Exploring The Outdoor Recreation Fair

Links (provided as a courtesy, WLRH is not responsible for external content)

Land Trust of North Alabama

Alabama Audubon

Sierra Club of North Alabama

Madison Greenways and Trails

Huntsville Track Club

Tennessee River Line

Alabama Scenic River Trail

The Dirty Danglers

Transcript (automatically generated)

I’m Alex Hall, host of WLRH’s Curiosity Squad. North Alabama has no shortage of outdoor places to explore, from rivers and caves to trails and greenways. The Land Trust of North Alabama teamed up with the Orion Amphitheater for a first outdoor recreation fair held this past weekend.

I went along to check it out. I’d wondered what was behind the idea. Caroline Kennedy from the Land Trust explains.

We came up with the idea for this event because there’s so many wonderful ways to get outside in North Alabama, but there can be barriers for folks to trying these things out. If you’ve never been mountain biking before, you might think, well, how do I just go out and go mountain biking one day? I don’t want to go buy one. You know, I want to learn about it first and connect with a group or rock climbing, you know, that takes equipment and some expertise. And so we wanted to put this event together so that people could come out and find all in one place the answers they’re looking for to how to get connected outdoors. It’s been wonderful. We’re so excited at the turnout. We’ve had over 400 people come through already. And I have to say, even at our table at the Land Trust table, just about half of the people I talked to said that they just moved here from out of town. So it sounds like this has become a place for people to plug in and find out ways to get connected with hobbies and friends after they move here.

My name is Keith Wolf-Hughes. I’m the finance and admin director with Alabama Audoban based in Birmingham, Alabama. We are the state’s largest bird conservation organization. We do bird walks all around the state. And then we do a lot of science and conservation work behind the scenes where we’re monitoring nesting birds, trying to educate the community on how we can cohabitate with our bird friends. And all of us enjoy the environment together. There are so many different ways that you can get out and enjoy nature. One of them being as simple as just getting out and seeing the birds. There are some great apps for your phone, like Merlin and eBird, where if you are a novice like myself, you can just turn on your app, hear a bird song, and it will help you identify that bird.

I’m Bob Locklear, and I’m here with the Sierra Club of North Alabama. We get up to a lot of hiking. So we do a lot of hiking events and those kind of things around the area. We have such great properties and mountains here. I thank the Land Trust for that and the state parks. We have beautiful state parks to hike in. So we do hikes all over this general area in North Alabama. Right now, I’m leading a Tuesday night hike that’s 5.30 every Tuesday evening. If you want to come up to the Monticello State Park hikers parking lot, we do a different route every night. We get back just before sunset. So right now, it’s about a two-hour hike. In September, it’ll be about a one-hour hike. And if it’s muddy and stuff, we don’t go down the slopes. And if it’s nice, we do. And we just kind of go where we want to go. And we set a pace that’s pretty quick. But I set a pace that everyone can do. So if we have people that want to go fast, we go faster. If people want to go slow, we go slower. And that’s the hike we mainly do. And we also do a social. First Monday of every month, we do a social at Stovehouse. Just drop in 5.30. We just get on a table and talk environmentalism and hikes. What’s the advantages for people who are, say, interested in hiking and joining up with a club like yourselves? Well, first of all, you don’t have to join Sierra Club to come on our hikes. So you can just come. If you join Sierra Club, we’d love it. It’s just $35 a year. And you’re supporting all the environmentalism that goes on nationwide. But the advantage is you can just come out and hike with somebody who’s professionally trained. So I’ve been through certifications and first aid certifications that I keep. I bring a first aid kit to every hike. So I know the trails. I’m not going to lose you. I’m going to take care of you if you fall. And I’m going to get you out. So that’s the advantage of going with a group like that as opposed to take it off on your own.

