Already October

I cannot believe today is already October 2. It's been 3 months since I left home and started this adventure and I'm already more than halfway through my first round project.

ready to grub some roots on the horse trail with Brian, Kat and Ria

We (almost completely) finished up work at Little Black Creek this week which meant finishing grubbing out roots on a three-mile long brand new horse trail (soon to be christened the Rio Dos Horse Trail in our honor), building and installing 4 picnic tables and 6 hitching posts along the trail, designing, cutting, and painting signs and markers to place along the trail, finishing painting the outdoor picnic pavillions, staining a cabin and doing various other small tasks around the park. Since our supervisor was intent on the trail being our legacy in the park and having us take ownership of it, we got to decide what sort of markers we wanted to put along it. We decided to install signs that indicate the mileage to each of our hometowns along the trail and name the rest areas after some of our favorite animals (Bear Pause, Foxes' Den, and Hawks' Hideaway). It was really fun to figure out how far away from home we all are (thanks for the help on Google Maps, Momma and Tillie!) and we're all really excited have the signs finally installed.

sanding my 1151 miles to Ardmore, PA sign before painting it

On a sad note, one of my corps members left the Corps this week. His dad, who had been in poor health, had a stroke on Sunday night and lost the use of his right arm and right leg. Will decided to go home to be with his family and help support his mother during this tough time. If everything goes okay and his dad is able to recover quickly, Will may come back to us, but for now my team's down to 11 from 12. We miss you, Will!

The team will be going to a maize maze with our sponsor and his family tomorrow evening in Poplarville, MS. There's 2 miles of trails and it's in the shape of the Mississippi River between Mississippi and Louisiana. You have to visit certain spots in a certain order to get your card stamped to successfully complete the maze and we are very excited for the challenge! If nothing else, we have been extremely spoiled by our supervisor Stewart and the staff at Little Black. They are constantly bringing us treats and making us feel like family. We can only hope to have sponsors like them throughout the rest of our year!

Jimmy Stewart Smith, Jr., our amazing site supervisor

I miss you all so much! Keep keeping in touch!