If you haven’t been out on the Raccoon River Valley Trail as this record-breaking winter finally begins to wind down, you’ve missed a whole lot of views like these! These photos were taken on Friday, February 26, at the Waukee trailhead on the RRVT, along U.S. Highway 6 on the northwest corner of that town. Both signs stand 7 to 8 feet tall, so you can see just how much snow has been piled around them. As you travel on west and north along the trail, you can find places where snowdrifts are 8 to 10 feet high and might stretch for 50 yards along the trail. What a winter! Welcome spring!

Submit your photos for placement

A new, $6.6-million, 33-mile-long “North Loop” is now under construction.  That will boost the RRVT’s total  mileage to 89 miles in the next couple of years, making it one of the longest paved rec trails in the U.S.  The number of  bicyclists, walkers, joggers, skaters, snowmobilers, birdwatchers, hunters and others on the trail is expected to triple or quadruple.

Plans are now underway in nearly every community along the trail to enhance their amenities and attractions to be ready for the growing number of trail users.

Everybody was talking in that direction at the banquet, including guest speaker Kevin Cooney, the veteran news anchor at KCCI-TV who is also a member of the RRVT association and a frequent user of the trail, both as a cyclist and runner.

Kevin Cooney speaking at RRVT banquet.

“All that’s happened on this trail the last 20 years is going to increase a millionfold over the next 10 years,” Cooney told the crowd of nearly 200 that filled the Lake Panorama National Resort & Conference Center.  “To those who had the vision 25 years ago and acted on it to get all this started on this trail, thank you!”

Cooney cited several benefits from having a well-developed rec trail.  “It’s a great place to enjoy exercising, but it’s more than that,” he said. “It’s also an economic development opportunity, a great public relations vehicle for the communities, and something that has a positive impact on public health.”

Among those attending were two members of the boards of supervisors in the three counties the RRVT traverses, as well as mayors of four trail towns, several city council members, several members of the counties’ conservation boards and regional economic development officials.

The RRVT Association will start the coming trail season in the best financial position it’s ever been in, thanks to the $10,604 raised with live and silent auctions and several cash donations Saturday night.

The attendance and the amount of money raised are both records.  At the first banquet in 2008, 153 attended and the auctions brought in $8,589.  At the second one in 2009, there were 171 in the crowd and $8,873 was raised.

The money all goes to fund the trail association’s activities in marketing and promoting the RRVT and its communities – locally, regionally and nationally.

Of course, the association has been very active in the past three years in the $6.6 million campaign to pay for the new North Loop.  That effort went over the top last fall.  To help celebrate the conclusion of that successful drive, one of the largest private donors was represented at the banquet to make a ceremonial check presentation.  Tom Holcomb, a member of the board of directors of Raccoon Valley Bank, handed Dallas County Conservation director Mike Wallace and RRVT Association president Offenburger a trophy check for $75,000 from the bank – and that brought cheers and applause from the big crowd.  The Raccoon Valley Bank has several locations in towns on the trail or nearby – Adel, Perry, Minburn, Bagley and Dallas Center.

Guest speaker Cooney told hilarious stories about his own cycling, as well as counting the glories of rec trails. He pointed out that he and his wife Mollie Cooney, another KCCI-TV reporter and news anchor who was in the audience Saturday night, have ridden on trails all over Iowa.

Kevin began his talk wearing his anchorman’s blazer, dress shirt and necktie, but ripped them off quickly and spoke in his favorite cycling  jersey. That immediately won over the big crowd of trail enthusiasts.

“I’ve watched over the years why people get into bicycling,” he said. “We’re in it for the exercise, or for the health aspect of it.  Yeah, right.  When we’re out there, aren’t we really running away from something?  We’re running away from the next decade.  We have this fear, this mis-trust of the next decade.

“That’s why I ride bikes,” Cooney continued, getting more fiery with every word, “to try to stay young.  They say 40 is the new 30?  Shut up! 50 is the new 40?  I’m knocking on 60’s door right now.  60’s fricking 60 – that’s what it is!”

Having a trail like the RRVT, he said, is “one of the greatest things that can happen to an area. ‘If you build it, they will come.’  I’ve got my eye on a house in Redfield,” then adding in an aside to Mollie, “Dear, I probably should’ve told you before now!”

She rolled her eyes and said under her breath, “I’m sliding my purse back under this chair to try to hide my wallet.  I’m afraid how much this night is going to cost me!”

Kevin Cooney had two big suggestions for the RRVT Association.

“I’ve become a triathlete the last few years,” he said. “I think you should have your own triathlon out here on the RRVT.  I’d help with that.  Now, the trail would be perfect for the bicycling and running parts of a triathlon.  But I’m not sure anybody would want to go for a nice long swim in the Raccoon River.  There’s a solution to that.  A triathlon I’ve done in Ames has people kayaking instead of swimming, and you could sure do that on the Raccoon.”

