California trip and beginning of crew leader training

As promised, here are some of the highlights from the trip I took to California a few weeks ago with my coworkers, Sondra, KV, Harold and Justin.

The first day consisted of driving to San Francisco, which took over 9 hours. Justin stayed with his brother, Sondra stayed with her aunt, and the first night the rest of us stayed at a little inn in Berkeley just down the road from the UC Berkeley campus. It was called the Rose Garden Inn, and it was really cute. Here are some pictures.

 We stayed in San Francisco the next two days after that and mostly we just hung out around the pier area and in Berkeley, but the thing I was most excited about was going to Alcatraz. I had never been there before and I really enjoyed it. We took the ferry across to the island and then took the self-guided audio tour of the main building that housed all the cells. The tour was very informative and fun and definitely exceeded my expectations. Here are some pictures of that as well.

The view from the ferry approaching the island

One of several rows of cells. One thing I learned on the tour that surprised me was that even though there are so many cells, at any given time when the prison was operational the prisoner population was only around 200. 

One of the cells that was furnished as they would have looked when prisoners were there.

Some cells in the higher area where the less well-behaved prisoners were held.

One of the solitary confinement cells. I walked inside it, it was pretty creepy.

The view of the city from the island. It's less than 2 miles away.

After San Francisco we drove to Monterey and camped there for one night and explored the town a little. After that we drove down the coast on Route 1 and stopped to admire the ocean a few times, including one beach with elephant seals. It made me miss living on Cape Cod near the ocean!

The last 2 days of the trip we spent at Joshua Tree National Park. It was a really cool landscape there, obviously with lots of Joshua trees in many areas, and there were also lots of neat rock formations and things that we climbed around on. Another spot we stopped at was a cholla garden, an area where the vegetation suddenly changed from mostly Joshua trees to mostly cholla.

Cool rocks!

Cholla! Even though it's not very friendly if you touch it or accidentally brush against it, I like cholla. 

More cool rocks!

Scrambling around amongst the rocks

Climbing down from the top of a tall rock we climbed. 

Since that trip, we have had two weeks of leadership training that have been pretty awesome. This past week was basically just a normal project for us so that the new hires could get used to how a normal week usually goes, and it was that exciting because our only task was picking an invasive weed, but the first week was different. That week we talked a lot about what leadership is, did a lot of self-reflection and discussions about our goals, expectations, strengths and weaknesses, and other things like that, as well as doing team-building exercises and getting to know each other. All of the new people who got hired are really cool and it seems like we all get along really well and it's going to be an awesome group of people to work with and get to know for the next few months. I'm really excited about all of the opportunities and experiences were going to have, even though some of what we're going to do makes me nervous because it will require me to be more out of my shell than I am used to, but even that I'm excited about because I know I'm going to learn a lot.

Well I guess that's it for now. I'll keep you all updated as exciting things happen, which hopefully there will be a lot of in the near future.

Updates from the past month...

It's been about a month since I've posted so I'm just going to go over some of the highlights of what I've been up to. Since my last post I've had 3 projects. The first was invasive removal and re-vegetation on the Virgin River about an hour or so north of Las Vegas. This was an interesting project because we were camped on one side of the river but our work site was on the other, so we had to wade across the freezing water twice a day, once to get there and once to get back. The first time we went across was terrible for me because my feet have always been way more sensitive to cold water than other people's seem to be, so even though I was wearing a pair of old sneakers to help keep my feet slightly warmer and other people went barefoot, I was still in a lot of pain when I got to the other side and had to sit there for a few minutes taking deep breaths and waiting for the pain to subside. Then after we made the crossing we had a short walk to the edge of a seemingly endless forest of tamarisk (aka salt cedar, an invasive tree) that crews before us had cut paths and clearings into. The first day we used chainsaws to cut some more of the tamarisk, mostly cutting stumps that other crews had left behind, and then rest of the time our task was to cut willow saplings from other areas and stick them at least 3 feet into the ground in the clearings. To add another level of excitement to all of this, most of the area we were working was filled with mud and puddles of water, so the first day our feet were completely soaked from walking through the puddles. The other days weren't as bad because we started wearing rubber boots that one of the supervisors had thought to bring, and the boots also helped on the river crossing luckily, so none of the other days were as torturous as that first crossing. Here are a few pictures from that week.

