Challenge complete!

While I hike solo most often, I'm part of several hiking groups, including very local ones and some that are chapters in larger organizations. There are groups for women only or 20s and 30s. Some groups have very active retirement-age members. Intensity and location can vary, often by who is leading a particular trip. In addition to group trips, hiking groups can be great resources for  trips locally or far away, trail conditions, and inspiration from queries like "great place when mountain laurel is blooming."

Requisite photo of mountain laurel, the state flower of Pennsylvania

One such group, Hiker babes, really encourages members to share trip reports as you complete their challenges. The original one is the "100 hikes challenge," which is an open-ended task to hike 100 times. How far is a hike? Do paved paths count? If my loop uses two different trails in the same trip, is that 1 hike or 2? Only you can answer for yourself 😊.

There are monthly challenges as well: mileage based, trip count, bingo cards, wildflowers of every color of the rainbow, etc. The goal is to motivate you to work towards a goal, and maybe explore someplace new along the way.

After seeing trip reports from other women in Rhode Island, I started working on the RI Walks Creature Challenge (separate from Hiker babes challenges, just talked about by members). The RI Walks organization works with local land trust properties. These are not state or municipal-owned but are private properties set aside for conservation. The organization partnered with a metal artist to make creatures, 2 ft cutouts of smiling plants like oak leaves and blueberries. The website shows a list of which properties and trails contain a creature, but you have to go find which creature and scan the QR code.

As of February 2023, there are 34 trails with creatures - every time I checked over the past 6 months, a new one had been added. And I am proud to say that as of this week, I have caught them all!

T shirt in February, thanks climate change

The RI Walks Creature Challenge does not hold any prestige compared to other popular lists like the New Hampshire 48 4000 ft list. Most properties are quite small with trails only a mile or two long. It's hard to justify driving for 40 minutes to hike one mile, so I would often group 2 or 3 together or pick ones close to another group hike or other outing. It definitely was the path less traveled and got me to explore across the state.

Where are these? You'll have to visit to find out. Also I don't geotag photos and keep poor records of my hikes.

Happy hiking!

Comments

  1. SpidermanMarch 12, 2023 at 3:42 PM

    When the "obligate" Mountain Laurel blossoms begin littering the forest floor in a few months, pick one of those still perfect geometries up and count the teeth on the gear that flower had secretly formed.

    ReplyDelete

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