Park Housing

We just moved into park housing! The mechanic who had been living at the park got engaged and bought a house, so it was open. We just finished moving most of the big stuff...bedroom stuff, dressers, the bathroom, and fridge. The fridge was an adventure....we had to take the handles off the fridge and the doors off the oven because of how the kitchen is set up, in order to fit the fridge into the kitchen. Then we had to put it all back together!

My husband already caught a bunch of teenagers driving out in the sand dunes (not allowed). He went out and talked to them. I saw my supervisor soon afterward, and she went out and talked to them also. Surprisingly, they were still out there!

I will post pictures soon, but the house needs to be painted first. I've been here almost a week now and saw a very cool rainbow! We've had 80-90 days without any precipitation so even though I didn't get rain where I am, it did fall in the valley. It's a start!

I worked in the fee booth this morning and we had lots of questions about the boat ramps and how much water is in the lake. I always say the lake was dry for a year and a half, so now we have more than we've had, even though it's not much at all! I like working in the fee booth because I can get other things done (prepping for an astronomy program) while I talk to the park visitors. I even had people coming in looking for hiking trails today and got to describe my favorite (sand dunes). They walked around for a while, then went up the Deadman's Creek trail.

Last time I lived in park housing, we were pretty isolated. It was 45 minutes away from the nearest town. Now, we live about 5 minutes from a really small city, and about 15 minutes from a normal-sized city. Walmart is right down the hill along with a real grocery store!

Thursday night I did a full moon hike, using an equestrian trail that is around 3 miles long. I had 8 people, including a group of five girls who chatted loudly the whole time. I had been planning to do a "sit and listen" activity, to have everyone quiet for five minutes, observing and listening for sounds of nocturnal animals. At the start of the hike, I had decided not to do it, but after listening to the group of girls for a while, I thought it would be good for this group after all. It worked! Five minutes of silence, except for frogs, crickets, airplanes, and cars on the freeway. It's so quiet in the valley you can hear the cars all the way over on the freeway!

The moon rose and I pointed out that we could all see our shadows. One guy had asked if it would really be lighter once the moon rose. That's why I like doing these hikes--giving people new experiences and showing them something they might not normally see.

The trail I chose started out as a dirt road, turned into a wide trail through tall sagebrush and sand, then turned into a narrow trail in a wide open area with short grass, sort of like a dry lake bed (which it probably was a lakebed at some point). When the moon got higher, the wide open area was lit up and we had a beautiful moonlit view of the valley. It was one of the few full moon hikes where I felt like it turned out almost perfect!

Ordering Supplies, Finding New Projects

Today I am working on ordering the last of our interpretive supplies from the last grant I wrote. I sent it in in May, but it got lost somewhere between signatures, so I am just now trying to finish it up. The grant was for black lights, animal pelts, track replicas, and references like night sky and bird guides. I also really want a program about gold, so I ordered a couple supplies to get me started--a vial of gold and gold pans.

Bird Watching Program

 

Yesterday I posted that my friend Linda brought her history trunk, which I thought was a great idea. I think I am going to send in a grant asking for funds to build and fill two trunks...one for Dayton and one for Washoe Lake. We would use them during park programs and we would also be able to take them into schools with us.

 

I think the hardest part will be deciding how to make it and what to fill it with. We go to a lot of outreach activities (Nevada State Fair, Dayton Valley Days, Capitol City Gun Club, Cabella's, Sportsman's Warehouse) and I think this would be great to bring to get people's attention. I even think that Nevada State Parks could have its own traveling trunk that has something in it to represent each of the state parks...but for now I'm going to stick with Dayton and Washoe!



I also joined the Nevada Day Parade float committee and our first meeting is Wednesday. I'm going to try coming up with a few ideas. The theme is Nevada: Then and Now, and I think we could come up with some really fun ideas. The last parade we were in was the 150th Anniversary of Nevada's statehood and our float was a birthday cake surrounded by people dressed up like historic figures: Mark Twain, Sara Winnemucca, Liberace, and Bugsy Segal.

It's August Already!

I can't believe it's August already, and that the season is coming to an end in a month or so! Labor Day weekend is usually our last busy weekend, but sometimes the week after is busy too. We had an almost-full campground this weekend because of an event in Reno called Hot August Nights--a big classic car show!

Yesterday, I had two programs. One at Dayton State Park about the Carson River, and one at Washoe Lake--an astronomy program with telescopes! A fellow River Wrangler, Linda Conlin, asked to help with the program at Dayton because she needed some environmental education time to put on her quarterly report, so she brought the Carson River history trunk and her maps (which are much better than mine!).

Linda talking about the history of Dayton and the Carson River.

The Carson River History Trunk, complete with an adobe brick from Fort Churchill.

 

We've had several programs this summer, both at Dayton and Washoe, and I've given one at Mormon Station State Historic Park. Participation has been kind of spotty and unpredictable lately. I had three at Mormon Station, two people at Dayton, and only two on my last full moon hike at Washoe Lake. We did have great participation at the Kid's Carp Fishing Derby at Little Washoe and at our Dutch Oven Cooking Class. The Park Interpreters at Fort Churchill and Mormon Station have said the same about their programs. We don't usually cancel the programs though, because even though we might only have a few people, it's great to show we are doing these programs and that they are available for the public!

