Beach Walk and Reading Day

Yesterday's guided walk was advertised as a short, easy walk along the beach to serve as an introduction to Washoe Lake State Park. I ended up with nine people, one of whom had never been to the park and was new to Carson City (yay!). A few had been to the park but not for years. I decided to make it a loop, because I was planning on talking about the sand dunes, so we made a short loop around one sand dune so I could talk about their formation, preservation, and vegetation. We had perfect walking weather too, just a little breezy and close to 60 degrees!

Coming out of the dunes and back onto the beach.

 

This trail leads from the beach to the Maze, a fairly new kid's area.

 

I had been asked to be part of a local elementary school's reading week program, so today I went into town and read to 23 4th graders for 30 minutes. Even though I was a little worried it was higher than their reading level, I chose Adventures of a Nature Guide, by Enos Mills (1870-1922). I read most of the chapter "Waiting for Wildlife" because as I was reading that chapter in preparation for the event, it made me want to put the book down and go outside, to get to know the wildlife in our park as well as he knew his small meadow in Rocky Mountain National Park. We don't have big wooded forests (and very few trees), but what we do have, I want to know!

 

I definitely recommend the book to anyone interested in this profession--he was one of the first  Nature Guides for Rocky Mountain National Park, sort of paving the way for all of us as Park Interpreters!

 



"That's Not a Groundhog!"

I know I've missed a few more days, but I will try to keep up better! Thursday, Feb. 25 was my Friday last week and it ended an interesting week!

Sunday and Monday I focused on cleaning the park and doing rounds around the whole park, which always includes fee compliance. I put an envelope on someone's car at Little Washoe, and pretty soon, an older man in that car drove up to me to ask why there was suddenly a fee for people to park and walk their dogs. I explained that the fee system has been in place since it became part of the state park (1999 I think?) and that there are several signs posted at the entrance explaining the fees, and that they are charged daily, year-round. He said he has been coming for years and has never had to pay, and said he was never coming back. He drove away, but he didn't seem angry, just disappointed that we charged a fee. Another person hadn't paid because they thought the park was "closed."

The rest of the week seemed pretty normal: we went through seasonal applications, set an interview date, and called the people we had chosen to interview to set up times. I did the deposit, took it into town, and attended another River Wranglers meeting. I had to leave at 5 because there was a full moon hike scheduled for that night at 6 p.m. I only had two people signed up for the hike, but ended up with 11 total, which was great! I had timed the hike wrong, so we waited at the top of the overlook for an extra twenty minutes or so for the moon to rise over the mountains, but overall, I think it went fine.

Wednesday morning, someone came to the park office to tell us there was a groundhog stuck in the vault toilet at the Wetlands restroom. I was thinking...first of all, we don't have groundhogs here (we do have marmots at higher elevations...), so I figured they meant a packrat or a squirrel or something. I texted my supervisor, then went out to take a look. As I leaned over the riser to look down inside the vault part of the toilet, a large, round, white face looked up at me. That's an owl! I had no idea how it looked like a groundhog, but you never know...haha. I texted my supervisor again and told her about it. She said that happens sometimes, but if we left the toilet lids up and the door open, the owl would fly right out after dark. She said to leave a long stick in there just in case. I left the stick and a printed sign on the door so people would know not to use that side of the toilet.

The next morning, the owl was gone. I kept working on a slide show outline for a talk we are doing for the American Association for University Women in March, finished the outline, and left. I was going to Dayton State Park for pictures of the park truck, said hi to the new employee with River Wranglers, and went to Fort Churchill to meet with Kristin. We are doing the talk together, so we decided to meet and figure out how we wanted the talk to be set up. She is talking about Nevada State Parks as an agency, and a little about the fee structure, and I am talking about the individual parks, highlighting some of the less well-known and the ones that are the most "important." (Not that one park is really more important than another, but some have higher historical significance or more unique natural resources).

My days off were spent mostly at home. My husband was sick, so housework, laundry, and grocery shopping were starting to pile up. I know that's not very exciting, but it was nice to have a couple days at home!

Family Science Night and More

Wow, it's really easy to get busy and neglect my blog! I haven't written in about 10 days, but I'll try to cover a few things that happened in the past week and a half...

Thursday, Feb. 11 was Family Science Night at a local elementary school. An organization called Sierra Nevada Journeys had put everything together and were looking for volunteers, and I wanted to go. They teach STEM activities; Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (sometimes called STEAM with an art component). I have never officially developed STEM or STEAM activities and I wanted to see what they looked like.

