Transcript
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The French Broad is home to more than 40 access points and 20 riverside campsites managed by federal, state and local governments, as well as non-profits, businesses and volunteers.
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In this episode, I sit down with Jack Henderson from Mountain True and we talk in depth about the French Broad Paddle Trail, from the tranquil banks of Rosman to the distant shores of Douglas Lake, tennessee.
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We unveil the geographical tale of the French Broad River, lake Tennessee.
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We unveil the geographical tale of the French Broad River.
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But our adventure doesn't end with geography.
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We delve into the heart of conservation, where collaboration is truly the key.
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From the efforts of the French Broad Riverkeeper Program to the tireless work of local partners, we'll uncover the passion driving the stewardship of this natural wonder.
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And speaking of passion, get ready to hear about the upcoming enhancements to river access points and camping opportunities that await eager outdoor enthusiasts.
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With the combined efforts of local outfitters, federal agencies and non-profits, the French Broad isn't just a destination.
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It's a community-driven experience like no other.
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So grab your paddle, open your heart and join us as we push off to explore the French Broad Paddle Trail, a symbol of unity, environmental respect and the boundless joy found in the great outdoors.
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I'll see you on the other side.
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You're listening to Exploration Local, a podcast designed to explore and celebrate the people and places that make the Blue Ridge and Southern Appalachian Mountains special and unique.
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My name is Mike Andrus, the host of Exploration Local.
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Join us on our journey to explore these mountains and discover how they fuel a spirit of adventure.
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We encourage you to wander far, but explore local, let's go.
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So we paddled this morning.
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We're back in the studio today.
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Thanks so much for coming in the studio to talk about this.
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Yeah, super grateful to be here Mike Thanks so much for having me and talking about the paddle trail today and super grateful we got out for a float this morning.
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It was a beautiful day for it.
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It was incredible.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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Let's talk just real quickly about the geography.
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So let's talk about sort of the headwaters, where it runs to where it terminates, and then we're going to talk a little bit about some of the special projects with the campsites like we talked about.
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Yeah, so the French Broad River, the section that we help manage as the French Broad Paddle Trail, flows from Rosman, north Carolina, here in Transylvania County, all the way through Cocke County, tennessee, into Newport, tennessee, at Douglas Lake.
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So that includes Transylvania County, county Seat being Brevard, where the river is kind of narrow and sinuous and there's trees and it's kind of tight and slow and things like that.
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It's beautiful.
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Into Henderson County where it kind of still is slow and low but a little bit wider, a lot of farmlands, a lot of floodplain in those areas.
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Then into Buncombe County where it's a little bit wider still.
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You're starting to see more riffles and bedrock and a little bit of gradient, although the whitewater is calm and relaxed.
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Then into Madison County where Hot Springs is and things like that, and that's where the whitewater is and the rafting and the kayaking and the good rapids, before it kind of continues as such into Cocat County, tennessee, where there's national forest land and yet more rapids and big gradient on the sides in terms of cliffs and, you know, mountains and things like that, before it kind of slackens back out and slows as it enters into Douglas Lake.
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So that's about 140 miles altogether.
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That's where we do our work in programming.
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But the French Broad River does continue below Douglas Lake for a little bit before confluencing with the Holston River where it forms the Tennessee River near Knoxville.
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Wow.
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So there's a lot of literally moving parts to this and a lot of small creeks and things like that, that sort of dump into the French Broad that just increases its flow as you go through it.
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Yeah, major tributaries that you or your listeners might be familiar with are the actual forks of the French Broad down in Transylvania County the North Fork, west Fork and East Fork.
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There's the Davidson.
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There's the Little River In Henderson County, there's the Mills and Mud Creek In Buncombe County, there's the Swannanoa River and Harmony Creek.
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Madison County there's Big Laurel and Spring Creek.
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There's a variety of tributaries that come in and add flow and character throughout the way.
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Yeah, it's amazing, and you all the French Broad Riverkeeper.
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That's a program that exists within Mountain True.
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So this is not just its own standalone thing.
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This is kind of part of a bigger mission and a bigger vision that Mountain True has for this river, this region, this whole area.