He also continued his own lobbying effort to get a trail link completed between the towns of Perry and Woodward.  Perry will be on the new North Loop of the RRVT.  Woodward so far is the west terminus of the “High Trestle Trail,” formerly known as the Ankeny-to-Woodward Trail.  He said he’s been pestering Dallas County’s conservation boss Wallace with the idea during the past year.

“Look at the map of that area – it’s just this far from Perry to Woodward!” Cooney said, holding up his fingers to show a very short distance.

He recalled how the RRVT Association, on a snowy February Saturday in 2007, held a “Business & Tourism Development Seminar” in the trail town of Cooper.

“We sent up a reporter, Eric Hanson, to cover that seminar,” Cooney said, “because we of course recognized that Cooper, Iowa, is such an important center of business and economic development.  But actually the seminar was really good.  You brought in those speakers from the Root River State Trail in Minnesota to tell how they’d developed everything on that trail.  I went back just the other day and pulled up that story to see it again.  You know what?  Everything you all at the seminar talked about wanting to do, it’s all happening right now out here.”

More coverage of the banquet is included in the captions to the photos posted below here.

Raccoon River Valley Trail Association board members Jim Miller (left) of Waukee and Kevin Wilbeck of Rippey, ready to start selling raffle tickets as the crowd arrived.  One raffle was for chances on a new bicycle, the other was for a bag of cash.

Allan Sieck, another RRVT Association board member from Rippey, shows off the unique table he built and donated for the auction. It features five species of wood native to the area of the RRVT.

Here is a close up of the top of the table that Allan Sieck built.  Note the different kinds of wood that are inlays in the cherry wood surface.  The artwork was done by Sieck’s daughter Julianna Cullen.

In this photo are some of the guests who traveled farthest to the RRVT Association banquet in Panora.  Left to right, board member Jim Miller, selling a raffle ticket on a bicycle; Mark Wyatt, of North Liberty, executive director of the Iowa Bicycle Coalition; Joe Connolly, of Council Bluffs, buying the ticket; Jen Wyatt walking up from the right, and Cindy Connolly.

Mike Wallace, the Dallas County Conservation director, did an update on the RRVT’s “North Loop” expansion project.

Forrest Ridgway (center), owner of the Bike World stores in the Des Moines area and Ames, talks to two of his good customers, Jefferson Mayor Craig Berry (left) and Greene County Conservation Board member Diane Wise, also from Jefferson.

Kevin Cooney (left) was wearing a blazer, dress shirt and necktie when he arrived at the RRVT Association banquet with his wife Mollie Cooney.  Here, they are talking to Clark Smith, of Des Moines, who is executive director of the association.

After the first half-minute of his speech, Cooney ripped off his anchorman’s coat and tie, and delivered the rest of his remarks while sporting his favorite cycling jersey.

After the speech, Cooneys stayed to visit with those attending.  Here they are with their banquet tablemate Rich Osborne, of Jefferson, an RRVT Association member who is co-owner of the new Greene Bean Coffee Co.  One-pot sample bags of that coffee, which is roasted in Jefferson, were given to all those who attended the banquet.

Larry Pickering of West Des Moines and Kevin Cooney had a quick chat after Cooney’s speech.

Allen Hall, of Malvern, makes a bid on a silent auction item, as the crowd behind him checks out others of the 55 silent auction items that were donated.

Carla Offenburger (left) is shown here with Allen & Joyce Hall of Malvern, all wearing their RRVT vests. Notice here that Allen, a proud Scotsman, came sporting a tartan tam & necktie.  He is a member of the board of directors of Southwest Iowa Nature Trails, which owns and operates much of the Wabash Trace Nature Trail.  The Wabash Trace towns of Malvern and Imogene each put together baskets for the RRVT auction, offering overnight accommodations, free meals, local gifts and year-long passes on that southwest Iowa trail that stretches southeast from Council Bluffs, through the Loess Hills to the Missouri border.

Tom Holcomb (left), a member of the board of directors of the Raccoon Valley Bank, talked about what a recreational and tourism amenity the RRVT is, as he prepared to present the bank’s donation to Mike Wallace for the new North Loop. Holcomb added the trail makes for pretty good people-watching, too.

Here’s the trophy check for $75,000 that the Raccoon Valley Bank donated in the campaign to raise $6.6 million for the North Loop project.  Left to right are Tom Holcomb of the bank; Mike Wallace, the Dallas County Conservation director, and Carla Offenburger, president of the RRVT Association.

Wendy Kozal, of Jefferson, shows off the new Schwinn bicycle she won by picking the right spot on a raffle board, with chances costing $5 per spot.  The Schwinn was donated by the Hiawatha Bike Company, of Perry.

