Lake Wobegon Trail Extension Photos

WAITE PARK -- The culmination of years of work, millions of dollars, a lot of elbow grease was finally unveiled Thursday night with the opening of the Lake Wobegon Trail Extension.

After starting construction last August, the trail now extends from Sauk Centre to Waite Park. Cliff Borgerding is one of the senior board members of the Lake Wobegon Trail Association. He says it's a great feeling to see the trail finally extend into Waite Park.

"Wonderful! It can't get any better. This has been such a long project, with a lot of work and time trying to get it all together. It's just really great to see it happen."

He says central Minnesota now has a great opportunity to market itself to the worlds' biking community.

"The comments I get constantly from people who come through this area are about how wonderful the Minnesota state trail system is. They say they've never seen trails anywhere in the country that are as good as what we have here."

Borgerding says a lot of the credit still goes to the Albany Jaycees who started the trail. Saying their advantage is that they're usually "too young to know that sometimes you can't do things."

The project totaled around $4.9-million and was paid for with the help of Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment grants, $200,000 each from the cities of St. Cloud, St. Joseph and Waite Park, $20,000 Bernick's Companies and a $5,000 donation from a community member.

Borgerding says, he'd even like to see the Lake Wobegon Trail extend even further, toward Hinkley.

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