Member Highlight: Hiking & Biking in Wright County

Below is a contribution from GMPT Member Wright County, authored by Celeste Lewis. For more information, please visit co.wright.mn.us.

This summer, Wright County Parks & Recreation took a path less traveled and offered the “Challenge Wright.” This new adventure was designed to encourage participants to get out and experience parks that they otherwise might not have ever known about. The challenge was part of a bigger effort to encourage people to “Adventure Here” in their own backyards. The parks and recreation department has so much to offer that a lot of people don’t know exist. Going into this program, we weren’t quite sure how it would be received. Based on the information from the Parks & Recreation Comprehensive Master Plan, we knew that trails for hiking and biking are among the most sought-after opportunities in our area, and that there was an opportunity for this to be successful.

Carson Law, Parks & Recreation Coordinator-Programs, and her team worked diligently to get Challenge Wright off the ground. They took the time and effort to seek out sponsorships for prizes and giveaways for the different categories—fastest, oldest, family, and pet—and to provide food for the get-together held at the end.

With everything in place, the challenge went out. The challenge was to complete seven different hikes along designated trails around Wright County between June 21 and August 2. Each trail was selected by Carson and her team and designed for novice hikers, with the longest hike being approximately a mile and a half. Medallions were created and placed at the halfway point of each hike, which included a QR code that automatically opened the native email application on their phone preloaded with our parks and recreation email address. When the hiker or hikers reached the medallion, they would take a picture of themselves or their group, scan the QR code, and send the image to us along with their name and what park they were at. This allowed us to track the progress of each participant. The cost to participate was $40 per family or $25 per individual. Every person who registered received a buckthorn hiking stick and was invited to the get-together at Robert Ney Regional Park for pizza and prize drawings. Each hiking stick was cut, peeled, sanded, and had a wrist strap with an “Adventure Here” keychain attached to it by the programming staff, and to qualify for the prize drawings, you had to complete all seven hikes within the allotted dates.

By the time the challenge began, we had 24 families and 12 individuals registered, totaling over 100 participants in the first year.  A big part of the program was the communication and engagement with participants throughout the program. The office technician, Delia Scepaniak, would monitor the email inbox and communicate with the participants after they sent their picture to us, tracking each participant’s progress on a spreadsheet. Going above and beyond, Delia would also reinforce their progress with congratulations on completing that specific hike, let them know how many more hikes they had left to complete, and encourage them to continue their progress. She really became the face of the program for the participants and provided a fun and positive atmosphere even through electronic communications. Each week, Delia would get permission from participants to post the pictures they sent in on our social media sites, continuing to engage with people.

All in all, Challenge Wright was a success! We sent surveys out to all the participants to gather feedback, and the responses were overwhelmingly positive, with many of them stating they are already looking forward to doing it again next year and have other family and friends interested in joining in the challenge in 2026.