by Michelle | Oct 5, 2023 | Being Well, Featured, Work Well
To promote the well-being and growth of children, access to regular physical activity is essential. Over the past three years, Tillamook County Wellness’ Health Promotions Committee has been offering fun, physical activity programs designed to introduce families to local outdoor recreational opportunities. Where participants qualify for exciting prize drawings.
Historically, we’ve collaborated with schools, local libraries, the Oregon Food Bank, and various community partners to promote these activities. Thanks to the generosity of our donors, we’ve been able to incentivize participation through rewarding prizes.
Tillamook County Wellness would like to encourage more family participation, especially among families with children aged 0-17 years. Since younger children might not have the means or easy access to parks and other physical activity locations on their own, they depend on older family members for transportation and motivation. This realization has led us to develop a more deliberate strategy for engaging families in 2024.
We plan to identify and acquire participation prizes that are specifically appealing to families. The Kiwanis Community Giving Award Funds will play a crucial role in enabling us to achieve this goal.
Tillamook County Wellness extends its heartfelt gratitude to be the recipients of the Kiwanis Community Giving Fund. Their support is invaluable in helping us achieve our mission of promoting health and well-being in our community to young children in Tillamook County.
Picture of: Janeane Krongos of Tillamook Family Counseling Center and Ron Rush of Tillamook Kiwanis Club
Tillamook County Wellness is a community-driven initiative with a primary focus on reducing the risk of chronic diseases by promoting healthy behaviors from an early age. We believe that by making healthy choices more accessible and enjoyable, we can cultivate thriving and vibrant communities.
by Guest | Jul 21, 2021 | Move Well
It’s amazing how a little sunshine can brighten our mood – and when living on the Oregon coast, we know not to take those beautiful summer days for granted. Tillamook County is well-known for its beaches and hiking trails, but if you’re looking to mix up your weekend activities or try a new hobby, it’s worth stopping by the Bohannon Disc Golf Course (and bringing a few friends or family members as well!)
For those who have never played, disc golf is similar to golf except instead of balls and clubs, it involves throwing a flying disc (like a Frisbee) into a raised metal basket. The goal is to complete each hole in as few throws as possible, which makes it a great a family-friendly activity where all ages can enjoy participating. Take for example, local community member Tonya Brown, who was recently diagnosed with arthritis in her knee and was told that she needed to walk more often. “I hate being told to do something,” she commented, “but this course is fun and you’re not ‘walking’, you’re playing and having fun with family and friends.” She initially got involved in disc golf when her son-in-law challenged her husband to a match (and who doesn’t love a little friendly competition?) It also serves as an opportunity to do something fun and engaging with her grandchildren who often play with them as well.
Tonya has tracked the 18-hole Bohannon Disc Golf course on her walking app and found that it’s about 5,000 steps long. This is half of the 10,000 steps that are often recommended as a daily goal, which makes disc golf a wonderful way to enjoy the outdoors while also checking physical activity off your list.
So how can you get started?
- Find a few discs: These usually cost between 10 and 20 dollars and can be found at Fred Meyer, Tillamook Sporting Goods, and the Tillamook Family YMCA.
- Gather some basic supplies: If you plan to spend an afternoon out on the course, bring some snacks, sunscreen, and plenty of water.
- Round up a few friends:This one is optional! Disc golf can be enjoyed solo or with others.
- Make your way to the Bohannon Disc Golf Course: The course can be found at 3960 Alder Lane in Tillamook and it has a sign at the first station, or tee box, outlining the rules of play. The course was built around Bud’s Community Fitness Trail at Tillamook Junior High School, just behind Tillamook Bowling Lanes.
And that’s all there is to it! Please remember to respect neighboring property lines and school use of the course.
If you want to check out other disc golf courses, visit https://oregondiscgolf.com/ for an interactive map and descriptions of courses across Oregon.
For any upcoming local events or tournaments, follow Bud’s Community Fitness Trail and Bohannon Disc Golf Course on Facebook.
As Tonya noted, “We are so lucky to have this course here and hope that more people will enjoy it as well.”
AUTHOR: Ariel Slifka, AmeriCorps VISTA at Tillamook County Community Health Center
For more local health and wellness information, follow Tillamook County Wellness on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
by Guest | Apr 7, 2021 | Move Well
In Tillamook County, OR, the problem isn’t finding a place to enjoy the outdoors but rather that there are too many places to choose from. With hundreds of beach access points, dozens of parks and day use areas, over 40 boat launches, and over 200 miles of trails, how do you find the right park or the right trail for you?
