Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
PARTICIPANTS IN the Iron County 4-H Trailblazer program share some dehydrated fruit that they made earlier in the week while taking a break from exploring the Gile Flowage Thursday. Among those participating are, counter-clockwise from left, Donna Lotzer, Brooke Saari and Rissa Lane, a summer intern with the University of Wisconsin's Iron County Extension Office who helps lead the trip.
HURLEY - A group of Iron County kids cycled along County Road C to the Gile Flowage on Thursday to explore the shoreline before continuing on to Mount Zion in Ironwood Township as part of the county 4-H's Trailblazer program.
The 4-H Trailblazer program is offered every Monday and Thursday through the end of June, according to Neil Klemme, the youth development agent with the University of Wisconsin's Iron County Extension Office. Each session generally begins around 9 a.m. and runs until roughly 3 p.m. and usually center around the kids bicycling to a different waterfall in the area, including several in Michigan, and then journaling about their experiences.
Prior to Thursday's expedition, the trailblazer program has included trips to Upson, Peterson and Kimball falls as well as Wren and Rouse falls.
At the flowage, the group scrambled around the rocky shoreline exploring while discovering numerous snails that live in the flowage as well as the remains of several turtle nests after the eggs had hatched.
While fun was certainly one of the goals of the Trailblazer activities, the bike rides are also building stamina for those who will participate in the 4-H program's new "outpost camp" - which begins with a 20-mile bike ride to the campground - offered for sixth and seventh graders.
"Our goal for the whole summer is to one, have fun, and two work their way up to the outpost camp bike trip. It's about 20 miles to the camp," said Jacob Berlyn, a summer intern with Iron County's UW-Extension Office who - along with the office's other intern, Rissa Lane - is helping run the Trailblazers program. "Today's ride is, I think, 13 miles. And then another goal is to explore the county, we are trying to focus on the waterfalls so we hit some waterfalls that most of them hadn't seen."
The waterfalls is a popular part of the program for Brook Saari, one of the program's participants. Saari also enjoys the journaling process.
"Every day they make up a map and you glue (items) in there and you write about it and where you went to," said Saari, who added that the journals can then be entered in the 4-H portion of the Iron County Fair where they can win prizes.
More information on the program can be found by calling the extension office at 715-561-2695.