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That's correct, yeah, so Mountain True is a regional nonprofit advocacy organization that also does quite a bit of stewardship of our public lands and resources, and we're focused on clean water, resilient forests and healthy communities.
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And so the French Broad River Keeper Program specifically, is a program within the clean waters area of our work and that focuses on swimmable, drinkable, fishable waters here in the French Broad River watershed, and one of our programs within that is the French Broad Paddle Trail, which is focused on access, stewardship, signage, camping and information along the river Basically all things related to recreation on the French Broad River.
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But the French Broad River Keeper Program otherwise, we do water quality monitoring, we do pollution enforcement, keeping an eye on bacteria and other issues all across the watershed, and so that kind of water quality arm and our recreation arm fit together really well to ensure that the river is protected and clean, but also that it's accessible and fun and safe.
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Perfect.
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Well, that's a great backdrop, so thanks for painting the huge picture.
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This gives us a little bit of context of what we're talking about today, but specifically what we want to focus in on is this French Broad Paddle Trail.
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Here in North Carolina our state trails program.
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I can't remember the numbers right off hand, but between 10 and 15 state trails and most of those are terrestrial trails.
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Think of like the Mountains to Sea Trail, you know, or the Fonteflores State Trail or the Hickory-Dunk Gorge State Trail.
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But there are also paddle trails.
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So the French Broad River is a paddle trail in the state trail system the Ha River State Trail, the Reedy River and a few other ones across the state.
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Here on the French Broad the French Broad River State Trail was designated in 1987, and that was a result of the powers that be determining that the river had sufficient access points and connectivity and unified management behind it and kind of an energy of recreation that kind of elevated it to this quality of experience.
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And so between the late 80s and the early 2000s that mostly just kind of was something on paper, it existed in legislation, there were some interested parties kind of working on managing the river for that.
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There were some interested parties kind of working on managing the river for that.
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But the river was also in poor condition in certain ways and there wasn't as much energy behind Stewart's Buzz there is now and over time it kind of got better and better and more access came together.
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No-transcript experience that it is now and kind of in that kind of early 2000s, you know, 2010 era, is when I really consider the trail to be launched, kind of to become reminiscent of what it is today.
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So, between now and then we've kind of increased all those amenities that were created back at that time.
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I love to kind of talk a little bit about the number of campsites that you all actually manage.
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The one that we saw today is somebody could pull over there, but the facilities aren't there, it's not marked, it's not named.
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Well, I guess it may be named.
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At least you had an idea of what it could be named.
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But yeah, let's talk about some of those campsites that exist right now, the of recreation and stewardship and access for the river.
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You know we're kind of the we're the state's official partner.
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You know, for the French Red River State Trail we're the ones that kind of are that liaison to the state government.
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But you know county governments, you know state governments, the federal government, the Forest Service, local governments and other nonprofits and even businesses all partner together to create and steward access, do on river stuff etc.
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So we're one of many groups here that do that.
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But specifically what you know Mountain Truth's Paddle Truck Program really focuses in on is, you know, creating and maintaining access points, creating and maintaining riverside campsites.
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You know, maintaining unified signage and also information like a website and print map and things like that.
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So kind of within that, you know, one of our unique offerings and things that we do is creating and maintaining, you know paddle trail specific campsites.
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So these are campsites that you cannot as a user drive into from the road but you can access from the river, you know, as a stopover point for a one night trip or for doing the entire river system.
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And so we have, you know, a campsite here in Transylvania County, we have one in Henderson County, we have two in Buncombe and two in Madison.
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We maintain six currently and those campsites you know they kind of vary in terms of like shape and feel, in terms of where they are if they're in the, if you're, you know, in like a field or a forest or like a bluff, things like that but they all have the same basic amenities.
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They all have an access point out of the river you need to get in and out of your boat.
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They have, you know, a picnic table, a fire ring, an elevated composting toilet, you know, space to, you know, pitch a tent or put up a hammock, things like that, and they're, all you know, kind of consistent in terms of their amenities, of offerings.
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So those are the ones that we maintain.
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But there are other campsites that other kind of private outfits maintain as well, that are more campsites that you can drive into and access but also just happen to be along the river and are available for paddle trail overnight users.
