What started as a way to stay active during COVID is now a regular seasonal fixture to many Juneau and Southeast residents. Walk Southeast is a free program of CBJ Parks and Recreation. The goal is to walk almost 300 miles and, while doing it, you get tickets for raffle drawings. Parks and Recreation’s Dawn Welch heads up the program. And Linda Kruger is AARP’s liaison for Walk Southeast. KTOO’s Mike Lane recently sat down with Linda and Dawn to learn more about Walk Southeast.
Listen to their conversation:
The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
Dawn Welch: It is a virtual walk from Juneau to Ketchikan, and obviously you can’t walk to Ketchikan, so it’s wherever you are, you walk around your neighborhood, you do a trail, you go on vacation, you walk the beach, all of those miles count on your trek to Ketchikan.
Mike Lane: What’s your favorite thing about the program, or is there a particular anecdote or story that’s come from Walk Southeast?
Dawn Welch: Well, I think my favorite part about it is when I hear how motivating it is to people who might not normally walk, and that it helps them walk more, get more active, healthier. Some people their first year, their goal might be to get halfway, because that qualifies you for the Alaska Airlines drawing for the round trip tickets, and then they get to that point and they realize I can go further, so now, they might make it to Ketchikan, they might not, but they’re doing more than they thought they could, and so they’re gaining health benefits in there, and they’re getting active, and I think it’s great.
Mike Lane: And doing more than you thought you could would be a great segue to Linda Krueger, who last year logged the most miles, I believe. Right?
Linda Kruger: It was pretty fun. Yeah, my partner and I walk a lot. We, every month, do at least one half marathon somewhere, and mostly in the Pacific Northwest or California, but last month we got away with three. I think we’re on four, so that’s a lot of miles when you think 13.1 times three or four times a month. So, plus we walk. I make sure that I walk five miles a day, at least five miles a day, so it adds up. Yeah.
Mike Lane: And last year you logged, from my understanding, nearly 1000 miles, or three times the distance from Juneau to Ketchikan.
Linda Kruger: Yeah, I walked back and forth to Ketchikan a lot. It was kind of a joke. It was like, “oh my gosh,” I’m going to Ketchikan again.
Mike Lane: How was the scenery?
Linda Kruger: It was beautiful. Well, mostly it was beautiful, but I have to admit, some of those, some of those miles were in the field house, because some of our days are not the nicest, and when we get a miserable, rainy, pouring, blowing kind of unsafe day – and certainly unfun day to be outdoors – we walk at the field house.
You know what gets me going is pain. Actually, I have a really bad back, and walking is one of the best things you can do for back pain, and so if I wake up in the morning and my back is like, oh, you know, I’m not quite.. it’s a motivator, and it motivates me to get out and walk.
Mike Lane: and how would participants track their miles?
Dawn Welch: We have two different methods. We started in 2020 with just a paper tracker, so you can check off your miles one box for every mile, or like people will log them on the back, because some people like to actually keep track of where they walked and how many miles. Linda still loves this method.
Linda Kruger: I’m old school.
Dawn Welch: And paper’s good. And then we also have an app through my virtual mission. It’s a platform that does these kind of activities, and we can set our route. And so, on the app, you can actually visually see yourself on the route from here to Ketchikan, and it follows the marine highway. So, you look at the map, and you might be in the middle of the water, but you’re on the Marine Highway on your way to Ketchikan.
Mike Lane: So I can download an app on my smartphone, and then track my miles through there. What counts as miles and what doesn’t count as miles?
Dawn Welch: Miles are your intentional walks, runs, and hike. We like to use the word intentional, we try to motivate you to go on a walk, do something a little bit more. Don’t count all of your steps throughout the day when you’re walking around the office or go to the coffee machine, Don’t count your steps at the end of the day and say, “Oh, this is this many miles,” but did you go for a walk?
Mike Lane: When the program started How many people participated?
Dawn Welch: We had just over 400 which, believe it or not, blew us away that first year. We didn’t expect that big of a response, which was great. And now it’s almost 2000 people this year.
Mike Lane: And people can walk or run on their own, but Parks and Recreation also has community walking events. Can you tell me about those?
Linda Kruger: We started these walks to the library. We have three city libraries: Douglas, the Valley, Diamond Park, and Downtown, and all of them are conveniently located close by trails. And so we can walk a trail to a library and it seemed like a really good way to connect the libraries and parks and the community and it’s been so fun we get people of all ages. We get people with babies and carriers and strollers and grandmas and grandpas bringing their grandchildren, and it’s just been really fun to see that all the different ages of people turn out and walk to the library.
And then at the library we have a snack, and we look at the books that the library has on walking and being outdoors and spending time with your children or grandchildren in nature. It’s been just a really eye opener. just having people experience the trails, experience our libraries, and experience them spending a little time together – I met three new people yesterday that I hadn’t met before, and that’s wonderful.
Mike Lane: That’s fun.
Linda Kruger: Yeah, it was fun.
Walk Southeast’s next group hike in Juneau is this Saturday, June 27.
