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!

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.