26.8.08
16.8.08
More pictures
The view from work one beautiful day!
Steph and I at the pirate party.
Fure's Cabin
Sunset on the lake.
8_15_08
Once again, I have been far too busy to write in my journal. If I’m not working, I’m cooking, sleeping or enjoying the company of others around here. Let me just mention some of the things that have been going on here.
Pirate party
Thanks to my mom and Carl, I got to host one of the biggest parties of the season… the 1st annual Pirate Party and Salmon bake! Because I am pretty good friends with everyone in camp, I invited everyone I could find. Unfortunately most of the maintenance men were still in King Salmon, but I still had a great turn out. My friend at the lodge, Stephanie, helped me make 4 different recipes of salmon and design a sign for the party. Since the park employees and the lodge employees don’t really hang out too much, the park employees showed-up early in the evening and ate all the salmon and the lodge employees showed-up later at drunk as can be. It all worked out really, because the lodge staff gets free meals so they weren’t really looking for food per se. I had bandanas to give to everyone, tattoos, eye patches (that crushed your eye because they were flat), and tons of candy. I even made a little treasure chest to put the candy in. It was pretty awesome. Good food, good company and a little bit of drinking; what more could you ask for? Yo,ho a pirate’s life for me!!
Plane crash
Late last month we had a plane hit shore here at Brooks Camp. Rumor has it that the water was very glassy that day, the pilot couldn’t tell how far away he was from camp, and by the time he realized he was too close it was too late to pull up and over the trees. He hit the water at about a 70 or 80 degree angle causing him to skip across the water and right up on to the beach. Luckily there’s a tree line between the beach and the dinning hall of the lodge, because had there not been, that plan would have ended up on top of a few people. It was a very lucky crash. Everyone walked away unharmed. The only unfortunate part of the crash was the leak of jet fuel on the beach. Thankfully though it was only a trickle and we were able to keep people and bears away from it. Had it been any worse, I have no idea what we would have done. All of our maintenance that has Haz-mat training were in King Salmon working on a new bridge for the river. All of the people around the plane clean-up really had no clue what they were doing. At least it all worked out. It only took something like 2 weeks to get the plane off the shore. (That my friends is a ridiculous amount of time to be making sure that bears aren’t eating the plane wreck. I can’t believe it took that long.)
Grand Cayman and the Everglades
So, I’ve been looking for a job. Something to do after September would be nice. The first job I’ve applied to is a job with the Ritz Carlton in Grand Cayman doing environmental education. The job sounded pretty interesting. It also sounded like the weather would be nice. However, I didn’t even get an interview. Oh well. I didn’t want to talk about the endangered Blue Iguana anyhow.
Then I’ve recently applied to Everglades National Park. It’s also doing interpretation/environmental education. I’ve never envisioned myself going to the Everglades, no less living there, but then again sometimes new experiences are the best experiences. Take for example when I went to Arkansas for a summer. I thought it was totally going to suck, and parts of it did, but overall it’s one of my best summer memories. Who knows how the Everglades will work out, if I get the job. A colleague of mine here at Katmai NP put in my name and said good things about me for the Everglades job. She’s on temporary assignment from her permanent job in the Everglades so she knows a number of people there. Thanks Katie.
Apartment-sitting
If I don’t end up getting another park job right away, I may be house-sitting for Amanda in Anchorage. She’ll be going on a rotation to India from November through January. She’ll mainly be doing the same thing she does here for her accounting company KPMG, she’ll just be doing it in another country. I’m super excited for her! I’d like to help her out as well so that she doesn’t have to worry about her apartment and car, ect. However in that same breath, I’m not sure what kind of job I could find in Anchorage. I’m not sure if working at a place like REI would drive me crazy or not.
I did talk to the Alaska Public Lands Information Center in Anchorage back in May and they said they might be hiring some environmental education positions at the end of September. I was pretty excited about doing that until I heard from them recently and they said they’ll probably hire a student or an intern if I could swing that. However, I’m not ready to be a student again and an internship just wouldn’t support me I get the feeling. *sigh* What the heck!? I know life works in mysterious ways and all will work out, it’s just the process and the waiting for getting it to work out that’s the annoying part.
In the mean while things are still pretty busy here at Katmai National Park.
Truck rollover and moving the bridge
Bear and people wise things have really slowed down here. We have one bear at the river and maybe 30 people a day. It’s quite nice after the rush of people we received in July… and we’re expecting in September. Just because that has slowed down however, does not mean it’s less busy, there are just other crazy things going on. There’s a lot of construction going on.