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And our goal for our sites is to have one to where someone could theoretically do that entire 140 mile section of river between Rosman and Newport, camping along the way at reasonable stopover points along the way, and there's a couple of spots where it's a little bit longer stretches, but more or less, you know, those sites that we have create that experience.
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That's great.
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Let's unpack a little bit of what we did today.
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So I know we just did a small section.
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We could have done a little bit different, but we focused right on trying to get to that campsite Water Could have been a little bit different, but we focused right on trying to get to that campsite Water flow again was up a little bit, but just beautiful.
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I mean the springtime, everything's budding, blooming, it's coming out, but this particular spot is just really picturesque.
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But let's talk about that and then why this particular place is so important and why did you earmark this one particular spot?
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Yeah, great question.
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Yeah, so today we floated from Pisgah Forest River Access kind of right there in Pisgah Forest, right outside of the city of Brevard, down to Everett Road, which is also, I think, a Pisgah Forest address, but here in central Transylvania County and there's a variety of great kind of you know part day trips that are short across this region that we could have chosen.
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But I focused on that one because right now we have a lot of really cool programming happening in transylvania county and there's a variety of reasons for that.
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You know, it's the headwaters of the river, it's the first county it flows through, there's a lot of opportunity there in terms of, just you know, interest, but there's also good partnerships happening too, and so in transylvania county we're currently working with some funding that we have available through the state trails program.
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Back a few years ago, the state of North Carolina General Assembly budgeted or allocated funding in their budget for State Trails.
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Specifically, it was called the Great Trail State.
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The Great Trail State Coalition was the lobbying group that advocated for this, and the funding they got from it was the Complete the Trails Fund, and so Mountain True in my position has been the steward of those funds across the region, kind of looking to allocate them towards eligible helpful projects.
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And so here in Transylvania County our local TDA, our Tourism Development Authority, a few years ago internally commissioned a study called the Blueway Master Plan for the French Broad River in Transylvania County and that was a roadmap for projects that could improve access to the river and experiences for paddlers, for visitors, for tourists, but also for locals.
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I'm a huge fan of the report because it helps leverage natural resources from a tourism standpoint.
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But everything we do as part of that benefits locals as well, myself included in that.
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So here in Transylvania County there's a lot of energy towards improving what we currently have and so we floated this section.
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We did today because I wanted to show you Pisgah Forest River access where currently it's a gravel lot with a boat ramp that we're looking to kind of replace that boat ramp with a better one, kind of make it a little more accessible and smoother and lower grade and things like that, replace some signage and things of that nature.
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But then where we took out was a property that Conserving Carolina, our land trust partner in this region, recently acquired for the sake of public access to the river for this campsite to be built and for them to do floodplain restoration as well, and we're hopeful that we'll be reimbursing them for that purchase through some funding that we have access to through that same pot of funds from the General Assembly.
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So just a neat little section that's going to be like it's a couple miles long, it's short, it's fun, has a lot of potential for new access and has a lot of energy at the put in and take out.
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It's amazing to me all of the different organizations that actually that it takes to fund to advocate for to steward it, that actually that it takes to fund to advocate for to steward it's really a synergistic relationship between those groups, which is really, really cool.
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Yeah, for sure.
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We're fortunate to work with a variety of awesome partners across the entire watershed.
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So here in North Carolina we're in four counties you know fifth in Tennessee and so on any given project or any given basis, we're working with, you know, government agencies, including federal agencies, like the US Forest Service in Madison County.
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You know we're at the Episodic National Forest.
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We work with state governments, including, obviously, the state park system and state trails program that supports us for the state trails program, and then also, you know, with the North Carolina Wildlife Resource Commission that does a lot around fisheries and angling, access and things like that.
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So from the government we work with those two.
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And then we also work with local governments, like, you know, county parks and recreation programs.
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You know, city governments in all the counties.
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I won't go into detail, but we work with each and every parks and recreation program and or you know, their like farmlands program, depending on what we're working on.
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But we also work with local businesses Down here in Henderson, transylvania County.
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We work with Headwaters Outfitters and Lazy Otter Outfitters.
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We also work with a variety of the outfitters in Asheville and further downstream and then local businesses or I mentioned local businesses and then local nonprofits, so organizations like Conservative in Carolina, that's a land trust that can acquire and manage land here.