My name is Michael Goodman. I’m with Madison Greenways and Trails. And I’m part of Madison Greenways and Trails. We build, maintain hiking trails and greenways for the city of Madison. And we encourage all of them to come on out and enjoy our trails. There’s greenways and then there’s trails. A greenway in the city of Madison is generally a paved flat trail. So maintaining it is easy. A trail is, depending upon where you are, could be rocky. It could have lots of trees. The trees fall down. Or there could be washouts. It’s certainly on Rainbow Mountain. Other places, we’re building a new trail on Mill Creek off of Walsh Road. And that, there’s no rocks. It’s just pine trees and cedar trees. And you just, we just scrape out a new trail. And so that’ll be easy for people. My backyard is Rainbow Mountain. And so for many years, I would go take my dog out on a daily hike. And now I’m retired because I worked for almost 40 years for NASA. I’m an old guy. So I still go out on most days of the week. Go out for like a three, four mile hike. And I just ran into some other folks who were maintaining the trails. And they said, hey, you want to join? I said, sure. And so that’s how we do it because we’re all volunteers. And we just go out. And if there’s some, if there’s an issue with one of the trails, we fix it.

I’m Brian Carter, Huntsville Track Club. So the Huntsville Track Club is a local nonprofit. We’ve been in here in Huntsville since 1971. We host roughly 25 races a year. Our big events will be Cotton Run on Memorial Day and the Rocket City Marathon in December. And what message are you trying to get across by being here today? Really, we’re trying to celebrate anybody that’s interested in running or get them out there, teach them about running, help them connect with the community and get involved in a way they’d like to. And what do you love about running? I think the camaraderie of people. And you get to, in my opinion, when I go somewhere, I love to run through the city because it’s a great way to see somewhere new.You go a little bit slower on foot than you do in a car.

My name is TJ Johnson. I’m with the Tennessee River Line. The Tennessee River Line is first the 1.2 million acres of connected outdoor recreation experiences on and along the Tennessee River. It’s also an initiative out of UT Extension that serves communities on and along the river in the four states that the river is housed in to create access to the Tennessee River because it’s one of our region’s most underutilized outdoor recreation assets.

Yeah, I’m Savannah Schmidt. I’m with Alabama Scenic River Trail. I’m the communications specialist there. The Alabama Scenic River Trail started as an idea of we have a 632-mile continuous water trail that goes from northeast Alabama down to the Gulf. And out of that kind of sprang this organization. It was a federally recognized national water trail and national recreation trail and a scenic waterway. We are super proud of all the work that has kind of gone in. We’ve really kind of blown up and grown throughout the past few years. And the other thing is we’re in our eighth annual year of the Great Alabama 650. And the Great Alabama 650 is actually the longest paddle race in the United States. And it goes down that river trail that I was telling you about. So 650 miles it actually goes in to Mobile Bay and finishes in Fort Morgan. So we have about 20 or so racers do it every single year. And we are so happy. It’s a fantastic opportunity to just show off all of Alabama’s waterways.

How long does it take to paddle 650 miles? So it’s 10. They get 10 days total. They get 10 days. That’s a cutoff. Believe it or not, some people do it in five. Which is crazy, right? I think the record is four days and 20 hours. Now that was when there was a huge amount of flow on the water. But there is still people. They’re crazy endurance athletes. They’re awesome. Just super dedicated. They don’t sleep a lot. So it’s really funny and interesting to talk to them, especially afterward. But no, we’re super proud of that. We’re super proud of our race. And it’s just an awesome thing to showcase all of Alabama.

So I’m Sean with the Dirty Danglers. We are a local caving club to North Alabama. We take people out caving. And we are also a conservation task force. So we clean up caves and we fix broken spaleo themes and remove graffiti and stuff like that. And we take people out and teach them how to cave conservatively and safely. And we want to basically save the caves for the future generations to enjoy just like we are. I like the adventure. And I love the science-y aspects of it. Underground, you get to see all the geology in the area. So you literally get to navigate through the layers, through the different geological layers. And you get to see that hands-on. And there’s also tons of biology. So you get to see tons of different cave adapted creatures, like cave shrimp and cave crawfish and bats and isopods. And tons of really neat animals that you only get to see underground.

Getting outdoors is not as hard as people think it is. Just take that first step. You know, reach out, do a Google search, fill out a contact form. And, you know, these people at these organizations and these clubs and affinity groups, we all want you to get outside and have fun and experience the joy of being in nature. So just take that first step. It’s not as hard as you think it is.

There were two dozen organizations at the Expo, including camping, cycling and boating, giving you no excuses for getting out and having fun. The Land Trust said that they hope to make this an annual event. I’m Alex Hall for Tennessee Valley Mornings.