500/55000 in Illinois: Rain, Wind, Sun, Wind, Cold, Wind, Heat, Wind.... and fun?

The title says a lot about the weather we experienced at our Rock Island County project, where we camped and worked along the mighty Mississippi; probably the most schizophrenic weather we've ever experienced where no two days in a row were alike. It was, well, consistently inconsistent. Despite the challenging weather though, we also had a lot of fun and our project progress was incredible. If there was consistency, it was the hard work our crew put forth, despite the unrelenting wind and extreme weather shifts. Here's what we were tasked with to accomplish:

Dorrance Park, Port Byron IL

• Build dugouts on a baseball diamond.

• Reroof the pavilion.

• Renovate the public restroom including walls, floors, and some repairs.

• Replace the entry privacy wall between both men's and women's entrances.

Illiniwek Forest Preserve

• Renovate their large pavilion alongside the river (read - VERY windy)

  • New fascia boards.

  • A complete cleaning including all picnic tables and the peaked roof covered in mud dauber nests.

  • A fresh coat of paint for the entire structure and picnic tables

  • Repair a broken light fixture.

• Install a Rolling Barge bridge over a creek between two day use picnic areas.

• Paint several structures in the campground including the camp office and the roof lines/soffits of all bathroooms.

• Clean out, repair, and seal a pumphouse that had become a frequent battle between the park staff and anything living in there (mostly wasps).

• Remove a deteriorated cable fence within the park.

• Build a new 3-sided fence partition for a new dumpster location for the park. This included a separate section for a porta-potty.

• Replace a wooden sign post with a new metal one.

• Paint and install new bollards on a multi-use bike path that entered the path.

• Refresh the playground with new mulch and tighten all the hardware.

• Replace board on a portable dock system for boaters at the park.

Amôwa Forest Preserve

• Amôwa West

  • Repair and strengthen two trail crossings over installed culverts using gravel and 'riprap' stones that strengthen the side walls.

  • Clear established trails of fallen trees and debris

• Amôwa East

  • Begin an entirely new trail system.

And here's how we did. We COMPLETED EVERYTHING with the exception of finishing the last (lowest priority item) on their list, the new trail. BUT, we blazed a full mile in the last two days of the project. All this with a smaller than usual crew of 20-23 volunteers (depending on the day with volunteers coming and going).

We absolutely had the RIGHT team to do this project and we have one particularly special call out. Although most projects were tough, we are so grateful for our pavilion crew who endured two weeks of unrelenting and bone-chilling wind while they cleaned and painted the large pavilion. There was no escape. We noticed that their job site was never wind free - even on the calm days in the campground. The fetch from the river and the contour of the terrain funneled the wind directly to that building. So, a huge thanks to that amazing team who revitalized a tired pavilion into something beautiful to behold while mother nature threw everything she could their way.

At the completion of our 43rd project in our 29th state, we contributed 1080 hours to Rock Island County, IL which brought us just over 500 work days and 55,000 volunteer hours completed for Y2V. Here are some pictures to share taken by a lot of our crew.