The last several weeks have been a whirlwind of activity as I went from one place to another for various reasons, so I will catch you all up on my travels recently. As I mentioned the last time I wrote, the week before Christmas break my crew spent 6 days at Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area with 3 other crews doing trail maintenance. The trail we were working on was already a well established multi-use trail that is mostly used by mountain bikers, and we were adding drainages at intervals along the trail in places where water could pool up or cause erosion on steeper areas so that instead of staying on the trail the water would be diverted off. Here are a few pictures courtesy of my crew's work camera to give you an idea of what we were doing:
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| I'm in the foreground working on one drain and the 2 guys in the back are working on another one, which you can see to the right of them. |
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| Me and Sondra working on a drain. We are standing in the drain and the trail is behind us. |
It could get monotonous at times, especially one day when my partner and I got stuck on one drainage for almost a whole day, so at times motivation was in short supply but for the most part I was able to keep a positive attitude, and it helped knowing I would be going on break as soon as the week was over. The same night that I got back from the project I flew out of Vegas on an overnight flight to Florida to visit my mom, where I spent 5 days seeing some sights (including Epcot, my favorite Disney park!) and getting some much-awaited relaxation time with my mom and her dog, Jake. Then I flew to Massachusetts, where I stayed for about a week with my dad and got to see family and friends around the area, which was a lot of fun, as well as a good amount of relaxing on the couch and watching tv which I don't do much of normally. Then I flew back to Vegas on the last day of break on a flight that was supposed to get back to Vegas at 10pm, which I realized after I booked it was a really bad idea because it didn't give me any time to relax from traveling before going back to work the next day. My flight ended up being delayed by about an hour, so including getting my bags, getting back to my apartment, unpacking and repacking for work the next day I didn't get to sleep until after midnight (which felt like 3am eastern time to me) and then had to wake up at 4:30 to get ready for work. So needless to say I was very tired the next day, but luckily we had several hours of driving that day so I got to take a good nap, and I don't usually get bad jet lag so I didn't have to worry about my sleep schedule being thrown off.
So given all of the traveling and not having much sleep or time to ease into my regular schedule again, I thought the first week back would be really hard to get through because I would be tired and missing home and my family, and it was also an 8-day project instead of a 4-day. But it actually turned out to be a great week! It was in Death Valley National Park, which is one of the places I really wanted to visit while I'm out west, and we were using chainsaws to remove invasive tamarisk trees, so it was a type of project I enjoy a lot more than the trail work we were doing the week before break. I also ended up being very refreshed after break and ready to jump back into work, so it wasn't hard to motivate myself or readjust to working and camping like I thought it might be. The week was a lot of fun and went by pretty quickly, and on the last day we got to go to the visitor center and see Badwater Basin, the lowest point in the park which is also the lowest point in North America at 282 feet below sea level. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of that spot, but I do have some other pictures from the week from the crew camera:
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| Crew picture in front of the visitor center...I ruined it by not being able to see in the sun haha. |
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| Crew working picture: Justin is in the foreground and Corey and Afele are in the background. This is what the area that we spent most of the week in looked like. We had to cut down the tamarisk while fighting with the phragmites to be able to get close enough to the tamarisk. |
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| Me carrying a chainsaw. |
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| Me making a snow angel! Not really, it's actually salt not snow, but it looked surprisingly similar so I had to. |
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| When seen from a distance, it really did look like snow, which was especially strange because it was 70 degrees. It was disconcerting to come back from Massachusetts, where it got down to below zero while I was there, and go directly to a project where it was so warm. |
Now it is the last day of my 6 days off that I had after the 8 day project, and I did lots of fun stuff this week, including taking a ballet class for the first time in probably a year and a half. It was tons of fun, and I really want to try to take dance classes as often as I can, although with my schedule it is very hard to consistently do things outside of work that happen on a weekly basis. I also went back to Red Rock Canyon, this time to hike. We hiked Turtle Head Peak, one of the most difficult hikes at Red Rock, but it was so worth it because the view from the top was amazing! Pictures never do things like this justice, but here they are anyway:
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| View of Vegas from the top. |
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| Panoramic! |
I also went snowboarding yesterday, which I hadn't done for over 10 years! We went to Brian Head in Utah, about 3 hours from Vegas. It was a little scary when I first started because it was a feeling I wasn't used to anymore and I was pretty wobbly, but after few runs it came back pretty well and I wouldn't say I was back to the same level I was at when I was younger, but I got pretty comfortable and didn't fall too often. It was lots of fun and I definitely want to try to go again this winter. I also want to try skiing too, which I also haven't done in a long time, even longer than snowboarding, but I remember being better at skiing than I was at boarding, so I want to try both and compare to see which one I like better. I was not used to how much snowboarding works your legs and the stress it puts on your ankles and knees to push yourself along and hold the board up on the chairlift, so I was pretty sore by the time we left, but in a good way, and I'm actually not sore today like I thought I would be. I took a few pictures at the top of the mountain with my new iPhone (I finally was able to replace my stolen iPhone since I was eligible for an upgrade in January!! So I will now be able to take pictures of all of my adventures again):
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| The view was amazing, with the snowcapped peaks and red moutains. |
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| The view to this direction wasn't quite as spectacular but I wanted to get the chairlift in the picture too. |
The other important news in my life at this point is that I got the crew leader position I applied for! I'm so excited! That means that in February I will start 3 months of crew leader training and then for the summer I will actually lead my own crew. I will still be an AmeriCorps member and it doesn't change my contract or how long I will be out here for, but it means that I will have more responsibility, learn a lot, get great leadership experience, and also get paid more for the summer months, which I'm not complaining about! I will of course keep you all updated on all of that once training begins. Until then, we have 3 more weeks left with out current crews, which is a little sad because I've really enjoyed being with my crew members these past 5 months. But we'll still get to see each other once crews get mixed around and I'm really excited for crew leader training and getting to know all of the other crew leaders better.