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But we also work with Riverlink in Asheville for the similar types of projects in that area.
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And then other kind of more advocacy, stewardship-based groups like the Mills River Partnership or the French River Partnership or groups like that kind of all across the board that help us accomplish our mission and goals.
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Wow, those are a lot of relationships to the bridge and to manage and to kind of keep going and all be.
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They're all of the kindred spirit, they're all trying to do some of the very same thing.
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So I didn't realize it was that many agencies and organizations that you have to work with.
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But that makes sense to me.
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Yeah, for sure, and kind of the reason for that, you know, among just the interest in partnering as such, as the French Broad River you know the 140 miles that we work on in this region you know like it's not managed by one particular entity or agency.
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Like if you go out west and you float, like the Grand Canyon or the Salmon, you know kind of these big picturesque multi-day river trips, typically there's one, maybe two government agencies, you know, the National Park Service or the Forest Service, us Forest Service.
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That's kind of managing those places.
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They're covering the permits, they're owning and managing the access points and they're kind of setting the rules and regulations around that.
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And here, you know, on the French Broad River, there is not one entity that does that and that's, you know, nice in some ways because it makes it, you know, more accessible in some ways.
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There aren't, you know, lottery permits on the water and there aren't fees and things like that.
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But it makes it more challenging in terms of like ensuring that everyone's treating the river, you know, nicely, they're not polluting it and that there's, you know, equitable access areas with accessibility and things like that.
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And so as a result, it kind of just takes this much larger partnership of entities to provide these.
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You know basic services and opportunities.
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You know equal, if not better, to what you might see on a river managed by one particular organization or agency.
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Good, good, good.
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What I'd love to do is kind of talk a little bit about why these are so important from a recreation perspective, not just for people traveling in, but for people that live here and just looking to get away.
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Because we were talking earlier about we can drive, we kind of think of having to go on an adventure, we're driving to these places, but there's these overnight camping, remote-ish kind of places that are right here in our backyard.
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So the campsite that we visited today is not currently open.
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It will be within, hopefully, a month or so.
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We're probably going to call it Poplar Bend.
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The property that it's on is off of Everett Road and this is a property that Conserving Carolina purchased last fall for the reason of becoming a public access point and Riverside campsite and also, more than likely, some kind of floodplain restoration work in the middle of it.
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It's a 16-acre property off the French Broad River, there in Pisgah Forest and, as I mentioned before, we're planning to reimburse them for that purchase through a grant and so the campsite portion of that is going to be located on the upstream portion of that property and we're excited about that because it kind of puts it in a really important area.
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There are a couple riverside campsites further upstream in Transylvania County managed by a couple of variety of private businesses that are open to the public to use for the fee, and we have some campsites kind of further down into Henderson County.
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So this kind of puts a campsite in between those two, making it usable for people that are doing a multi-day trip.
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That kind of includes that area.
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In terms of the site itself, the basic amenities that we have and we'll be offering.
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There are, like I mentioned before, we'll be building an access out of the river that enters into the property.
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We'll have a nice picnic table there, nice firing.
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We do elevated composting toilets to kind of keep, you know, human waste, you know, out of the floodplain and out of the river and also kind of like a moan open space for users, you know, to tent camping or hammock camping, things like that.
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And so we're excited about that because, you know, just those sites themselves offer such a unique experience, what you're talking about for people that want to have, you know, like this multi-day adventure.
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You know where they're paddling downstream from their canoe or kayak but don't necessarily have the means or the knowledge or the you know the, the equipment to do a big trip.
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You know out West, you know in in in the Rockies or on the Grand Canyon, or even on the boundary waters or or things like that.
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Like here in the Southeast, we have quite a few blueways or paddle trails where you can do multi-day trips, but not a whole lot.
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Right here in western North Carolina and the French Broad is a unique spot where you can do a one-night trip with five miles beforehand and five miles afterwards, or you can do like a seven-day trip, you know, covering 140 miles, and this campsite facilitates that experience right here in Transylvania County.
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Or I guess we're in Henderson County talking right now, but where we were this morning in Transylvania County, or I guess we're in Henderson County talking right now, but where we were this morning in Transylvania County, and so we're excited about that.