My crewmate, Daisy, crossing the river

A group of us working in one of the clearings

One of the muddy pathways through the trees

The week after that my crew had a local desert clean-up project, so we went home every night instead of camping and we spent 4 days picking up trash in the desert right outside the city. It was an interesting week and sometimes picking up trash could be fun, but at the same time it was discouraging seeing how much people take the desert for granted and just think they can use it was their own personal dumping ground. There were also several areas where people had come out to the desert to shoot things, so in those places everything was riddled with bullet holes or shattered into little pieces that were impossible to pick up because it would have taken way too much time to pick up every little piece. So the places looked better when we were done but I couldn't help thinking it would only be a matter of time before people trashed it again with their garbage and shooting targets. Here's a few pictures from that week as well.

My supervisor Corey carrying an old camper shell

Definitely the cutest piece of trash I found: a tiny birdhouse!

Me, Corey and the project partner, Melissa, rolling a water heater filled with bullet holes up a hill

Afele's solution to the wind blowing our hard hats off: a trash bag bonnet. 

Our most recent project was an 8-day project working with the Bureau of Reclamation. We worked half of the time in Laughlin, NV, and half the time in Bullhead City, AZ, which was a little confusing because the two states are in different time zones, but we just tried to stick to Pacific time even when we were in AZ. The beginning of the week we worked at Davis Dam, which is a dam on the Colorado River downstream of the Hoover Dam. Our task was to remove vegetation from the dam because it is an earthen dam and having plants growing on it could weaken the structural integrity. While we were working there the project partner gave us a tour of the power plant section of the dam, which was really cool! Then the second half of the week we worked at a county park on the Nevada side of the river doing more vegetation removal, but this time it was mostly an invasive plant called brassica and we had to hand pull each plant that we saw. We did 3 full days of this, which basically is the same as weeding, so it got pretty dull at times, but overall it wasn't so bad. For one of the days we also did some trash pick up at a site where groups of people had been camping long-term, essentially making their homes there, for years and then the Bureau finally got around to telling them they weren't allowed to be there so they had to leave. For the most part they did a really good job of cleaning up after themselves but there was still a good amount of trash left over, so we did the best we could to make it look clean. There were some interesting finds, and it was a little weird at times, but also fun. This project also marked the last week of work with the crews we've worked with since the beginning of the year. It was a little sad knowing we were going to be working as closely anymore with the people we've spent the most time with up until this point, but it's also exciting because we'll get to spend time with different people and there are several new members joining the corps for the remaining 6 months. Again, here are some pictures from that week.

Crew pictures inside the dam

Floodgates on the dam

This is what's holding all that water back! 

A hallway inside the dam

The spinning shafts that produce the electricity

Outside of the power plant

Maintenance workers ride these awesome trikes around the hallways with all their gear on them

Pretty picture of the dam from a hill where we were picking brassica

Group photo after the powerplant tour

Another shot inside the powerplant during our tour

They gave us pizza before our tour!

Beautiful Lake Mohave, which is the lake that the dam created. 

A great find from the trash pick up

Another great one. If you can't tell, that's a pair of shorts attached to a piece of wood. Very strange. 

Then in my spare time I've done some cool things too. A few weekends ago I went to see Zumanity, a Cirque du Soleil show. It was awesome, and really made me want to go see more Cirque shows. Then this past week, we had 7 days off because of our 6 days off after our 8 day project plus President's Day today, so I went on a road trip to California with 4 of my coworkers. I want to write about that but it's getting late and I have to go back to work tomorrow, so I will save that for my next post. This week begins the 3 months of leadership training for all of us who were selected as crew leads, so I'm really excited! It should be a great week of getting used to working with a new group of people, including 4 crew leaders who were hired from outside the program, and getting used to a new set up of our weekly schedule since we'll be focused more on learning new leadership skills than on physical skills and just working to get projects done like we're used to. So I will write about that in my next post too! But now it's time for me to get some sleep. Goodnight!

Red Rock Canyon, Death Valley, and Snowboarding

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:

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.

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:

Crew picture in front of the visitor center...I ruined it by not being able to see in the sun haha.

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. 

Me carrying a chainsaw. 

Me making a snow angel! Not really, it's actually salt not snow, but it looked surprisingly similar so I had to. 

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:

View of Vegas from the top.

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):

The view was amazing, with the snowcapped peaks and red moutains. 

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.