It’s been a total pain coordinating with the contractors on the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes road. We don’t all have the same radios, so there always has to be a middle man. I am very surprised there hasn’t been a head on collision on the 23 mile, one lane road out to the Valley. Anyhow, that aside our contractors are working on improving the road. It needs to meet federal “highway” standards. Why a road out in the middle of nowhere Alaska needs to meet “highway” standards is beyond me, but at least they’re putting some gravel down and flattening out the road so it’s safer to drive. The only problem with that is they’re using an already unstable road along a valley edge to transport large amounts of gravel. One of the trucks actually rolled over the edge just a few weeks ago. What I understand happened was just simply that he was too close to the edge and the road gave way. The truck and driver rolled 125ft down into the valley and landed upside down. Incredibly the driver got out of the truck at walked up to the main road to wait for help. His nose was shattered, his ear had to be reattached, and he has multiple broken ribs. I can’t believe how lucky he is. I hope nothing else like that happens again.
In other construction news, maintenance is moving and extending the bridge across the river this month in order to relieve some problems of people and bear management that will arise next month. My sentiment is that the bridge movement and extension will just create new problems. A high number of bears feed in the area where the bridge crosses and they will continue to do so. The interpretive staff job is to stop people from crossing the bridge if a bear is within 50 yard of it. I like many others call bridge closures by landmarks. The landmarks are about to change and there will be more bridge to worry about. I think that the only way to resolve this problem is to not have a bridge at all. I have no idea how we’d get from one side of the river to the other, but at least I wouldn’t have to worry about a bridge. Maybe a zip line would be good… and fun too!
Savonoski Loop
Speaking of fun, I recently got to take part in a set of death paddling and floating exercises called the Savonoski Loop. Actually the Savonoski Loop was full of good times.
Basically it’s a canoe/kayak trip that goes from Brooks Camp through Naknek Lake and the North Arm of Naknek Lake, where you then portage from Fure’s Cabin to Lake Grosvenor (1.5 miles) to paddle Lake Grosvener to the Savonoski River. Once finishing the river you paddle from the mouth of the Savonoski River through the Iliuk Arm of Naknek Lake back to Brooks Camp. Now the maintenance men, John, Mark, Neil, Cal, and I had someone drop us off at Fure’s Cabin, but in total I estimate we still spent about 50 miles in canoes.
We left camp at about 7pm that night and after finishing a grueling portage we paddled the last few hours of daylight. We ended up setting-up camp in the dark, on uneven ground, somewhere on the shore of Lake Grosvenor that night. Lucky… or unluckily, depending on how you look at it, Neil had brought his ipod and ipod speakers and woke us up at 8:30am the next morning to start paddling. Thankfully we had a BEAUTIFUL day, because that day we paddled practically all of Lake Grosvenor, floated the Savonoski River, and paddled part of the Iliuk Arm. The trip was wonderful, but I think that all of us (except Neil) felt like our arms were going to fall off. We counted 18 bears and 3 cubs on the river and watched some beautiful alpine glow from the sunset that night. I even made somores over when we built a fire that night. It was super good. The next day, once again Neil woke us up with blaring music; we picked up camp, and started paddling. We paddled from 9:30am to 4pm. Once again we had a beautiful day. I couldn’t believe how blessed our trip was! After arriving back in camp and organizing a bit, we had a wonderful dinner at Brooks Lodge and went to bed.
Carl Roberts Visits
A few weeks before planning started for the Savonoski Loop, I got a letter from my good friend Carl saying that he wanted to come out for a visit. I wrote him back saying that would be great and for him to let me know when he got the tickets. It seems like I waited forever for his response before I had Amanda call him to confirm that he got the letter. Amanda then relayed to me that Carl had received the letter, was working on getting the flights, and would write me when he finally bought them. I waited and waited, until the opportunity came up to do the Loop. I knew that I might not be able to do the Loop at any other time this summer, so I took it thinking that Carl wasn’t coming. Sure enough though, Carl showed up only about an hour before I left on my canoeing trip. I couldn’t believe it. Carl was really good about it though. He hung out with some of my friends here at camp and went fishing all weekend. He said it was just nice to not be at work.
That following Tuesday was his birthday, so I took him to the Valley on my Valley tour. We had dinner that night at the Lodge. All was right with the world. I even had the Lodge put a candle in a piece of desert and sing “Happy Birthday” to him. It was good fun.
The boring stuff
Other than that, I’ve just been working. There aren’t many bears to watch, but I’m okay with that. I’ve been working on adapting my evening program into a walk and developing a new evening program, “An Explosive Topic: Volcanoes of Katmai National Park”. I find it really fascinating. I think this will be a lot more entertaining for me and the visitors than identifying animal evidence.
The sun is starting to set earlier in the day and the days are already starting to get cold again it seems. It seems like our 10 days of summer was all that we’re going to get. That’s okay though I suppose, like I said, who knows I may end up having a summer type thing in the Everglades this winter.
