our shelter there and will be giving out literature for those who might be interested in walking with us. In addition, we will also be conducting a number of guided walks of our Oak Ridge (Secret City) YRE. This is going to be a walk-filled and fun-filled year. Hope you will be able to join us for Fitness, Fellowship, Fun, and (of course) Food.

Well, it has been quite a time since I entered anything into this pseudo-blog. It is not that nothing has been happening, instead too much has gone on since the last entry--a walk in London, one or two walks every day during the AVA Biennial Convention in Iowa, and now trying to get caught up with everything at work and at home. Even now I don't have the time to do more than just this entry to put a new timestamp on the page, but I promise to come back later and get things really caught up.

Happy trails. 

April 9, 2011

The East Tennessee Wanderers held another successful Traditional Event (one-day walk) at Frozen Head State Park. This was the third State Park Walk that we have conducted in our club challenge to walk all the 18 Tennessee State Parks in the Eastern Grand Division of Tennessee in the next 5 years.

The two routes (10 km and 5 km) were rated as a 5 and 4 respectively. Different walkers had their own opinions about the difficulty of the walks, but everyone seemed to have a good time. We had a total of 30 walkers which as a new record for the club. Walkers came from Alabama, Colorado, Georgia, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and locally (Clinton, Greenback, Knoxville, Louisville, Norris, and Oak Ridge). Many of the walkers stuck around to talk and partake of our value-priced lunch of "chili chip pie," soda or water, and homemade cookies.

Folks who missed this walk should make sure that they mark their calendars for the next East Tennessee Wanderers event.

Happy trails.