We're Getting Busy!

I haven't written for a long time, but we've started getting busy! We had our biggest equestrian event of the year at the end of March--the Nevada All State Trail Riders. It's an endurance ride where they start at the park and ride into the Virginia Range surrounding the park, then down to the north side of the park and back. Normally they would use our obstacle course, but it's under water right now! All but two obstacles, both bridges, are flooded!

Washoe Lake is full!

Our local PBS show, Wild Nevada came to the park for a day and filmed us! I've been watching re-runs on Channel 5 and it's been fun to watch my co-workers show off their parks. I watched Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park, Spooner Backcountry, Lahontan, and other episodes I can't think of right now.  My supervisor, Jenny, did the section on boating (they brought me with them so I got to go out on Washoe Lake for the first time!) and I did a guided hike to the gazebo overlook on the Deadman's Creek Trail. After that, we met a local park user, Beth, for a segment about our equestrian area and trails. Chris, one of the hosts, loves horses and they had her put on a helmet and ride with Beth. It was really fun seeing all the behind the scenes work they do while filming. One of the cameramen was from Estonia and he was great to talk to. He kept having us re-do shots, mostly of us walking on the trail so they could get different angles of us walking over rocks and over bridges. They also wanted more shots of us entering and leaving the gazebo. Our episode won't film until sometime in October probably.

We had over 200 people at our Easter Egg Hunt, which is hosted by the South Valley Volunteer Fire Department. Their Facebook page said they colored and hid something like 3,000 hard-boiled eggs and we had over 200 cars in the park, maybe around 500 people. It got crazy in the fee booth, waving people through (the egg hunt was free), selling campsites, and selling permits with the line building up. We got through it and had a great day and nice weather for a change!

We've got a great crew this year and so far they seem to work really well together. We've got a guy who was the administrator of the Department of Ag's weed control program, a retired National Park Service interpreter, a UNR (University of Nevada Reno) engineering student, a man who is from Tahoe but has been working for Xanterra at Crater Lake for the last few years and wanted to get back to Nevada, and three returning seasonals, two of which are Park Aids II and will help us supervise the Park Aid I staff and assign projects and daily activities.