I hope everyone is well and everyone finds their days as exciting as mine!
Many smiles till next time I write.
Pirate party
Thanks to my mom and Carl, I got to host one of the biggest parties of the season… the 1st annual Pirate Party and Salmon bake! Because I am pretty good friends with everyone in camp, I invited everyone I could find. Unfortunately most of the maintenance men were still in King Salmon, but I still had a great turn out. My friend at the lodge, Stephanie, helped me make 4 different recipes of salmon and design a sign for the party. Since the park employees and the lodge employees don’t really hang out too much, the park employees showed-up early in the evening and ate all the salmon and the lodge employees showed-up later at drunk as can be. It all worked out really, because the lodge staff gets free meals so they weren’t really looking for food per se. I had bandanas to give to everyone, tattoos, eye patches (that crushed your eye because they were flat), and tons of candy. I even made a little treasure chest to put the candy in. It was pretty awesome. Good food, good company and a little bit of drinking; what more could you ask for? Yo,ho a pirate’s life for me!!
Plane crash
Late last month we had a plane hit shore here at Brooks Camp. Rumor has it that the water was very glassy that day, the pilot couldn’t tell how far away he was from camp, and by the time he realized he was too close it was too late to pull up and over the trees. He hit the water at about a 70 or 80 degree angle causing him to skip across the water and right up on to the beach. Luckily there’s a tree line between the beach and the dinning hall of the lodge, because had there not been, that plan would have ended up on top of a few people. It was a very lucky crash. Everyone walked away unharmed. The only unfortunate part of the crash was the leak of jet fuel on the beach. Thankfully though it was only a trickle and we were able to keep people and bears away from it. Had it been any worse, I have no idea what we would have done. All of our maintenance that has Haz-mat training were in King Salmon working on a new bridge for the river. All of the people around the plane clean-up really had no clue what they were doing. At least it all worked out. It only took something like 2 weeks to get the plane off the shore. (That my friends is a ridiculous amount of time to be making sure that bears aren’t eating the plane wreck. I can’t believe it took that long.)
Grand Cayman and the Everglades
So, I’ve been looking for a job. Something to do after September would be nice. The first job I’ve applied to is a job with the Ritz Carlton in Grand Cayman doing environmental education. The job sounded pretty interesting. It also sounded like the weather would be nice. However, I didn’t even get an interview. Oh well. I didn’t want to talk about the endangered Blue Iguana anyhow.
Then I’ve recently applied to Everglades National Park. It’s also doing interpretation/environmental education. I’ve never envisioned myself going to the Everglades, no less living there, but then again sometimes new experiences are the best experiences. Take for example when I went to Arkansas for a summer. I thought it was totally going to suck, and parts of it did, but overall it’s one of my best summer memories. Who knows how the Everglades will work out, if I get the job. A colleague of mine here at Katmai NP put in my name and said good things about me for the Everglades job. She’s on temporary assignment from her permanent job in the Everglades so she knows a number of people there. Thanks Katie.
Apartment-sitting
If I don’t end up getting another park job right away, I may be house-sitting for Amanda in Anchorage. She’ll be going on a rotation to India from November through January. She’ll mainly be doing the same thing she does here for her accounting company KPMG, she’ll just be doing it in another country. I’m super excited for her! I’d like to help her out as well so that she doesn’t have to worry about her apartment and car, ect. However in that same breath, I’m not sure what kind of job I could find in Anchorage. I’m not sure if working at a place like REI would drive me crazy or not.
I did talk to the Alaska Public Lands Information Center in Anchorage back in May and they said they might be hiring some environmental education positions at the end of September. I was pretty excited about doing that until I heard from them recently and they said they’ll probably hire a student or an intern if I could swing that. However, I’m not ready to be a student again and an internship just wouldn’t support me I get the feeling. *sigh* What the heck!? I know life works in mysterious ways and all will work out, it’s just the process and the waiting for getting it to work out that’s the annoying part.
In the mean while things are still pretty busy here at Katmai National Park.
Truck rollover and moving the bridge
Bear and people wise things have really slowed down here. We have one bear at the river and maybe 30 people a day. It’s quite nice after the rush of people we received in July… and we’re expecting in September. Just because that has slowed down however, does not mean it’s less busy, there are just other crazy things going on. There’s a lot of construction going on.
