The face of downtown Yale, a town of 287 that is a favorite stop on the Raccoon River Valley Trail, is changing. This new building, shown on May 12, is going up on the site where the Windsor Hotel stood for more than a century. Sarah Brewster and Tom Smith moved the hotel to their farmstead a mile north of town, just off the trail, where they continue to work on its renovation for eventual use as a bed & breakfast. Meanwhile, Brewster and Smith are considering opening a small grocery in the front of the new building, with the back part of it being addition space for Smith’s tire business, which is headquartered west the street. For trail users familiar with the community, the new building sits catty-cornered from the popular Just Ethel’s bar & grill.

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Willrich’s conversation with show host Shawn Kenney covered a lot of details about the trail, including an update on the construction work underway on the new “North Loop,” as well as the possibilities of linking the RRVT to the High Trestle Trail.  They talked about how the RRVT Association works with communities along the trail to enhance economic opportunities by marketing to trail users.

KDLS gave permission for us to post the full interview here on this RRVT site on the Internet, and you can listen to it by clicking here. Turn up your speakers, and enjoy the chat about one of our favorite topics!

The ride will again have an overnight stay in Jefferson, where that community’s 33rd annual Bell Tower Festival will be underway, with a full slate of activities.

The leisurely “Tour the Raccoon” ride will have participants leaving the Des Moines area and Waukee on Saturday morning, June 9.  There will be luggage drop-off before the weekend at the Bike World store in West Des Moines.  Saturday morning luggage drop-off will be at Easton Elementary School in Waukee.  Enroute to Jefferson, the cyclists will pass through Waukee, Adel, Redfield, Linden, Panora, Yale, Herndon and Cooper.

The camping in Jefferson will be in the new Trailhead Campground, adjacent to the Jefferson Depot and the Greene County Fairgrounds.  The campground features a new picnic shelter, as well full-service restrooms and showers.

Here is the poster for the “Tour the Raccoon” bicycle ride coming up in June. You can click on the poster to see it in larger format.

On Sunday, the cyclists will reverse the route and ride from Jefferson back to Waukee and the Des Moines area.

Online registration for the ride will begin May 1 at www.dmcycleclub.com.

More details about the Bell Tower Festival in Jefferson are available at www.belltowerfestival.org.

In addition, there will be more stories published on this Internet site in the weeks preceding the “Tour the Raccoon.”

Sponsors of the event, besides the Des Moines Cycle Club and the RRVT Association, include Bike World and Dee Zee, Inc., the truck accessories company in Des Moines.

At the group’s annual meeting held Friday, March 23, during its regular monthly board meeting, Daniel Willrich of Dallas Center was elected chairperson, succeeding the founding chairperson Carla Offenburger of Cooper.  In addition, Cindy Jensen of West Des Moines and Panora was elected to the position of vice-chairperson, which had previously never been filled.  Secretary Karen Sievers of Guthrie Center and treasurer Bob German of Dallas Center were re-elected to their positions.  All the officers’ terms are two years.

Offenburger was among a group of five or six people who began working on enhancing and marketing the Raccoon River Valley Trail in 2004.  She was elected chairman when the group formally organized in 2006 as the RRVT Association, and had headed the group ever since.  She seconded the nomination of the new officers on Friday, and said she was happy to step down from the chairmanship and continue as a board member. 

“It’s great to have a younger member of this board like Daniel Willrich step up to be chairperson,” she said.  “He’s been on the board for four years, has learned what the organization is all about and will do well heading it.  Fresh ideas are always good for any organization.  I’ve served, and served well, I think, as chairperson for six years, and that’s long enough for anybody. I’m ready to start using the trail more and working a little less on it.”

Newly-elected officers of the Raccoon River Valley Trail Association are (left to right) chairperson Daniel Willrich, of Dallas Center; vice-chairperson Cindy Jensen, of West Des Moines and Panora; treasurer Karen Sievers, of Guthrie Center, and treasurer Bob German, of Dallas Center.  Willrich and Jensen are new in their positions, while Sievers and German were re-elected.  Their new terms extend until March of 2014.

As the new vice-chairperson, Jensen will likely succeed Willrich eventually.  Board member Jim Miller, of rural Waukee, who nominated the new officers, said his thinking was to continue developing new leadership on the board of directors and formalize the succession procedures.

Willrich is assistant director of store architecture for Hy-Vee, Inc.  He is a graduate of Dallas Center-Grimes High School and earned his architecture degree from Iowa State University in 1997.  He was a good football player in high school and was on the ISU Cyclones team for a year.

For the past six years, Willrich has served on the city council in Dallas Center and is now in the middle of his second term there.  He and his wife Heather have three sons, Levi, 8, Ben, 4, and Seth, 2.

