Tag: Adopt A Highway

Earth Day

Earth Day was born in 1970 on my husband’s (Gary) birthday ~ April 22. We both remember the first Earth Day. I’m glad we’re still celebrating it, and I’m glad we’re still celebrating my husband’s birthday. HA!

For his birthday, we picked up trash along Highway 60 in Faribault, Minnesota. This clean-up is a bi-annual task the Faribault Flyers Bike & Ski Club does for the community. We are a part of the bike club so we volunteered to help.

This sign is along Highway 60, near Faribault.

This year’s clean up date happened to fall on Earth Day, and Gary’s birthday. Little did anyone expect that the temperature would climb to 90* in April!  It was sunny, windy and hot. And there we were in the middle of the afternoon picking up trash in the ditches. It was hard work, but we survived and the group met at a Mexican restaurant for dinner afterward.

Our first year, four years ago, we picked up a lot more trash…so we assume our work is making a difference over the years. However, we placed multiple yellow bags, full of trash, on the side of Highway 60 to be picked up by the highway department.

There were several trout lilies surviving in the ditch.

There was one snafu. Gary and I started at one end of a section, and two others started at the other end so we would meet up in the middle. Along the way I took a photo of trout lilies in the ditch, blooming in spite of the trash.

Resize and rotate 180 degrees

I also took photos of animal bones in skeleton form. We have a retired vet in our group so he identified it as a deer (from my photo). We had no idea deer had such fierce looking teeth.

Deer teeth.

When we met the other two in the middle of our section someone asked me for the time. I went to retrieve my cellphone out of my pocket and lo and behold, it was not there! Sigh.

It must have fallen out while bending over for trash. So, Gary and I started retracing our steps. Fortunately, Gary had my cell phone on his “Find My” app on his phone…so it pinged when we were close. Even though we were in the vicinity, it was still hard to find, but after about 20 minutes we did find my phone in the ditch, and all is well.

Whew… I did not want to find my phone in the ditch among the trash next year!

Happy Birthday Gary.

Litter

The Faribault Flyers Bike and Ski Club picked up trash last week. The club adopted a portion of highway 60, out of Faribault. This means the club has committed to pick up litter along both sides of the highway section, at least twice a year.

The official Adopt a Highway sign.

Gary and I are members of this bike club and were available to help. It was a windy day, and that was challenging…keeping the plastic garbage bag from blowing away, or its twisting and dumping all the contents out. But, the sun was out and it was a mild temperature. 

We were all given fluorescent vests to wear. The traffic on this particular highway is heavy, and a little dauting at first, being so close to the road with the cars whizzing by. We were given garbage bags to fill, then instructed to leave them on the side of the road to be picked up.

We divided into four groups of four or five.

We were told mark with a bag… and do not touch… drug paraphernalia or firearms, if we came upon any. I found what looked like a small firearm. I did pick it up because I was fairly certain it was too small to be real. It ended up being a large cigarette lighter in the shape of a gun. Sigh.

This small, heavy, metal gun that was a lighter.

It felt good to be outdoors on this spring day, while picking up the discarded pop and beer cans, liquor bottles, miscellaneous paper, fast food bags and cups and utensils, cigarette lighters and cigarette butts (the worse). I think there is a mentality that cigarette butts are not litter, so smokers just throw them out the window. There are a lot of them!

Full trash bags set along side the road for pick-up. We filled 35-40 bags, in two hours.

It felt good to participate in this community service. There were several of us from the bike club that showed up to help. Many hands make light work, although it was still hard work. We had a handy, dandy picker-upper which worked well. It reduced the amount of bending over a little bit, during our two-hour shift. 

Six months from now, the club will set apart another afternoon to collect trash from the same section of the highway. It’s one of those jobs that is never ending, but I think we make a difference.