It started as a lark, unknown to everyone except the author.
The late John Robertson, who worked as a grant writer for Thrive Allen County until his death in 2015, envisioned cross country skiing as one of the uses for the Lehigh Portland Trail complex south of Iola.
So he slipped it into a grant application to the Kansas Health Foundation in April 2014, one of the key funding mechanisms that paid for the trail development.