One of the most popular items on the live auction was this unique copper weather vane, topped off with a classic high-wheeler bicycle.  The original work of art was made by artist & plumber Brian Myers, of Dallas Center, and donated by him and his wife Linda Myers.  Left to right in the photo are Mike Wallace; Bob German (holding the weather vane), the RRVT Association board member from Dallas Center who was chairman of the banquet committee, and auctioneer Chad Daughety, of Daugherty Auction & Real Estate in Adel.

Forrest Ridgway, owner of the Bike World stores, describes the Trek bicycle he donated for the live auction.  RRVT Association board members in the photo are Mike Wallace (left) and Daniel Willrich, of Dallas Center.  The bicycle is a new development by Trek — a self-shifting three-speed.  So it’s like having an automatic transmission on a bicycle! “It’s a perfect bike for the Raccoon River Valley Trail,” said Ridgway.

Nationally-syndicated cartoonist and artist Brian Duffy (left), of West Des Moines, again did an original drawing featuring the RRVT and donated it for the live auction.  The purchaser was Jerry Roberts (right), an RRVT Association member from Jefferson who is also on the Greene County Board of Supervisors.  Brian and his wife Sharon Duffy attended this year’s banquet, after he spoke at last year’s.  He now works with Kevin Cooney, as the Duffy cartoons are a regular feature of the KCCI-TV news.

“It’s the first patch of wildflowers we’ve put in along the trail in our county,” said Dan Towers, the conservation director, who did the site preparation and planting.  “It was really nice of the family and friends to make this possible.”

The wildflowers garden honors the life of Christopher Klinzman, a noted TV and video producer in Kansas City who died of a sudden heart ailment in early May, 2008.

His parents Martha Gilmore Klinzman and David Klinzman had grown up in the nearby towns of Cooper and Bagley, and Christopher visited this area many times to see his grandparents and attend family reunions.  In later years, he started bicycling and camping along the RRVT.  In the year before he died, he said he had decided that he would soon buy or build a get-away home in the area to enjoy country life and the recreational amenities of the trail, river and county parks.

Christopher Klinzman

After his death, his family and friends donated $965 in memorial funds to pay for development of the wildflowers garden.

Conservationist Towers used herbicide in September, 2008, to begin killing the vegetation on the wildflowers site.  He burned off the area in March of this year, then sprayed again in April and September.  In November, he leveled and worked-up the soil, and finally seeded it with the wildflowers mix.

“This is called a ‘dormant seeding,’ since I did it too late in the season for the seeds to germinate,” he said. “The idea is that with snow cover and then melting, that will work the seeds into the soil in a natural way. Most people who have experience in developing prairies say fall seedings seem to work out a little better.”

Towers said the 100-by-50-foot patch of wildflowers will feature such species as dwarf red coreopsis, grayhead prairie cone, purple prairie clover, blue flax, cornflowers, scarlet flax, Shasta daisies, red yarrow, purple coneflowers, California poppies, showy evening primrose, lemon mint, black-eyed susans, Mexican red hats, New England aster, gloriosa daisies and little bluestem.

“The first year it won’t look like much, because these perennials take a couple of years to start showing their colors,” Towers said.  “But I expect we’ll see some of the blues during the 2010 season, and then the rest of the colors in the next couple of years.  A lot of it will depend on how much moisture we get.”

A temporary sign was placed on it for this past summer and fall, telling trail users about the project.  There is already a bench adjacent to the garden.  And eventually a permanent sign will be erected there, explaining to trail users just who Christopher Klinzman was and how much he loved the area.

This photo shows the Klinzman Wildflowers Memorial Garden after it had been planted in November — and before the recent snows covered it.  The garden is located at Winkleman Switch, which is a trailhead located midway between Cooper and Jefferson.  There once was a stockyards and small grain elevator at the site, which was a shipping point for livestock and other ag commodities when the railroad operated on today’s RRVT.

Klinzman spent most of his elementary and secondary school years in South Africa, where his parents worked, his father David in the computer industry and his mother as a food writer and journalist.  Christopher got his first training in TV and video work in that country, then returned to the U.S. to attend film and theater school at Diablo Valley College in California.  He went on to the excellent radio and TV program at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville and graduated in 1987.

Once he started his career, he worked at local TV stations in the Midwest as a cameraman, editor, director and commercial writer-producer before moving into sports TV photography. He also worked regularly with the regional and national TV networks on sports coverage, including Kansas City Royals baseball and Big 12 Conference men’s basketball.

In addition, he worked as an independent filmmaker, utilizing TV as the main form of distribution. He had his own state-of-the-art digital editing system and camera gear, with which he produced commercials and other smaller video projects. For movies and other large projects, he partnered with others, generally in the Midwest.