Most people look for recreation information on the internet. However, in Tillamook County, it’s usually not that simple to find what you’re looking for. Multiple land management agencies, each with their own website and map, offer different types of recreation in different places. Anyone looking for a trail to hike must check 4 or 5 different websites to get a good idea of what is available. Trying to dig up all the facts on parking, entry fees, and restrooms could make anyone feel like they need a degree in investigative journalism. Even finding the local park in your own town can be difficult without a knowledgeable neighbor to share local information.
In fact, this is a problem for more than just visitors and locals. It’s also a problem for the towns, the county, and even the state and federal land management agencies. The Access to Physical Activity Committee (APAC) was formed as part of Tillamook County Wellness to focus on bringing the benefits of movement and physical health to more people. The committee brought together a wide variety of community, industry, and agency partners to try to understand and overcome the challenges that people in Tillamook County face when they are trying to be more physically active.
APAC recognized three major problems with lack of information in Tillamook County:
- Recreation information was scattered and separated by type, land owner, and availability. Each agency or organization had separate websites and separate maps. Trying to find a trail required searching through multiple sites.
- Recreation information was incomplete and not available online. Local resources had never been added to websites. Details such as parking, restrooms, and pet-friendliness were not included in descriptions of parks and trails.
- Recreation information is outdated and incorrect. Without regular updates, information on many websites was not always current.
Tillamook County needed a comprehensive, interactive map that would show all of the recreation and trail resources in the entire county; including every agency, landowner, and land manager. The map would be an all-inclusive experience that would give visitors and locals all of the information they needed with a simple click; restrooms, parking, pet-friendliness, fees, amenities, and more. This map would have the most accurate and up-to-date information about the recreation opportunities available in Tillamook County.
In the fall of 2019, TCW, together with Visit Tillamook Coast, The Northwest Youth Corps (NYC), and the USFS Siuslaw National Forest had put together the funding and the cooperative network necessary to hire an intern specifically to work on their ambitious mapping project for 6 months. In January of 2020, the Access to Physical Activity Committee welcomed me as their new intern to the project. I began work on the project right away and together we planned to finish it in a year, an ambitious but achievable goal.
The working theme of the map project was “More information is always better,” and it made sense to apply that to the data collection process. I had to consider what kind of information would be needed to make this map useful to outdoor enthusiasts as well as to agency land managers. What questions would people be asking when they looked to this new map for answers?
Some things were easy to guess such as noting which recreation sites had a restroom, how much parking was available, and whether dogs were allowed. However, we decided to gather even more information about each site and to include high-quality pictures to help people know what to expect. In the end, the list of attributes to include in the data collection was long and encompassed every type of recreation we could imagine. Attributes included categories such as Status (open, closed, unknown, etc.), Features (ocean view, old growth forest, sand dunes, etc.), Facilities (picnic table, fire ring, bench, etc.), Activities, (camping, hiking, beach access, etc.) and many more.
In the spring of 2020, I began identifying all of the recreation sites and trails located in Tillamook County. I would need to personally visit each one to gather data for the map project. Using the data I’d received from several agencies back at the beginning of 2020 as a baseline, I added new trails, new recreation sites, and new information to the map. It was exciting to see the visual representation of how our knowledge about Tillamook County was increasing.
The map had so much potential to help the county improve its recreation and trails projects and to improve access to outdoor recreation for everyone that APAC decided to advocate for a new full-time position to keep the momentum going; Outdoor Recreation Community Coordinator. This would create a dedicated position to manage and update the map, maintain and increase communication and coordination between the partners, and work towards creating a balanced and fully-realized recreation network in Tillamook County that would provide improved access to everyone.
The future of the Community Coordinator role is still under consideration, but APAC is confident that it will go forward. The map will be fully transformed into its new web format and publicly available by early summer of 2021, just in time for everyone to get outdoors and enjoy the sunshine on the beautiful Oregon Coast in Tillamook County.
The new map is featured on the Tillamook Coast website here. You can also discover great places to get active on the Tillamook County Wellness website under the Move Well tab.
AUTHOR: Samantha Goodwin, Northwest Youth Corps GIS Intern
And for more details and photos, check out the full story written by Samantha Goodwin, “Tillamook; Outdoors (A Summary): How A Map Brought A Community Together”
For more local health and wellness information, follow Tillamook County Wellness on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
