Retirement looks busy for a St. Adolphe couple.

Rick Colette and his wife Henriette were walking along the river in St. Adolphe last spring and discovered a campfire area that had been set for people to use. The area had been left in quite a mess and they decided to clean it up.

Colette ended up making a bit of a trail as he used his quad and trailer to clean up the mess left behind. And local residents liked the trail, ‘from there on the people thought it was great. So, my wife and I continued further.’

Colette and his wife spent their days lengthening the trail through a small ravine, which involved building a bridge and then continuing to forge a path for about a kilometer.

The trail is not just a path through the trees along the Red River. Colette got very creative as they built the trail and in addition to carving out a path for people to walk along, he built locations for people to stop and rest and enjoy the area.

He took dead logs from along the river and got busy carving. ‘I made some teeter-totters; I made a car out of logs and things for kids to enjoy themselves.’ In addition to things for the kids, Colette also got busy and made tables for parents to sit down and watch their kids. The trail also includes benches he made at various locations to enjoy the view of the river and the trail itself.

The trail is busy in the winter with locals using dead branches and setting up bird feeders, which is appreciated by the bird watchers in the community.

The community has been visiting the trail year-round including Christmas time. Colette sounds like a bit of a recreation director for the trail when he shares what they did over Christmas.

He set up a few Christmas trees along the path and cut up tree trunks into 3–4-inch pieces. ‘We gave them to the kids, they brought it home, drew on it, then we hung them up on the Christmas trees.’

The trail also has an area for campfires that was well used in the winter, but the areas were cleared up during the fire bans earlier last month.

And the trail is not complete according to Colette. If they can, they will extend it to meet up with another trail and park on the other side of the dyke in the St. Adolphe.

Colette says the community has been enjoying the trail and has been adding their own pieces to the area. ‘A lot of people are bringing stuff out there, painting stuff and all kinds of little signs, and it's fun to look at them.’

This has become a labour of love for Colette, sometimes spending up to eight hours a day when initially building the trail. There are always things to do according to Colette, ‘we had a tree that fell and woodpeckers got on it and we brought it, and we filled it up with bird seeds to feed the birds in the wintertime.’

He may be retired, but he is not slowing down, ‘we try we make sure that there's no branches that will hurt somebody or make sure that the ground is nice and level. If there's roots coming out, we'll clean it up and make sure nobody gets hurt.’ It is little projects like this that end up filling his days.

Seniors in the community are certainly enjoying it, ‘the older people do enjoy it because you can drive very close to it and there's a bunch of benches where you can all sit down.’

With his wife being an avid bird watcher who enjoys nature, Colette makes the most of his time outside on the trail. ‘I kind of enjoy myself and, I'm quite active. So, I like to give back a little bit to the community and a lot of people are enjoying that.’