Hello, welcome to another episode of Papa Bear Heights.

Well, while I've been digging myself out from 42 inches of snow and dusting off my winter hiking gear,

I started fantasizing about where I would have been this time, if not for COVID. I would have been in Florida, probably bike riding, maybe picking a section of the Florida Trail to hike.

Definitely not digging 42 inches of snow. Now, I'm actually...

Today, we have a representative from the Florida Trail Association. a

trail program director, Kelly Van Patten will talk to us about the Florida Trail Trail.

Kelly Van Patten will talk to us about the Florida Trail.

Kelly, welcome to the show and why don't we start by you telling us a little bit about yourself?

Sure, well thank you so much for having me on.

You said, my name is Kelly, and I work for the Florida Trail Association,

where a membership-based nonprofit,

and really our focus is to build, maintain, protect,

and promote the Florida National Phoenix Trail.

So I stepped into this role about five years ago.

I'm originally from upstate New York

and I've lived kind of all over the Northeast.

And now I'm down here in Florida

and really loving getting to explore the state and manage our small staff.

You know, we've got a small team here at FTA, just five of us really that work on the trail so we really depend heavily on

volunteers and we've got 19 volunteer chapters across the state and a really

dedicated group of folks that we're super thankful for that really make the trail possible.

So it's been a joy getting to know everyone and work with our volunteers especially.

...