He’d been married earlier in life, and had a serious relationship with a woman at the time of his death.

“I got to know Christopher the last couple of years of his life,” said Chuck Offenburger, of Cooper, a writer who is webmaster for the Raccoon River Valley Trail Association.  “He was a big, stout man, but he was really like a teddy bear.  He got in touch after my wife Carla and I moved to the Cooper area in 2004 and we were getting involved with the RRVT and other local projects.  He was always real interested in the latest developments here, especially with the trail.

“Christopher told me how much he always loved getting out of Kansas City and visiting here.  He’d ride his bike, canoe, fish and camp out along the trail.  I’ll never forget one time he was camped up near the North Raccoon River, and he rode his bicycle into Jefferson for lunch.  When he got back, his campsite had been burgled and he lost a good camera and some other possessions.  He was laughing it off, saying he always worried about that happening in Kansas City but not in rural Greene County.  He couldn’t have been less concerned, but I was so furious I insisted he report it to our local sheriff.”

Offenburger said in early 2007, he invited Klinzman to write a guest column about the area for the Internet site Offenburger.com  (to read it click here).  Here is part of what Klinzman wrote:

“I grew up from ages 8 to 18 living overseas, as my parents traveled professionally…  Both of them small-town Iowans, they traveled the world in cutting-edge businesses, their roots always serving them well in competitive environs.

“I had chances to return regularly to the Cooper and Bagley area, by myself from age 11 onward, to see both sets of my grandparents, who lived only miles apart until 1981. As such, I grew to think of the area very fondly, and still regard it as one of my favorite spots on the planet.

“Squirrel Hollow Park, on the National Historic Register. The bike trail. The railroad bridge. The North Raccoon and its sandbars. The Greene County Historical Museum. The Mahanay Memorial Bell Tower. The Jefferson A & W.

“All simple pleasures from a time seemingly past, especially to a hard-core post-modern urbanite like myself.”

Those same simple pleasures are attracting increasing numbers of urban people into the countryside to enjoy recreational trails like the RRVT.

Here is the temporary sign that marks the location of the Klinzman Memorial Wildflowers Garden.

Previously, snowmobiles were allowed only on the portion of the RRVT here in Guthrie County. 

But last winter, snowmobile enthusiasts in the area organized a new regional club, the Raccoon Valley Snow Chasers, and they now have more than 100 members.  They persuaded the Conservation Boards of Dallas and Greene Counties to open the trail to snowmobiles in those counties, too. 

“We hope this is going to be a real positive development,” said Carla Offenburger, of Cooper, president of the Raccoon River Valley Trail Association, which markets and promotes the entire trail and all its communities.  “There’s been some strain in the past between snowmobilers, property owners and other trail users.  But with new rules, a well-organized group of snowmobilers and new cooperation, we think this will work well for everybody.  And it means more people out using the RRVT.  We like that idea.” 

The conservation boards in the three counties established a common “snowmobile policy” for use of the trail, including: 

– There must be four inches of snow cover. 

– Snowmobiles have to remain on the hard surface of the trail, within the county-owned trail right-of-way, and do no trespassing on the property of adjacent landowners.  Where the trail goes through cities and towns, snowmobilers must obey local ordinances, including those prohibiting excessive noise. 

– No “studs” are allowed on the snowmobile track when the machines are used on the RRVT, to avoid damage to the asphalt or concrete trail surfaces. 

– Snowmobilers on the trail are required to have and carry RRVT trail user permits. 

The snowmobile season got off to a great start when a blizzard December 8-9 covered much of the RRVT area with 12 to 15 inches of snow. 

Eric Chrystal, of Panora, president of the Snow Chasers, said that first big snow actually came before club members were ready for it. 

“Our agreements with the counties were that we’d go out and mark the trail for hazards, the edges of the surface, the bridges and all that with the standardized Iowa DNR (Department of Natural Resources) signs,” Chrystal said.  “We hadn’t gotten all that done yet, and then we all had to spend several days digging out our own places, just like everybody else.” 

But the snowmobiles were soon running on the RRVT in all three counties. 

“What we’ve found is that our some areas with major drifting, like both south and north of the town of Yale,” he said. “There are other areas where the snow was about perfect, like between Redfield and Adel.” 

Because the Snow Chasers are a regional club recognized by the Iowa DNR, they have been assigned two trail grooming machines, and use of those was to begin this weekend, December 19-20, and continue the rest of the winter.  They are heavy, specially-equipped snowmobiles which pull an extra machine that grooms and packs the surface. 

“Part of getting the groomers was that we hold a training class, and we did that earlier this month,” Chrystal said. He said more than a dozen club members were certified by the DNR to operate the groomers.  