The new RRVT Association chairman has been a trail user since his early boyhood.  He grew up in Grimes, and said ”when I was a kid, I used to ride my Huffy bike over to the Neal Smith Trail and ride it.  Then when Heather and I moved to Dallas Center 10 years ago, that’s when I started riding on the RRVT.  It was when I was on the city council and heard that the RRVT was going to be coming through Dallas Center that I decided that I wanted to get more involved in the trail, something more than just being a trail user.”

The RRVT is 23 years old.  For most of that time, it’s been a 56-mile paved trail stretching from Waukee, just west of the Des Moines metro area, to Jefferson.  The towns along the way are Adel, Redfield, Linden, Panora, Yale, Herndon and Cooper.  But the last three years, a new 33-mile “North Loop” of the RRVT has been under development, and it is scheduled to be completed this year.  It runs from Waukee to Dallas Center, Minburn, Perry, Dawson and Jamaica before re-joining the existing trail in Herndon.  When that project is completed, it will create a 72-mile interior loop, the longest such loop on a trail in the U.S.

“We’ve got a real opportunity to do something big when the trail loop is completed,” Willrich said. “We should have a gigantic party, something that will attract attention of trail users across the nation.”

Offenburger agreed the completion of the new loop is a big moment for the board, and one that will require extra effort.

“The RRVT Association as an organization has done all the marketing and promotion of the trail, and since we started up, that’s included nine communities and we’ve worked for all of them,” she said.  “Now, we’re going to be adding five more communities to our marketing mix.  I think it’s good that Daniel is from one of those new communities, Dallas Center.  He has a good feel for what we need to do in each of those towns.

Offenburger reflected on the growth of the association during her six years heading it.

“Back in 2006, the three Conservation Boards that own the trail — Dallas, Guthrie and Greene Counties — each donated $1,000 to get us started,” she said. “Now we funnel money back to them.  And we’ve grown to the point that we raise and spend $40,000 to $60,000 a year on marketing and promoting the trail.  Our association membership gets up around 400 every year, we help sponsor several events on the trail that bring people to all the communities, and we have our annual banquet in February that has sold out every year.  As a group that markets and promotes one trail, I think we’re the envy of a lot of other trails around the state and nation.  There aren’t many other groups like ours.

“But for a trail advocacy group, I think there’s always room for improvement,” she continued.  “We’ve always said the RRVT is ‘becoming one of America’s best recreational trails,’ and I think that’s true.  But we need to do more to go to the wider market, beyond Iowa and the immediate Midwest, to get our message out.  And, of course, it takes a lot of money to do that — more funding than we’ve had.  But the more we can do that, the more people we’ll have coming to use the RRVT.”

Another challenge for the group is figuring out ways to help the conservation boards with the costs of maintaining and enhancing the RRVT.

Willrich said that in recent years, “the weaker economy has forced governments to modify their budgets, and trails probably aren’t going to get as much attention as they’ve had.  We’ve started talking about how it’s time for our organization to make another evolution — to go from just marketing and promotion to helping raise money to pay for trail maintenance.  We can help with that, and we should help.”

The board is working on ways to facilitate small and large donations to the association that would be turned over to the conservation boards, specifically for trail maintenance and enhancements.

In another organizational matter at the RRVT Association’s annual meeting, three members of the board of directors were re-elected to three-year terms — Willrich, Chuck Offenburger of Cooper and Mark Vukovich of Panora.  Another of the founders of the association, Butch Niebuhr, of Perry, decided not to seek re-election to the board.  He is city administrator in Perry and is involved in other groups that are taking more of his time.  Elected to replace him on the RRVT Association board is Bob Wilson, the executive at the Perry Chamber of Commerce and a native of that community.

The members of the board whose terms continue are Carla Offenburger, Jensen, Sievers, German, Kevin Wilbeck of Rippey, Allan Sieck of Rippey, Jon Doll of Waukee, Dan Juffer of Adel and Mike Wallace of Perry.  Wallace, who is conservation director in Dallas County, also serves in an ex-officio position on the board, as do the other two conservation directors, Joe Hanner of Guthrie County and Dan Towers of Greene County.

The project – designed to resemble a bicycle wheel with spokes – will include a restrooms building with separate facilities for men and women, a plaza, a fabric shade structure and extensive landscaping that will include trees and decorative grasses. 

Matt Jermier, director of parks & recreation for the city, said funding includes a significant donation from the Waukee Rotary Club, a grant from the Dallas County Foundation, a “REAP” grant from the Iowa Department of Natural Resource’s “Resource Enhancement and Protection” program, and some donations from individuals.  The city has budgeted to cover the rest of the project’s cost.

Work on it is to start soon and be finished by late July.