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And just yeah to your point.
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Like you know a lot of these, the river, the French Rod River, is not a wilderness location, you know there's.
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At any given point, you're never usually more than a mile or two from a road, if not less.
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And but these sites, though, are oftentimes they're in old farms, you know, or they're in forests, you know, they're just in the floodplain, where they don't have a whole lot of development around them, depending on how the roads are arranged.
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And so pretty quickly and easily, you can get to a place where you feel like you're way out there in this quiet, solitudinal place, but in reality you're pretty close.
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And that's helpful for both perspectives because, like, on one hand, you have that, you know, that kind of feeling of being far out and, you know, having enough solitude, but also if there was an emergency or someone's having a bad time or just feeling sick or whatever you could paddle out in like an hour or less.
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You're pretty close to the front country pretty quickly.
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So it kind of provides both experiences of something that feels fun and remote, but also safe and secure.
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Yeah Well, and the other thing we talked about too is, even if somebody is looking for just that quick experience, it may not be that they have the time for a few days, it may just be a few hours.
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And in this particular section, what we talked about, when the Acousta Trail comes online and that won't be long, it'll be.
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You know, henderson County is moving a little bit quicker than Transylvania County, but when that's all said and done, you're talking about an opportunity where you can take one car, take your gear, float, have a bike, run your own shuttle, do this lap.
00:20:07.496 --> 00:20:13.467
I mean, there's a lot of things you're going to be able to do.
00:20:13.487 --> 00:20:14.993
That you might not be able to do if you were so, so remote, totally.
00:20:14.993 --> 00:20:24.107
Yeah, one of my favorite things to talk about, just in doing in general, is like a self-shuttle paddling trip, and what that means is, like you know, typically when you go boating, you have, you know, say you have two people and two cars.
00:20:24.107 --> 00:20:35.229
You're going to drive to the takeout, load everything into one car, drive to the put-in, paddle down the section, load everything into the second car and drive back out, which is fine, that's the normal way to do things in a problem.
00:20:35.920 --> 00:21:01.278
But there are certain locations where you have relaxed roadways or you have greenways or trails that kind of like more or less follow the river or provide a way to kind of get back to the put-in from where you take out or less follow the river or provide a way to kind of get back to the put in from where you take out and with that now you can do what I call the self shuttle, where maybe you drop all your stuff off at the put in, drive to the takeout, you know, in one car and then bicycle or jog or walk or whatever back to that put in and paddle back downstream and reverse it afterwards.
00:21:01.278 --> 00:21:08.329
So just kind of allows a you know for a you know a one car trip with your buddies, and especially if you're say you're coming in from further away and visiting this area.
00:21:08.550 --> 00:21:13.605
You're bringing one car versus two, or saving money, not having to hire a shuttle, but you also get some fun exercise.
00:21:13.605 --> 00:21:19.065
You get to ride your bike, you know, and see these other parts of the watershed from that perspective as well.
00:21:19.065 --> 00:21:31.423
But even if that's not for you, if you have two cars now, these kind of these trailheads that serve with the Acusa Trail and the river, you know, sharing access points and whatnot, become places where you can do both in one day While to your point.
00:21:31.423 --> 00:21:40.520
You know being 15 minutes from your house, like it just provides way more opportunity in this corridor for people that want to enjoy the river but also get some exercise at the same time.
00:21:41.082 --> 00:21:44.288
And one thing I'll mention that I forgot to before is that you know these camps that we maintain.
00:21:44.288 --> 00:21:47.213
You know to stay overnight at them.
00:21:47.213 --> 00:21:50.140
You know these campsites that we maintain, you know to stay overnight at them.
00:21:50.140 --> 00:21:53.711
You know we ask that you reserve them via our website and we have a campsite page on that website.
00:21:53.711 --> 00:21:55.419
There's a small fee that helps support our stewardship of them, you know.
00:21:55.419 --> 00:21:59.153
So those are a little more structured in terms of how they're booked and paid for.
00:21:59.496 --> 00:22:05.628
But you know our intention with these sites as well is for them to be kind of, you know, rest and stopover points along the water.