The machines will be used to “knock-down the big drifts,” he said, and that will help even out the snow surface.  He added that a 12-inch snow can be “packed down to about two inches” by the groomers.  As snows keep coming, the depth of the surface will grow. 

“One of the side benefits of having the trail groomed for snowmobile use is that it will also make it better for cross-country skiing,” Chrystal said. “We noticed through the years that when cross-country skiers come out, most of them like to ski in the groove that snowmobiles have created, because it’s a little easier than breaking a new trail. With the groomers, we’ll now have a surface there that will be seven feet wide,” instead of just the width of one snowmobile. 

Mike Wallace, conservation director in Dallas County, pointed out that the new “North Loop” of the RRVT – where preparation and paving of 33 miles of new trail surface is underway – is not open to snowmobile use.  He said the North Loop is posted with signs, specifying that no snowmobiles are allowed, but that rule has already been violated. 

“It’s not a surprise that they are ignoring the no-snowmobiling signs,” Wallace said. “This type of activity is what gives the snowmobilers a bad image, and all kinds of unauthorized activity has been going on for years on the segment west of Perry.” 

Chrystal and the Snow Chasers club have pledged to encourage members and the general public to learn and obey all the laws and regulations for snowmobile use of the trail.  He has explained how the club’s educational out-reach and presence on the trail will enhance public understanding and compliance. 

“With a marked and groomed trail, and if we keep getting good snowfall, we think this is really going to take off,” he said. “We expect to see a lot more people on the trail in the winter months, and that should have a positive economic impact on the area.” 

You can read more about the Snow Chasers in a story published in early December in the Guthrie Center Times.  To read that story, click here.  You can also go to the snowmobile club’s site on the Internet by clicking here.

So after we recently received a  couple of phone calls at the headquarters of the Raccoon River Valley Trail, asking whether any parts of the trail are cleared after snowfalls, we decided to do some checking.

It turns out the only part of the actual RRVT where the snow is removed is within the city of Adel, and that’s been the practice there for years. 

“The Adel Parks Department clears the bike path from the Raccoon River in the east part of town, to beyond the Adel brick plant in the west part of town,” said parks & rec director Nick Schenck. “We have never really measured it out, but another staff member and I are guessing it is close to two miles.”

But in Waukee, a new extension from the RRVT is indeed cleared.  That’s the trail that now runs east-west across the middle of the community, and it’s about two miles long.  “Currently our policy is that we clear this trail, but only after all of our other snow removal is complete,” said Matt Jermier, the parks & rec director in Waukee. “The reason for clearing this trails is it is heavily used for children walking to and from the different schools.”

Meanwhile, here in Clive and in West Des Moines, all paved trails are cleared after snowstorms, so that’s where bicyclists and other trail users can find the longest stretches of available trail riding.  Gary Scott and Jeff Thielen, of the parks & rec departments in those two communities, said their snow removal crews needed more time than normal after the December 8-9 blizzard to get the trails cleared.  “We have areas that had drifts over six feet deep,” said Clive’s Thielen.  And in West Des Moines, Scott said there were “a few isolated sections” that took several days to complete.

In the city of Des Moines, most of the recreational trail system is not regularly cleared of snow, but the two-mile trail around Gray’s Lake is cleared and trails that also double as sidewalks downtown are also cleared.

Most of the RRVT’s 56 miles are not cleared and, as other stories on this Internet site have reported, this year the trail is open to snowmobilers when there is at least four inches of snow depth on the trail surface. 

Some areas of the RRVT are used regularly by cross-country skiers. There’s no place on the trail where the snow is groomed specifically for the skiers, but after new snows, there’s usually good skiing in the paths that the snowmobiles create.

Many walkers continue to enjoy the trail during the winter.  They often report that when it’s cold and there is plenty of snow, they are amazed at how many more animals and birds they see along the trail right-of-way than in the seasons where there is thick foliage.

However, West Des Moines officials are fully aware that the RRVT connects to the Clive Greenbelt Trail, which in turn connects to the trail systems of both West Des Moines and Des Moines.  

And that means thousands of trail users coming in and out of the cities in years to come. 

Some of them will be West Des Moines citizens, enjoying the connectivity of their own city’s trail system.  But many more people on the trails there will be visitors from all over the Midwest and beyond, experiencing the Raccoon River Valley Trail, which is “becoming one of America’s best recreational trails,” according to its frequent boast. 

“We feel there will be some definite economic benefits that will come to West Des Moines as a result of this trail system,” said Jody Smith, the city’s director of administrative services.  “As trail users come into the metro area, a lot of them will more than likely be staying in West Des Moines motels, eating in West Des Moines restaurants and doing some shopping in West Des Moines stores and malls.” 

But that’s not the whole reason why the West Des Moines city council voted on October 19 to make the $60,000 commitment to the trail. 