Here are the RDG Planning & Design team’s drawings of what the new trailhead plaza will look like on the west edge of Waukee, the starting point for the Raccoon River Valley Trail. The Waukee City Council unanimously approved the $230,000 project in a meeting on Monday, March 5. Funding is from the City of Waukee, Waukee Rotary Club, Dallas County Foundation and other donors. Work is to begin as soon as possible and be completed this trail season.

Dan Dutcher, a member of the city council, said that the development of the new 33-mile “North Loop” of the RRVT – which is also scheduled for completion this year – inspired Waukee officials to make a dramatic change in what the plans had been for trailhead facilities here.  The Rotary Club had been working toward funding and construction of a new building with flush restrooms.  They expected to spend about $20,000 on the new restrooms, which by themselves would have been a significant improvement over the portable toilets that have been used for several years at the trailhead.

However, with the completion of the “North Loop” in the near future, Dutcher said that Waukee officials expect there will be much more use of the trail, and thus more investment in the trailhead is warranted.

“When the new part of the trail is completed, it means there’s going to be a 72-mile loop,” Dutcher said.  “This new loop starting and finishing here is going to make Waukee a real focal point on the trail.  We’re stepping up to that.  We see it as a real opportunity for Waukee.”

The trailhead being planned “is going to be a great amenity,” he said.

RDG Planning & Design, of Des Moines, has drawn the plans for the development.  Craig Bullis, one of the RDG partners, is a resident of Dallas County and a Waukee Rotarian, and he took special interest in the project.

“Our Rotary Club had come up with a little seed money for the restrooms project, but over a couple years, the trail has become more developed,” Bullis said.  “We started thinking we didn’t want to do just a restrooms facility.  And that’s when the city came forward and said they wanted to invest more in it, too.”

The trail right-of-way is just north of U.S. Highway 6 at the western edge of Waukee, adjacent to the junction with County Road R22.   For years, the parking and staging area for cyclists and other trail users has been on the west side of R22.  The new development will be on the east side of that county road, in the triangular parcel of land where the two routes of the RRVT meet.

Here’s what the junction of the Raccoon River Valley Trail’s two routes looks like now on the northwest corner of Waukee. The route to the left goes to Adel. The route to the right goes to Dallas Center. This also shows the triangular area that is going to be developed as a new trailhead.

Mike Wallace, the Dallas County Conservation director, whose agency owns and operates the RRVT in the county, said the new trailhead will be “a great addition to an already great trail.  It shows that the City of Waukee and the general public appreciate and want these types of recreational facilities, and see the economic importance of such a trail and similar recreational activities.”

 There may be even more to come in the development.

Jermier, the Waukee parks & rec director, noted that “there are multiple ways to add to this project.”

One way might include the installation of public art.

“I have been asking civic leaders if there is interest in doing public art at the site as well,” said Jim Miller, of rural Waukee, who is on the board of directors of the RRVT Association and is also a member of the Dallas County Conservation Board.  “There does seem to be some interest.  We have a group coming together quickly to look into this, and we plan to meet in early April.”

Council member Dutcher noted that while construction is underway on the new trailhead, “we’re also going to finish up a couple of gaps we have in our trail system elsewhere in Waukee.  All these items are going to be completed this year.  Our trail connections are really coming together now, and we look forward to becoming known as a real trail center.”

The plans are being developed and coordinated by the local Cyclists Of Greene bike club.  Their first announcement about the event was timed for this late-January weekend, when thousands of cycling enthusiasts are gathering in Des Moines for the Iowa Bicycle Summit, and for the big party Saturday night when the route of this summer’s RAGBRAI route is being announced.

The new festival is being promoted as “a celebration of the bicycle and those who ride it,” according to Craig Berry, who is president of the club and is also mayor of Jefferson. The City Council approved the plans at its meeting earlier this week.  Berry said “the council is very much in favor of this event and will be encouraging all citizens and bicyclists in Jefferson, Greene County and Iowa to attend.”

It will be family-oriented, with activities for all ages going on from about 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., all around the courthouse square and stretching east to the Jefferson Depot and Raccoon River Valley Trailhead.  All events will generally be with a bicycle theme, but they will be put together with the idea of appealing to the general public as well as bicyclists. 

Plans include a late-morning or midday parade, featuring RAGBRAI team buses from all over Iowa, a couple of bands, people of all ages riding decorated bicycles, some highly unusual bikes, and more. 

After the parade, there will be a “custom bike show” around the square, just like there have been “custom car shows” there, including team buses. And the crowd at the festival will be invited to paint a RAGBRAI team bus, too. 

The festival will include a juried “bicycle-themed art show,” with artists from across the Midwest invited to enter work that will be for sale and also will remain on display for a few weeks after the festival.

There will also be escorted “bicycle tours of Jefferson,” pedaling to see our notable landmarks.  And there will be competitions and contests involving bicycles, like a “fastest tire-changing contest.”  Another event will be a “bicycle apparel fashion show.”

