Walking the South Strip

It was a great day for a walk!  Our walking group did an 11k along the South Las Vegas Strip this morning which was both fun and scenic.  Did you know it is the "Year of the Pig" in China?  Our casinos do up Chinese New Year pretty well so all along the Strip we saw lots of pig-related displays.

A Nice 11k Walk This Morning

Our walking club headed out this morning to walk the north part of the Las Vegas Strip.  Even though it was raining a bit it was a really nice walk.  I have found, however, that I don't really do rain anymore...I am definitely a desert dweller now!

Another 10k Today

I've kind of hit the ground running, so to speak, this year.  I did my second volksmarch of the year today--a 10k volksmarch with my walking group in Henderson--and while it was really cold outside, I feel like I am getting in better shape already!  One of the walking group challenges I want to complete, in addition to walking a 10k in each state and in each state capital, is to complete 100 volksmarches during this year.  So far two down and 98 to go!

My First Volksmarch of the Year

With the SIL and BIL here visiting, I now have someone to walk with so the BIL and I headed out to do a 10k volksmarch in Henderson this morning.  The weather was perfect, the views were great, and the BIL was a super fast walker (he just finished hiking the 2000 mile Appalachian Trail so no surprise there)!  My challenge this year is to complete 100 volksmarches (walks) this year which will be about 600 miles so this was walk number one with 99 more to go!  Note the photo above was from the last time I did this walk since we were walking so fast this time I didn't have time to take photos.  This is also no spend day number three so far this year since I had free walk coupons to use for today's walk so we are doing great on both the health front and the money front as well!

Volksmarching...A Fun and Inexpensive Hobby

I've probably posted here before about one of my favorite hobbies but it has been so long I figured I would post about it again.  I love to walk.  Short walks, long walks, winter walks, summer walks...all are fun.  Anyway, today I headed out for another volksmarch (I'm trying to finish 100 volksmarches by the end of the year to win an award).  It was a great day for walking and there were so many people out in the early AM walking this morning!  If you haven't heard of it, volksmarching in a German-inspired walking club in the US and in many other parts of the world.  The annual cost to join a local club is around $15 and you pay $3 for each walk which supports the club and pays for small awards like patches and pins.  You earn awards for both the number of events you walk as well as achieving walking distances (I met one guy who has walked more than 50,000 km over the years and he is still going!).

As hobbies go, this is a pretty good one as it is both inexpensive and good for your health (each walk is a 5k or 10k with some as long as 42k).  The only thing you really need is a good pair of shoes but of course people who really get into walking can make it a much more expensive hobby by traveling to various walking events.  One couple I met walks more than 300 volksmarches a year, driving around the country to do this; they spend about 270 days on the road each year to hit A LOT of volksmarches.  A related walking club hosts a dozen walking weekend events all over the world which can get spendy if you are hopping from country to country each month to walk in these events.

Most cities and towns in the US have volksmarch events (either group walks or boxes where you can sign up and walk on your own).  My city has ten organized walks as well as a couple of special events each year.  The people who put these walks together really do a great job highlighting the best things to see in the area along your walk (some of our local walks go through the casinos along the Las Vegas Strip, other go out to Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam).

So if you are looking for a fun, enjoyable, and no so expensive hobby, check out volksmarching.  The US Club can be found here, the Canadian Club here, and an international club here.

One Marathon. Done.

I've crossed another goal off of my annual goal list: complete a marathon.  Which I did this past Saturday.  My feet still hurt.  Here's what we did:

• We skipped the trip to the San Juans, unfortunately.  It was storming the night before we left and we figured that if for some reason the ferries to the east side of the sound and the ferry through the San Juans got delayed due to the weather there would be no way to make it to the marathon.
• So we hopped the ferry from Port Angeles to Victoria BC the next morning and the weather turned out to be nice as soon as we got to the BC side of the water.
• I did complete the marathon (see certificate above).  Note that I am the slowest walker I know and it took nearly nine hours of walking to complete (needless to say my feet and still unhappy).  Of course the fact that I would walk ten paces then find something interesting to take a picture of didn't help (see photos here and here).
• Canadians are the nicest people on the planet!  They are so friendly and helpful (nearly a half dozen times people stopped to ask if I was lost or needed help during the walk since I was looking around for the trail markers and, well, I probably did look lost.  One guy went zipping by me on a bike, stopped, turned around, and came back to ask if I was looking for something.  Amazing!).  Also, if you are anywhere in the vicinity of a crosswalk, they stop and wait patiently while you cross the street (in Las Vegas, unless it is a certainty that you will cause damage to their car, people don't stop at crosswalks).  tl;dr: if it wasn't freezing cold in Canada, I would move there!
• The weather was great for a walk.  It was sunny and warm most of the way with a light breeze--perfect for walking.
• There is A LOT of nature in Victoria BC!  We walked 12+ miles out from Victoria and found ourselves in the wilderness.  We walked the Lochshead Trail, around two lakes, and hit all kinds of other trails through forests and along waterways.  Beautiful!
• Canadians also sound nice (I like their accents!) and look nice (or maybe everyone I saw on the trial looked nice because they get out in nature often.  Maybe socialized health care?  Whatever it is, they look much healthier than Americans).
• We had donairs twice (something we don't often find in the US) but I couldn't find poutine anywhere (it looked tasty on a Food Network Canada TV show we watched).
• Bus service around the island was excellent, with a $5 pass, we could get on and off buses all day as we checked out various parts of the city.
• I was a little leery about the hotel we reserved (Travelodge in Esquimalt) because it was a cheap rate where you pay first then find out the name of the hotel but I thought that since it was a two-star hotel with hundreds of four-star ratings, it might be OK.  And it was.  It was clean and quiet and well cared for and located perfectly for us.  We were super happy with the hotel!
• This was a smaller walk festival than I have been to in the past with only about 20 people completing the marathon and lots of people doing shorter walks and while I walked by myself much of the way, I did walk about 10k with a lady who was preparing for a May trip to Spain to do the 800k Camino de Santiago walk.  You meet the most interesting people volksmarching!

Overall it was a wonderful trip, I got to knock off another goal (although "do a marathon" may never again end up on my goals lists!), and I am already planning to come back up to the Pacific Northwest next summer to attend a week-long volksmarch festival in the Columbia River Gorge (where I will do daily 10k walks instead of one long--and painful--42k walk!).