Smith pointed out that the city limits of West Des Moines, which is home to about 55,000 people, have for years extended west from Polk County into Dallas County, and more recently have extended south into Warren County, too. 

“As a result, we have partnered with Dallas County on a number of things over the years, and we enjoy that relationship we have with them,” he said. “Helping with this trail project was a way we could help out Dallas County, and make our partnership even stronger.” 

The pledge is actually $20,000 per year over the next three fiscal years, starting with 2011.  It is being made to Dallas County, representing the Dallas County Conservation Board, which is the lead agency on the expansion project of the Raccoon River Valley Trail. 

The 20-year-old RRVT currently runs 56 miles from Jefferson in Greene County, south and east through eight other towns in Greene, Guthrie and Dallas Counties – Cooper, Herndon, Yale, Panora, Linden, Redfield, Adel and Waukee.  It is connected east from Waukee into Clive, West Des Moines and Des Moines. 

The major expansion is a 33-mile-long “North Loop,” that will go northeast from Waukee through Dallas Center, Minburn, Perry and then west through Dawson and Jamaica to Herndon. 

Thus, the RRVT will soon total 89 miles, and will be one of the longest hard-surfaced trails in the nation.  And its interior “loop” of 72 miles will be the longest on any trail in the U.S. 

That $6.6 million expansion project has been the focus of an intense, three-year fundraising campaign led by Dallas County Conservation Director Mike Wallace and other RRVT advocates.  The last major chunks of that funding came in June with a $1.6 million grant from the Community Attraction & Tourism fund of the Vision Iowa Program; then in early October with $367,000 from the state’s Resource Enhancement And Protection (“REAP”) program, and then a week later with $484,995 from the Iowa Department of Transportation’s State Recreational Trails Program.  In addition, more than $75,000 in private donations have come from members of the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation, the Raccoon River Valley Trail Association, other individual donors and organizations. 

Earlier in the year, a separate RRVT project was selected to receive $945,000 from the federal government’s economic stimulus program.  That grant, announced in March, will cover the cost of a badly-needed resurfacing project on five miles of the original trail from Panora to Yale.  That work is to be completed next spring. 

So, while the projected costs of the RRVT expansion and resurfacing have been met by the earlier grants, the $60,000 West Des Moines pledge is no less crucial, according to Wallace, the Dallas County Conservation director. 

“There will be many unforeseen things come up in the next three years while we’re building this trail that will increase the costs for this entire project,” Wallace said.  “This new pledge from West Des Moines will secure a consistent development strategy and help ensure that the project will not get off-track in its development phases because of tight funds or increased costs.” 

The pledge came after a series of meetings between trail advocates and city officials in three western suburbs that began in late May. 

Among the trail advocates involved in those meetings have been Wallace, Mark Hanson of the Dallas County Board of Supervisors, Perry Mayor Viivi Shirley, Perry City Administrator Butch Niebuhr, and two other members of the board of directors of the Raccoon River Valley Trail Association,  Jim Miller of West Des Moines and Chuck Offenburger of Cooper. 

The cities of Clive and Urbandale have also been involved in the discussions about ways to partner in the RRVT development, but it was West Des Moines that has now made the first pledge.

Jeff Thielen, Clive’s parks maintenance supervisor, said Friday that the Iowa DOT’s approval came this week, and that on Friday, Clive staffers got the barriers removed and snow cleared from the trail under the highway bridge.

That bridge is being reconstructed, and the trail beneath it was closed in early September to be sure that construction debris would not fall on trail users.  The trail was to re-open in November, but the construction work ran late. 

Now that it is re-opened, it is expected to stay open until sometime in the spring when “Phase 2″ of the bridge reconstruction will begin.

So, to be clear, the Clive Greenbelt Trail is now fully open going east from the Raccoon River Valley Trail, through Clive to Seventy-third Street.

That’s “a great holiday gift to all who use the trail system,” said Clive’s Thielen.

It also re-establishes the connection of the RRVT to the rest of the trails in the metro area.

The event is set for the Lake Panorama National Resort & Conference Center, just north of Panora.  A silent auction and social time will begin at 6 p.m., with the banquet meal at 7 p.m. and the silent auction continuing until 8:15 p.m.  Cooney will speak at 7:30 p.m., with a live auction following.

The $25 banquet tickets are available now.  You can access a handy ticket order form by clicking here.  Print it out, fill out the information and send it with your check to the mailing address on the form.   The deadline for reservations is February 15.

Proceeds from the banquet and the auctions are used by the RRVT Association to help develop, market and promote the trail; for special events held on it, and also to promote all the communities along the RRVT.

The banquets each of the last two years have been attended by more than 150 association members, who’ve donated about $8,500 each year with their auction purchases.

