Annie's AmeriCorps Adventure!: Friday October 22, 2010- Trailwork with 6th Graders

Let me start off by saying how appreciative I am for all the support!! I love that people are enjoying reading this! I'm not a very good writer, I just go on and on about what's happening, but that's what's important I guess! I promise more exciting things will come soon, we're just in training mode and head out on our first "spike" project in November so nothing too too exciting will happen until then!

So yesterday we went to Cherry Creek State Park which is a gorgeous park that has a lake and people camp, boat, hike etc. there. Our job was to fix up one of the trails that was already there. 6th graders from a local school came down and were assigned to different groups. There were almost 50 groups (5 corps members to 10 kids) So around 600 of us working in this area!!! Half of the groups had another job of getting rid of an invasive species that is taking over the area.

So our kids showed up and we played a name game to get to know them and them to know us. I always forget how much I love being around kids when I've been away from them for so long!! I found myself being able to relate to them and they got comfortable around me and respected me and we were able to get a lot of good work done!

We had to walk quite a ways to get to our section of the trail, but they stuck through it. When it came time to start work they were all willing to help and wanting to get their hands dirty which surprised me! Since we were so far away from the crusher fine we had to lay down we had to wheel barrow it back and forth a lot of times but once again the kids were excited to help! It was a long but fantastic day! I was exhausted last night but it was well worth it. I have a couple of pictures to give you an idea of what we did and what the trail looks like. More to come! This week is a lot of meetings and trainings so probably won't have much for you!