Local food vendors are being invited to serve on the square, but visitors will be encouraged to use all local restaurants, too.  There will be no beverage garden or street dance, at least this year.

The Greene County Board of Supervisors has approved use of the courthouse grounds and the atrium of the building.   

One activity in the courthouse will be a series of brief “bicycle seminars,” hosted by Chuck Offenburger, with such topics as the Raccoon River Valley Trail, other Iowa trails, RAGBRAI with that event’s director T.J. Juskiewicz, Iowa’s bicycle clubs, the Greene County Conservation recreation facilities & programs, and cartoonist & cyclist Brian Duffy has tentatively confirmed doing a program on his own bicycle artwork.

For more information, you can contact Mayor Berry or John & Ces Brunow at the All Ability Cycles shop on the square in Jefferson, or via the Facebook page for “Iowa Bicycle Festival.”  An Internet site will be launched soon for the festival.

The cost of the new trail is estimated at $5 million, and the Dallas County application to the U.S. Department of Transportation will ask for about $4 million in federal money.  That application is due in Washington, D.C., in mid-March.

This USDOT funding program is called “TIGER,” and that stands for “Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery.”

Dallas County Conservation first applied for the TIGER grant last fall, with support from the county’s Board of Supervisors, the City of Perry and other entities.  The application was put together in a 10-day period to meet a deadline, and that included asking for letters of support — and receiving more than 130 of them from organizations, agencies, businesses and individuals from across the region.  When the TIGER grants totaling $511 million were announced early this year, none of them were awarded for trail work in Iowa.  But the USDOT said then there would be another round of TIGER funding soon.

“When we found out that another TIGER grant is coming available, I went to the county supervisors and reviewed all of this with them, and they said to go for it,” said Mike Wallace, director of Dallas County Conservation.  “So here we go again.”

Wallace noted that Dallas and most other counties in Iowa are facing new budget challenges as they plan for the year ahead, “and in this new application, the Board of Supervisors is not in a position to come up with the $1 million additonal money we’ll need in non-federal dollars.  So we’re doing the application not knowing necessarily where that extra $1 million will come from.  But we’re going to put together a good application, and if we get the TIGER grant, then we’ll find that extra million we’ll need.  Some state trail money would be a possibility, or we may have to raise it privately.”

The Dallas County “connector” trail is envisioned as being built between Perry and Bouton, in conjunction with the paving of what is now a gravel road between those two towns. Perry is located at what could be described as the northeast “corner” of the Raccoon River Valley Trail, which will be 89 miles long once a new “north loop” is completed later this year. From Bouton, the connector trail is to be built on the right-of-way of an already-paved county road that goes on east from Bouton to Woodward. The town of Woodward is the west trailhead of the High Trestle Trail, which is 25 miles long, stretches to Ankeny and includes the 13-story-high trestle bridge between Woodward and Madrid.

The trail would be built in the rights-of-way of both roads, but not on the shoulders right next to the road surface. Rather, the trail’s path was gong to be on the sides of ditches or on fencelines, so there would be separation between the paved road and the paved trail.

A group of Des Moines bicyclists got the trail season off to a good start on the weekend of April 21-22, even though the weather was a challenge with some rain and wind. The group rode the Raccoon River Valley Trail to the town of Dawson, and overnighted in the Dallas County Conservation Board’s “camping cabins” at Sportsman Park, just east of town. Here is a photo from early Sunday. “We survived our bike trip and had a great time staying in the cabins on the Saturday night,” Andrew Reeder, one of the cyclists, reported Monday. “The cabins are a great place to stay and we will definitely be coming back for future camping trips.” You can learn more about the cabins in the advertisement on the right side of this Internet site. You can read an earlier story about them by clicking here.

Here is a look at the paving that started Wednesday, March 28, on the new portion of the Raccoon River Valley Trail between Minburn and Forest Park, which is located just south of Perry. The company doing the project is Absolute Concrete, Inc., based in the central Iowa town of Slater. This new section of trail will not be open for public use for some time yet, while the concrete work is completed, the shoulders are groomed and new signage is installed. (Photos from Dallas County Conservation)

The Raccoon River Valley Trail Association’s board of directors held its annual meeting Friday, March 23, in Jefferson, and officers were elected for the next two years. Left to right, they are chairperson Daniel Willrich, of Dallas Center; vice-chairperson Cindy Jensen, of West Des Moines and Panora; treasurer Karen Sievers, of Guthrie Center, and treasurer Bob German, of Dallas Center. Willrich succeeds Carla Offenburger, of Cooper, as chairperson of the board, a position she held since the association was organized in 2006. She will continue serving as a board member. More details will be available in a story coming soon in the RRVT News below here.