My station was called "Capture a Cloud." I taught students about high and low pressure weather systems, and about cloud formation. I had the students spray water into a 2L bottle, I lit a match and dropped it into the bottle and quickly put on the lid. The students would squeeze the bottle a few times, then I would show them what happened to the "cloud" caught inside the bottle...when we squeezed the bottle, the cloud disappeared. When we released the pressure, the cloud formed. By the end of the activity, the students could tell me the three elements needed to form a cloud: water vapor, heat, and pressure. Then they went on to the next station, which had more to do with high and low pressure systems, but in a different way.

My friend Linda, with River Wranglers, also volunteered. She had the station beside me.

They let me play with fire! I only dropped one burning match onto the table in front of the students...it was a good thing my instructions were laminated!

 

I also had four days off over President's Day weekend. It's not a really busy weekend at the park, and it's probably the last long weekend I will have off with my husband until the season is over! We went to Southern California and visited the La Brea Tar Pits and, of course, the beach--but only for a few minutes. The tar pits were great! Not exactly what I had imagined, but still very interesting and fun to walk around.

 

Today I looked over seasonal applications and picked some to interview, set a tentative date for interviews (haven't called anyone yet), and went out into the park! I started cleaning campsites: I walked around the campground, stopping at each site to pick up litter, then I started emptying fire pits and raking the sites out. I started at the beginning, then moved on to the sites that really needed to be cleaned. I hadn't gone through each individual site for a while, so I decided it was time, and the weather was great!

 

 

 

I also went out to Little Washoe to check garbage, restrooms, and fee compliance. I left a couple envelopes, took some pictures, and then went on to our North Boat Ramp and Equestrian Area. I only talked to one person who had been walking his dog at the park for "years," and never had to pay. He was surprised there was a fee, even though it's clearly posted, more than once, at the park entrance. I think people really do drive right past the signs without reading them, or just decide they will pay when they get caught. At least today no one told me they thought the park was "closed!"

 

This picture wasn't from today, but when the water comes up at Little Washoe, it comes up fast! Sometimes we have to rescue our drowning picnic tables...I've pulled this one out of the water a few times now. Hopefully it's out of harm's way!

 

Water in the Lake!

It won't be at the boat ramp for a long time, but it's getting closer!

There is finally water in Washoe Lake! It's been dry for over a year now so this is a good sign!

 

Today the park supervisor is meeting with the Northern Region maintenance staff about our well. The telemetry system between the well and the water tank hasn't worked for a while now, which means the park can run out of water--so the residence and both campgrounds don't have water, which can be a pretty big problem! The water table has also been really low because of the drought, so that doesn't help the well either!

 

I've been scheduling more interpretive programs and arranging a few guest speakers over the summer. The Nevada Department of Wildlife is going to do a campfire program for us about Nevada Wildlife, and we have a couple groups that do programs for us: The Northern Nevada Astronomy Group, and the Northern Sierra Dutch Oven Group. An acquaintance of mine is giving a Chautauqua performance as a Pony Express rider at Dayton State Park, also as a campfire program.

 

The American Association of University Women contacted the park looking for a speaker next month for their event. I agreed to do it, and invited a co-worker to split up the hour. I haven't heard if she can help yet, but I'm going to start working on it NOW, so I can be ready. It's going to be here pretty fast, the way things are going! This winter pretty much flew by. The talk will be about Nevada State Parks--describing the parks and things to do, like hiking trails, camping, and interpretive programs.

 

Yesterday I did the rounds through the whole park and everything still looked pretty good. The floors got kind of muddy but with all the snow and rain we've been getting, that's expected. Besides a truck full of garbage bags and restrooms to clean, it wasn't bad. We did have a garbage can stolen from one area in the park, so that required a lot of litter clean-up: they took the can, but not the garbage!

Education Work Group Meeting

This morning I went to an Education Work Group (EWG) meeting in Carson City, at the Carson River Subconservancy District office. We meet once a month to share updates on programs along the Carson River Watershed, plan new events, and talk about grant and funding opportunities.

Today, we talked about planning an Environmental Education Forum/Roundtable event in April. State, government, and individual agencies located within the watershed gather for presentations about environmental education and current events along the watershed. Nevada State Parks is one agency that is involved and I think I went to their last roundtable event in 2013, when I worked at Fort Churchill.