Kevin Cooney, news anchor for KCCI-TV in Des Moines, is a frequent rider on the Raccoon River Valley Trail. (Photo from www.kcci.com)

Kevin Cooney and his wife Mollie have both been news anchors and reporters for the Channel 8 news in Des Moines since 1982.

Kevin started working at the station, in the production department, in the late 1960s when he was in high school, and began doing sports reporting for TV8 in 1972 while he was a student at Iowa State University.  After graduating from ISU in ’74, he became a full-time TV8 news and features reporter.  In 1979, he and Mollie left to join the news staff at KNTV in San  Jose, California, for three years before returning to KCCI.  They’ve been anchors on central Iowa’s leading TV news team ever since.

Kevin said his bicycling began in his boyhood, “riding a 3-speed English race bike however far it was from my house to Holy Trinity” church and school, but he basically gave it up in his high school years.  In adulthood, he and Mollie “started riding occasionally on a couple of super-heavy Schwinn ‘Collegiates’ we had, but we never really rode much until about five or six years ago.

“Our daughter was showing some interest in biking then, and I bought her a nice new road bike,” Kevin said. “As soon as I hopped on it and took a short ride, I thought, ‘Wow! That’s a real bike!’ ”

He said when he realized how much smoother his daughter’s new bike rode than his own Schwinn and an old mountain bike he also had, he ordered a Specialized “Sequoia” model for himself.  A year or two ago, Mollie moved up to Trek road bike and “now she’s really become enthusiastic about riding the trails,” Kevin said.

He said his own cycling mileage has “probably averaged 2,000 to 3,000 miles a year for the last several years.  I haven’t been able to keep a total number of miles I’ve done over the years, because I’ve got this problem of odometers continually falling off my handlebars and getting lost.”

He said he usually does “two to three days of RAGBRAI each summer.  I’d like to do a whole one, but RAGBRAI always happens during the July ratings period for TV news, so I can’t be gone for a whole week then.”

He said he especially enjoys it “when I can commute to work by bicycle, but I also like going on morning rides.  Since I don’t go in to work until about 2 in the afternoon, I can go out for a good recreational ride in the morning.  I usually head out on the trails when I ride, and I love it when I can get in 30 to 40 miles.  I think I’ve ridden on every trail in central Iowa, but the ones I do most often are the Raccoon River Valley Trail, the Saylorville trail going north out of Des Moines and the Great Western Trail going south to Martensdale.”

Here are a couple of fun photos of Kevin Cooney, after he’d completed the 2007 “BRR” round-trip ride between Perry and Rippey in sub-zero weather.  On the left, he’s enjoying some hot chili, and on the right, he shows how he duct-taped his booties to his tights to keep away the freezing air!

He has also ridden on “BRR” (Bike Ride to Rippey, from Perry) several times, including the below-zero one in 2007.

In more normal weather, he treasures his time on a bike.

“What I like most about bicycling is that it really clears your head,” Kevin said. “It’s both mentally and physically therapeutic.  I’ve been a runner through the years, and running does the same thing for me.  But the difference is, bicycling over running, that you see more and go farther.”

The Cooneys have a family membership in the RRVT Association, and Kevin said he thinks Mollie will probably be joining him in attending the banquet.

Items to be available in the auctions will be listed on this Internet site in mid-February.

The event at the Lake Panorama National Resort & Conference Centerbegins at 6 p.m. with a social time, a full dinner and then the remarks of guest speaker Kevin Cooney, the well-known news anchor for KCCI-TV News in Des Moines.  You can read more about Cooney, and what an avid bicyclist he is, in another story on this Internet site.

The banquet is now nearly a sell-out, meaning there will be 200 people attending.

There will be both silent and live auctions, and among donated items that have caught our attention:

– RRVT Association board member Allan Sieck, of rural Rippey, has custom-made a one-of-a-kind wooden lamp table, which his neighbor Kevin Wilbeck, another of the board members, says is “stunning.”  Wilbeck’s description: “It is a small rustic-style table made from five pieces of wood native to the Raccoon River valley.  The legs are thin but still have bark on the outside corners.  The table top will have a wood-burned map of the trail, including the new North Loop, with an RRVT logo inset in another kind of wood.  Allan’s daughter Juliana has surrounded the map in a ‘Sticks’-style motif with small references to certain towns, like bricks near Adel and other local touches.”

– Mark and Char Vukovich, 0f Des Moines and Lake Panorama, are donating week-long stays at one of their condos, and you can make a choice whether you want to go to the one in Frisco, Colorado, or the other one in Scottsdale, Arizona.

– Cartoonist/artist Brian Duffy, who was guest speaker at last year’s banquet, has done another original drawing featuring the Raccoon River Valley Trail.