00:22:05.628 --> 00:22:15.578
Because you know, given that most of the French River watershed is privately owned in terms of its riparian areas, there aren't a whole lot of spots where you can kind of legally or safely hop out and have some lunch, like.
00:22:15.578 --> 00:22:28.450
There's a lot of, you know, shoals and beaches that are more or less fine, but these campsites give places assuming no one else is there already where you can pull off, have some lunch, go to the bathroom, relax for a little bit and kind of take some pressure off of other places as well.
00:22:28.450 --> 00:22:32.674
So there are overnight campsites, but there are also rest stops and stopovers as well.
00:22:32.914 --> 00:22:33.980
Oh, that's great, Jack.
00:22:33.980 --> 00:22:39.446
One thing I don't think I've even asked you and I'm just kind of assuming this whole time, is the French Broad Paddle Trail.
00:22:39.446 --> 00:22:45.172
I mean, I know when it was established and then some of the funding that's come up, especially some of the funding that's come up especially this last year.
00:22:45.172 --> 00:22:47.772
Is this something that is sort of new for Mountain, not new?
00:22:47.772 --> 00:22:59.203
Is this something like a resurgence of effort with the paddle trail or is this something that just now you're kind of here focusing on it more full-time, that more effort, energy is going to put towards it?
00:22:59.203 --> 00:23:00.867
How does that all play in?
00:23:01.088 --> 00:23:03.060
and yeah, yeah, that's a great question.
00:23:03.060 --> 00:23:10.575
Yeah, so, going back a little bit, as I mentioned, you know, our organization, mountain True's French Broad Riverkeeper program, you know, started off with the French Broad Riverkeeper.
00:23:10.575 --> 00:23:14.391
Hartwell Carson is my coworker and longtime Mountain True staff.
00:23:14.391 --> 00:23:18.290
He basically runs all of our French Broad Riverkeeper programming.
00:23:18.290 --> 00:23:24.044
So you know, he kind of you know, leads all the things around water quality and recreation and advocacy and lobbying and things like that.
00:23:24.044 --> 00:23:39.782
We have another team member, anna Alsobrook, who is our watershed science and policy manager and she is kind of more hands-on in the details around water quality, sampling, enforcement, kind of getting more into the nitty-gritty of those issues and details.
00:23:40.123 --> 00:23:45.023
And then my role is focused on the paddle trail, specifically related to recreation and access and things like that.
00:23:45.023 --> 00:23:50.173
So I've been working with Mountain True off and on since 2017 in this role, now full time.
00:23:50.173 --> 00:23:56.147
But Anna and Hartwell have been there for much longer and historically the paddle trail was a focus of their job.
00:23:56.147 --> 00:23:57.692
But it was one of many things.
00:23:57.692 --> 00:24:06.968
They would work on the paddle trail in the summer trying to get these campsites together and clean the bathrooms and get the restrooms figured out and the signage and mapping and all that.
00:24:06.968 --> 00:24:08.871
But they'd also be working on water quality stuff.
00:24:08.871 --> 00:24:19.124
They'd also be leading events and lobbying all this kind of stuff and they just got overwhelmed with that and you know, somewhere along the way, you know, certain things had to take a backseat and the paddle trail often did because it just required less.
00:24:19.124 --> 00:24:20.708
You know, consistent hands-on work.
00:24:21.190 --> 00:24:41.345
But when the state, you know, through the Complete, the, the trails fund, decided to invest in state trails financially and from capacity wise, it made more sense at that point to kind of bring someone back on full-time okay turn this program specifically and that's kind of where my role kind of came back in to kind of really focus in on this, this program, specifically, because we have money to support it and because there's a lot of energy around it.
00:24:41.464 --> 00:24:42.007
Yeah, yeah.
00:24:42.007 --> 00:24:56.049
So yeah, capitalize on it while you can, and and then all the other things, like we said a minute ago, just with the Acoustic Trail coming online and there's so many other resources just in this Henderson County, transylvania County, and then obviously we know that, you know, moving up into Tennessee there's more.
00:24:56.049 --> 00:25:00.727
But yeah, in those specific areas there's a lot of energy around this right now for sure.
00:25:00.846 --> 00:25:10.366
Yeah, there is so much energy and funding for that matter and just capacity for, you know, public outdoor recreation in Western North Carolina right now.
