Trail Trim Aug 6th 6pm

[dennis porter]

Bloomington River Trail Maintenance. As it does every year the multi use
River Trail in Bloomington has become a bit overgrown with nettles and other
summer growth. A work session to mow weeds, trim overhanging trees, and
patch any trouble spots will take place Wednesday August 6, starting at 6PM
and lasting for approximately 2 hours. The work party will meet initially at
the West end of the trail in the parking lot adjacent to the Bloomington
Ferry pedestrian bridge at the south end of Bloomington Ferry Road (just
South of Dred Scott playing fields). We will use a MORC supplied brush
cutting mower and hand tools to clear the trail as needed. Some people may
be asked to travel further down the trail to spread out the work party and
cover more ground if we have sufficient resources.

This trail work may be continued the following week if necessary.
Suggeted attire:
Light long pants, long sleeved shirt, sturdy shoes

Please bring: Water, Eye Protection, Work Gloves, bug spray, loppers and/or
folding saws, hand operated weed cutting devices.

Quick directions: South on Hwy100/Normandale Road, Right onto Old Shakopee
Road, then left on Bloomington Ferry Road to the parking lot.

Contact info:
Steve Eberly
seberly@att.net
952 201 6294 mobile phone

[cheese4brains]

This sounds great!

By "hand operated weed cutting devices" do you mean the weed wacker I have in the garage, or something like a sickle? Maybe a silly question, but won't I feel stupid if I get it wrong?! :laugh:

I'll be there if the wife will let me. The river bottoms is a good trail that's very convenient for those of us in the southwest metro.

[seberly]

Thanks for your note - I hope you can make it.

"hand operated" was intended to mean non-powered devices like a sycthes, sling-blades and those 3 foot long devices with an angled dual sided foot long or so blade on the bottom otherwise known simply as weed cutters.

That said you can feel free to bring your weed wacker as well - if you do please bring eye and ear protection for yourself. Keep in mind that mother nature has worked overtime to make the river trail weeds very tough, and I suspect you will use a lot of weed wacker line down there - not to mention stir up a lot of itch weed juice - it's not the same as a few nice grass blades along the fence line. If you have one of those saw blade devices that might work better - I really don't know.

Over time, we've found the hand devices to be pretty darn effective, not to mention quiet and somewhat less noxious that the typical two-stroke engine....

We will have some hand devices there for general use.

Hand operated hedge trimmers also can work but you'll be bending over a lot.

Regards,

[socrates]

Thanks Guys...the trail looked great tonight...had I known you guys would still be out there at 7:30 I would have joined you but none-the-less it's 100000% better

THANKS AGAIN!!!

[SPR]

Nice to hear the trail looks better. We had a large powered weed and brush cutter that just plowed down all the overgrowth on the trail sides (just like in the TV commercials). It did a great job as did the person operating it, thanks Terry.
:banana:

[socrates]

Originally posted by SPR
Nice to hear the trail looks better. We had a large powered weed and brush cutter that just plowed down all the overgrowth on the trail sides (just like in the TV commercials). It did a great job as did the person operating it, thanks Terry.
:banana:

Yeah I passed you guys with that thing...really looked like it could handle just about anything in it's way

[seberly]

Thanks to everyone who came out on short notice, I may not have the names right but that included Randy, Roger, Richard, Don Y, Craig, Shawn, Lauren (shes 10 and now wants to join MORC), + 1 other person I didn't get the name of (sorry).

We pretty well covered the trail from the ferry bridge parking lot to somewhere east of the railroad turn bridge. We also had a special operative John down on the east end who was working on his own.

Many passing trail users expressed their thanks.

Give me a day or so to assess what we achieved - I'm thinking we probably need another evening next week to complete the job.

In the meantime please feel free to get back to me directly with your ideas on areas that still need trimming, and dates you are available. I will probably take the mower out in the area west of the raft this wknd. Let me know if you wanna help with that.

Just a heads up for the future: we are still working with the city on a reroute of the trail east of Parkers Picnic Ground (at the power line). Currently the city is showing the proposed re-route to various parties including neighbors - trail work could start this fall.

[SPR]

Originally posted by SPR
Nice to hear the trail looks better. We had a large powered weed and brush cutter that just plowed down all the overgrowth on the trail sides (just like in the TV commercials). It did a great job as did the person operating it, thanks Terry.
:banana:

Sorry Randy, don't know what I was thinking but you get the kudos for running the brush cutter. (who's Terry?:embarass: )