 

I also can't believe that I've already given out our end of season notices to our Park Aid staff! Because we hired both a Park Aid II and a Park Ranger Technician, our budget was spent faster than I thought it would! We are keeping the Park Tech and a Park Aid into October so we can get more projects finished, but one is finished at the end of this month, and the other two are finished on September 11. It seems like Easter came early this year, so we hired people early, and everything else sped up because of that. We are getting some great projects done this season, including giving our buildings a fresh coat of paint, trails are getting cleared, and bulletin boards are getting re-built.

 

I'll try to post again soon with a better description of our projects. Until then, I hope you are having a great summer and don't forget to watch the upcoming meteor shower this week!

A Hike After Work

Last Wednesday evening, I was going to a workshop with a friend, and I had two hours to use before that, so I decided to go for a walk up to the gazebo on the Deadman's Creek trail. I got to the gazebo, walked around and took pictures of the flowers blooming up there, then decided to follow the dirt road to finally see where it goes.

Phlox is blooming at the top of the trail, and I was feeling creative, so I got down on the ground to take an "ant's eye view" of the flowers with the lake behind them. I admit that I have never smelled a phlox. I never thought about it, but I just read that it's worth getting on the ground for!

 

The dirt road climbs...and climbs...and climbs until it loops back around to meet the return trail. The lake is definitely growing again!

 

The light was perfect on the way back down. It was warm, and I could smell the flowers starting to bloom. I'm SO glad I did this hike instead of going to the library like I had planned to. (I was sore the next couple days from climbing though!)

 

 

Today I spent most of the day in the fee booth with a great view! The park is very busy because it warmed up, so people are out hiking, walking out to the water, and there is a huge group in the equestrian area doing an endurance ride. Our two new seasonal employees did the rounds all around the park and said most parts of the park were just as busy!

Behind!

I know I am so far behind with this blog that it'll be impossible to catch up! We've been through the process of interviewing and hiring seasonal employees. We have three returning and three new. One returning will be a park tech this year, which will take a lot of daily planning away from my supervisor and I...things like who is doing what for the day, and projects to be completed. Another is a Park Aid 2, who will also help with the day-to-day assignments and projects. Two seasonals have already started, another started yesterday, and the last new person starts on Monday. There is a lot of training and paperwork to do, including reading the Seasonal Orientation Manual I wrote up last year. It's got everything I wish I had known when I started at the park!

Saturday was our annual Easter egg hunt, hosted by the South Valley Volunteer Fire Department. We estimated around 250 vehicles with around 750 people! I think it's the biggest one we've ever had! Other parks, like Spring Mountain Ranch, said theirs was huge too. We did almost have a fight after two drivers almost got into an accident while entering the park. Our park supervisor is great at calming people down and making them really think. She also knew the person, so that had to help. I was in the fee booth most of the day, so I cleaned it out, wiped down the counters, and got it *almost* ready for the season. It still needs to be de-winterized and really cleaned, but for that day it worked fine...except that there was no restroom!

I met with another park interpreter and our personnel analyst to go over seasonal paperwork. I had been using a lot of old forms and not getting everything filled out right. It helped to go over all the forms and hear why they were needed. I'm going back Monday for information on hiring new seasonals. Even though I've already done all the new employees' paperwork, it won't hurt, and hopefully we can go over it again before the new season starts next year!

It had been getting warm and flowers are starting to come out, until it snowed yesterday and froze overnight! I need to get out on the Deadman's Creek trail again to see what has bloomed already. We do have some early-blooming flowers that I may have missed already...

One of my favorite wildflowers is Desert Peach. It has already started blooming in a few places in Dayton and around Washoe.

Another of my favorites is Phlox.

 

I am behind in another way too, not just my blog! I started looking for books on the Great Basin, which covers most of Nevada and Utah, and parts of California, Oregon, and Idaho. I was looking for "nature writing" types of books. I just finished Land of Little Rain by Mary Austin and realized that when we moved from Moab to Yerington, I had just stopped reading and researching native plants, local history, and local nature writers. I've been here almost five years now (really, 4 and a 1/2), and I'm just now starting to look for these books at the library and thrift stores. I think that I had gotten to know Moab and the Colorado River, and the plants, history, etc. so well, that when we moved into a new area, I didn't know where to start. The stress with the new job(s), and moving distracted me for a long time. Now I feel like I need to catch up on 4 years of reading Now.

 

I looked at the library and saw that most of the books I want to at least look at are in the reference section and can't be checked out, so that will be good for me to be at the library without many distractions after work for a while, spending time reading about our new-ish area. I'm working on an outline now for a plant program at Dayton this Saturday, so I'm reading a lot about the Great Basin and its plants, especially riparian and upland scrub plants. I'm going to start at the library tonight and tomorrow night to hopefully get a good start and an idea of where I want to focus for now. I'm sad it's taken me this long to get back into reading but I also have been able to learn about the parks themselves and explore a new area, so when I read these books, I'll have a much better picture in my mind than I might have at the beginning!

 

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!