00:25:10.428 --> 00:25:11.049
It's so awesome.
00:25:11.160 --> 00:25:26.019
I know that the year of the trail campaign from last year for trails and the Great Trail State funding that came around and just like enthusiasm and support from our local tourism authorities and other partners, there's so much energy around this topic right now, which I think is amazing.
00:25:26.441 --> 00:25:48.473
But I'm also grateful that we have, you know, good people and good organizations ensuring that things happen in a way that are equitable and accessible, because, you know, oftentimes we think of these amenities, like trails and greenways and rivers and parks, as places that we all can enjoy, but we often kind of forget that sometimes, like, access isn't always necessarily equitable in terms of you know, what languages are available for people to read signage in?
00:25:48.473 --> 00:25:55.532
Are your boat ramps accessible with a capital A in terms of for people that have issues or challenges with mobility?
00:25:55.532 --> 00:25:56.473
Are they accessible for them?
00:25:56.473 --> 00:26:02.611
Are there opportunities for a wide variety of types of people in terms of costs associated with them them?
00:26:02.611 --> 00:26:14.566
So now we can get, with this extra capacity and funding and time and interest, we can go beyond just creating the thing, but create it in a way that's accessible for as many people as possible, in a way that's sustainable, long-term.
00:26:14.726 --> 00:26:15.347
Yeah, that's huge.
00:26:15.347 --> 00:26:18.885
You know, the connection that I just made, in my brain too, with the whole movement last year.
00:26:18.885 --> 00:26:26.170
And then the funding is this idea of trails, kind of being for all and all, being literally all.
00:26:26.170 --> 00:26:29.705
But part of that too is just different ability levels and experience levels.
00:26:29.705 --> 00:26:35.108
And so you know somebody like yourself, for example, you know you're a classified boater, you'll pack raft.
00:26:35.108 --> 00:26:36.192
I mean, um, what do you call?
00:26:37.182 --> 00:26:37.703
it, is it pack?
00:26:37.824 --> 00:26:49.963
All right, so you're you're going to pack raft, you know you're going to do some some extreme, remote stuff, but yet I find somebody like yourself having equally joy in your canoe today just going down a flat section.
00:26:49.963 --> 00:26:52.974
So you just appreciate it like for what it is.
00:26:52.974 --> 00:26:59.362
And the really cool thing to me is that if you bring somebody in who doesn't have any of these experiences, it's really really safe.
00:26:59.362 --> 00:27:02.194
Now, hopping on section nine at flood is a different story.
00:27:02.194 --> 00:27:16.582
Hopping on these sections up here where you can float, feel comfortable on a sit on top, you know, an open boat, kayak, whatever it is it just allows the experience, the outdoor experience, getting people out there to experience all the benefits of it, and they don't have to be somebody who this is.
00:27:16.622 --> 00:27:22.748
You've done it all your life and you've got all the right gear, and I mean you want to have some gear and I want to talk about your website here in a minute because that really helps people.
00:27:22.748 --> 00:27:28.863
But that's one of the things that really strikes me, and this blue way is a perfect example of that as well.
00:27:28.863 --> 00:27:39.627
Right, so you have some of these multi-use trails, like the Fanta floor that might have steep elevations in some sections, but other sections it's just flat, it's asphalt, it might be a different surface, but in the blue ways it's the same.
00:27:39.627 --> 00:27:42.221
It's the exact same thing, and and and.
00:27:42.221 --> 00:27:44.404
This is a great opportunity for families.
00:27:44.404 --> 00:27:51.300
If you just got into it before, if you bought your, you know your sit on top at your local retailer and you just want a place to try it out and to be safe.
00:27:51.300 --> 00:27:52.143
This is it.
00:27:52.143 --> 00:27:53.586
I mean, this is really a great spot.
00:27:53.867 --> 00:28:04.608
Yeah, you raise a really good point too because, like a lot of our programming and work right now, given that we're working with funding for projects, has been kind of allocating and stewarding this funding to eligible places.
00:28:04.608 --> 00:28:12.102
So, like you know, replacing old, eroded stairs with a ramp, you know, or getting some new signage in here, or acquiring a property over here, things like that.