– Copper artist  Brian Myers, who is also a plumber in Dallas Center, has made another of his bicycle-topped “copper weather vane” art pieces, one of which was among the most popular items at last year’s auction.

– Overnight stays have been contributed by the Old Lincolnway Hotel in Jefferson, Prairie View B&B west of Panora, the Hotel Pattee in Perry,  the Yellow Swan B&B of Dallas Center, and the Butler House On Grand B&B in Des Moines, and the Butler House’s offer includes dinner for two at the popular Sage restaurant in Des Moines.

– There are golf packages offered by Lake Panorama National Golf Course.

– Bike World, of the Des Moines area, and the Hiawatha Bicycle Co., of Perry, have both donated bicycles.

– Two communities located on the Wabash Trace Nature Trail in southwest Iowa — Malvern and Imogene — have put together complete overnight packages for experiences on that trail including rooms, meals, gifts and more.  And Des Moines Cycle Club Danny Kruzic and his wife Louisa have contributed two passes for the club’s two-day “Ride the Raccoon” bike tour on the second weekend in June.

– There will be a custom-woven neck scarf made by RRVT Association board member Trisha Easton; a bicycle-themed birdhouse made by Panora’s Dave Beidelman; custom picture framing by the Ben Franklin Store in Perry; RRVT apparel from Sew Inspirational in Panora and Sweatshirts by LJS in Dallas Center; a cast iron frying pan (you’ve got to see it) specially made by the Progressive Foundry in Perry; Carhart Coats from John Deere Credit; a cross-country ski set from the Greene County Conservation Board; a 19-inch flat-screen TV and an Acer Notebook computer from Peoples Trust & Savings Bank, Bankers Trust Co. of Des Moines offers a wooden folding picnic table with a 72-inch umbrella, and how about a $400 gift certificate good for in-stock carpet and pad at Perry Paint & Glass?

– Here’s one that will be fun: Bill Claman, of Dallas Center, is donating two-weeks of mobile advertising service on the electronic sign he has mounted on the rear of his vehicle.  He drives it back and forth to work in the Des Moines area every weekday. Got a short fun message you’d like for a whole bunch of people to see?

– There have been generous cash donations, too, and those gifts will help support various fun raffles during the evening. Donors include Scheel’s Sporting Goods, Panora State Bank, Guthrie County State Bank, and the Prairie Woodland Conservation Foundation.

– Meal packages will be available from Gatewqay Market, contributed by Morgan Stanley Smith Barney; ToJo’s of Jamaica; Breadeaux Pizza in Panora, and Just Ethel’s in Yale.  P.J.’s Drive-In in Panora is offering a honey-baked ham that will serve 20, and Mitch Hambleton, of Dallas Center, has donated a home-brewing session.

All of the above is just a partial listing.

New this year — and available for the first time at the banquet — will be specially-designed lapel pins that feature the logo of the Raccoon River Valley Trail.  They’re $7 apiece “and look great,” said Mike Wallace, Dallas County Conservation director who coordinated having the pins made.

Bids will be taken on the silent auction items from 6 p.m. until about 8:30 p.m., and the closing time will be announced several times before it happens. 

The live auction will be conducted by Chad Daugherty, who is the son and partner with his father Kelly Daugherty in Daugherty Auction & Real Estate in Adel.  Kelly Daugherty cried the RRVT auction the last two years and had everybody laughing while he did.

It’s actually a 23-mile round-trip between the two towns.  The ride starts at 10 a.m. in Perry, but there’s a full day of fun there and in Rippey, too.  The event is held regardless of the weather, and temperatures have ranged from 29 degrees below zero in 1996 to the upper 50s in 2009.  If it’s a tolerable day at all, you can bet there will be several thousand people taking part.

This year’s BRR theme is “Land of the FREEzing, Home of the BRRave.”  That is illustrated in a very funny drawing that bicycling cartoonist Brian Duffy of West Des Moines has done for BRR merchandise and promotional materials.

BRR does not use the Raccoon River Valley Trail, but Perry is one of the towns that will be on the new “North Loop” of the RRVT.  While BRR participants are in Perry, they’ll be able to see the North Loop coming diagonally through Perry, going right through the business district.  Downtown, you can also see the recently-renovated railroad depot, which will be a trail welcome center, as well as a new shelterhouse that has signs in it with health and exercise information, and bicycle lockers right behind it.

The RRVT Association will have its informational booth set up for BRR.  It will have information about the current trail, the North Loop project and the trails in Perry.   And we’ll have for sale RRVT Association memberships and trail passes, as well as tickets to the February 20 RRVT Association membership banquet.

For details of BRR, go to the Internet site of the Perry Chamber at www.perryia.org or to www.bikeiowa.com.  On the Bike Iowa site, you can register online for BRR.