I volunteered for two upcoming events: Trout in the Classroom and a Family Science Night at a local elementary school. Trout in the Classroom is a program where students raise trout, then release them into the watershed at various points, depending on where their school is located. Somewhere I have pictures of the one at Fort Churchill. We had 70 students, each with a small trout in a vial around their neck and a letter to their fish, offering it advice to survive in the river by itself.

I also led a guided nature walk at Dayton State Park on Friday afternoon. I didn't know how many people to expect, but I had 20, including a few children! It was a pretty warm day; I didn't need my jacket, but I should have brought my sweater. Anyway, I just wore my long-sleeved uniform shirt and it was fine.

Compared to a completely dry riverbed in September 2015, this is looking great!

Most people had never walked the trails inside Dayton State Park. Most visitors were from Dayton; some were from Carson, and one was from Chico, CA and visiting family in Dayton.



Basic Astronomy

When my friend Louise retired, she gave me a lot of reference books, activity books, a spotting scope, and a bag of binoculars. She is really interested in stargazing, astronomy, geology, and nature in general and taught junior high-aged students how to enjoy the outdoors. I'm willing to bet that most of what I learned about nature, and my love of the outdoors, came from her! I also keep in touch with a lot of friends who were also in the Escape Club.

Louise ran a club at our junior high school called the Escape Club. I'll post more on the club later, but we did hikes, service projects, and tours of the local dinosaur quarry at Dinosaur National Monument in Jensen, UT. We had to do a certain number of hikes and service projects to be able to go on the BIG trip at the end of the year. When I was in school we went to Moab and spent three nights exploring, hiking, camping, and rafting the Colorado River. When my sister was in school, the trips alternated between Moab and the Tetons.

For the astronomy program tonight, I brought my bag of binoculars, the spotting scope, and a few of the reference books to have with me. I don't have a lot of constellations memorized, but I'm hoping to keep adding to the ones I know, and be able to point out interesting stars and features in each constellation.

We do have a great spot for viewing the night sky!

Tonight I'm talking about Orion, Taurus, Ursa Major, and the Great Square of Pegasus (which is not a constellation, but an asterism, just like the Big Dipper). In Orion, I'll point out Betelgeuse, Rigel, and the Orion Nebula. In Taurus, I'll point out Aldebaran, the Hyades, and the Pleiades. I also want to show people the Andromeda Galaxy. Unfortunately, it hasn't been clear enough at night to go out recently and look, but I remember where they are from other astronomy programs and I've got a couple star charts to take with me. I don't have a green laser pointer yet, but I'm planning to ask for one in an interpretive grant I'm about to write up.

At the very least, it's fun to be in the park in the late afternoon and early evening. We get some great sunsets and interesting light on the surrounding hills.

Park Academy and Program Planning

Well, I missed a week of blogging because we went to Mesquite, NV for Park Academy. Sixty-five park rangers, interpreters, park supervisors, and maintenance staff gathered for a few days of training and presentations.

We started with an interpreter's meeting on Tuesday to make final decisions about our Junior Ranger booklet. We're going to have a statewide booklet, downloadable from the website, and individual parks can add to it if they want, or just use the statewide book that will be adaptable for each park the child visits. Each park will have a unique badge, but all badges will have a uniform style. I'm excited we're developing this program; Junior Ranger programs were a big deal in Utah State Parks and kids really enjoy getting their badges!

We also had timesheet training (new system), Budget 101 (not as bad as it sounded), School Outreach, History of State Parks, and a couple of field trips. We went to Valley of Fire State Park for lunch and a hike, and to Snow Canyon State Park (in Southern Utah), also for lunch and a hike.

I got to see on of my co-workers from Utah State Parks, Jordan, who led one of our guided hikes at Snow Canyon. We worked together at Dead Horse Point, and he got my job as Park Naturalist after I left for Nevada State Parks.

 



Yesterday, Monday, was my first day back at Washoe Lake. I had forgotten that it was the first day of February, so I had to go around the park, resetting traffic counters and collecting fee envelopes so I could do the month-end deposits.

Today I have to start getting ready for my programs this weekend. I've got a basic astronomy program on Friday night, about winter constellations and a nature walk at Dayton on Saturday. Now that there is water in the Carson River, we should be able to see more animals, birds, and signs of wildlife. I might also borrow some furs and footprint molds again to show people. I just need to relearn some more information about the stars and constellations, and there are some planets we will be able to see. I'm not using telescopes, but I have a bag of binoculars I can bring for people to use!