Woods n Water is honored to call NJ VFW Commander Jon Hinker family and privileged to have been working side by side together since the conception of Woods n Water. WnW Co-Founder, George Daly, and Commander Hinker teamed up before WnW was created and has grown as the mission continues. What started out through the WnW Food Pantry program during the pandemic turned into many conversations of how to help our Nation’s Heroes, late night three-way phone calls with Veterans or a Veteran’s advocate, networking together to solve a Veteran’s issue(s) from mental health to financial struggles, to holding events together as well as our upcoming retreat.
Commander Hinker reached out with his ruck mission, knowing that hiking & rucking is one of the many activities that WnW provides to our Nation’s Heroes. His vision is to hold several ruck marches both on trails and through city streets on weekdays, in hope that he will be able to engage his Brothers and Sisters that have yet to discover the many resources available to them or are hesitant to utilize the available resources.
Having a shared passion for the Hero mission, Woods n Water is excited to be part of this boots on the ground (literally) initiative. Together, we held the first of many ruck marches to come. It was a beautiful morning with great weather conditions at Maurice River Bluffs in Millville, NJ. The Maurice River Bluffs is maintained by The Nature Conservancy who do amazing job with all of their locations throughout New Jersey. This location offers both very easy flat trails for beginners and those that have mobility struggles as well as challenging trails with climbs, turns, uneven ground, sandy areas, etc., for those that “embrace the ruck”.
Here are some of the photos of the Maurice River Bluffs Ruck March. We did a total of 6.2 miles. The app was stopped at just over 5 miles, but Commander Hinker wanted at least 6 miles so we hit the trails again for a little over 1 mile……………