It’s been a total pain coordinating with the contractors on the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes road. We don’t all have the same radios, so there always has to be a middle man. I am very surprised there hasn’t been a head on collision on the 23 mile, one lane road out to the Valley. Anyhow, that aside our contractors are working on improving the road. It needs to meet federal “highway” standards. Why a road out in the middle of nowhere Alaska needs to meet “highway” standards is beyond me, but at least they’re putting some gravel down and flattening out the road so it’s safer to drive. The only problem with that is they’re using an already unstable road along a valley edge to transport large amounts of gravel. One of the trucks actually rolled over the edge just a few weeks ago. What I understand happened was just simply that he was too close to the edge and the road gave way. The truck and driver rolled 125ft down into the valley and landed upside down. Incredibly the driver got out of the truck at walked up to the main road to wait for help. His nose was shattered, his ear had to be reattached, and he has multiple broken ribs. I can’t believe how lucky he is. I hope nothing else like that happens again.
In other construction news, maintenance is moving and extending the bridge across the river this month in order to relieve some problems of people and bear management that will arise next month. My sentiment is that the bridge movement and extension will just create new problems. A high number of bears feed in the area where the bridge crosses and they will continue to do so. The interpretive staff job is to stop people from crossing the bridge if a bear is within 50 yard of it. I like many others call bridge closures by landmarks. The landmarks are about to change and there will be more bridge to worry about. I think that the only way to resolve this problem is to not have a bridge at all. I have no idea how we’d get from one side of the river to the other, but at least I wouldn’t have to worry about a bridge. Maybe a zip line would be good… and fun too!
Savonoski Loop
Speaking of fun, I recently got to take part in a set of death paddling and floating exercises called the Savonoski Loop. Actually the Savonoski Loop was full of good times.
Basically it’s a canoe/kayak trip that goes from Brooks Camp through Naknek Lake and the North Arm of Naknek Lake, where you then portage from Fure’s Cabin to Lake Grosvenor (1.5 miles) to paddle Lake Grosvener to the Savonoski River. Once finishing the river you paddle from the mouth of the Savonoski River through the Iliuk Arm of Naknek Lake back to Brooks Camp. Now the maintenance men, John, Mark, Neil, Cal, and I had someone drop us off at Fure’s Cabin, but in total I estimate we still spent about 50 miles in canoes.
We left camp at about 7pm that night and after finishing a grueling portage we paddled the last few hours of daylight. We ended up setting-up camp in the dark, on uneven ground, somewhere on the shore of Lake Grosvenor that night. Lucky… or unluckily, depending on how you look at it, Neil had brought his ipod and ipod speakers and woke us up at 8:30am the next morning to start paddling. Thankfully we had a BEAUTIFUL day, because that day we paddled practically all of Lake Grosvenor, floated the Savonoski River, and paddled part of the Iliuk Arm. The trip was wonderful, but I think that all of us (except Neil) felt like our arms were going to fall off. We counted 18 bears and 3 cubs on the river and watched some beautiful alpine glow from the sunset that night. I even made somores over when we built a fire that night. It was super good. The next day, once again Neil woke us up with blaring music; we picked up camp, and started paddling. We paddled from 9:30am to 4pm. Once again we had a beautiful day. I couldn’t believe how blessed our trip was! After arriving back in camp and organizing a bit, we had a wonderful dinner at Brooks Lodge and went to bed.
Carl Roberts Visits
A few weeks before planning started for the Savonoski Loop, I got a letter from my good friend Carl saying that he wanted to come out for a visit. I wrote him back saying that would be great and for him to let me know when he got the tickets. It seems like I waited forever for his response before I had Amanda call him to confirm that he got the letter. Amanda then relayed to me that Carl had received the letter, was working on getting the flights, and would write me when he finally bought them. I waited and waited, until the opportunity came up to do the Loop. I knew that I might not be able to do the Loop at any other time this summer, so I took it thinking that Carl wasn’t coming. Sure enough though, Carl showed up only about an hour before I left on my canoeing trip. I couldn’t believe it. Carl was really good about it though. He hung out with some of my friends here at camp and went fishing all weekend. He said it was just nice to not be at work.
That following Tuesday was his birthday, so I took him to the Valley on my Valley tour. We had dinner that night at the Lodge. All was right with the world. I even had the Lodge put a candle in a piece of desert and sing “Happy Birthday” to him. It was good fun.
The boring stuff
Other than that, I’ve just been working. There aren’t many bears to watch, but I’m okay with that. I’ve been working on adapting my evening program into a walk and developing a new evening program, “An Explosive Topic: Volcanoes of Katmai National Park”. I find it really fascinating. I think this will be a lot more entertaining for me and the visitors than identifying animal evidence.
The sun is starting to set earlier in the day and the days are already starting to get cold again it seems. It seems like our 10 days of summer was all that we’re going to get. That’s okay though I suppose, like I said, who knows I may end up having a summer type thing in the Everglades this winter.
I hope everyone is well and everyone finds their days as exciting as mine!
Many smiles till next time I write.
Subscribe to:
Posts
(
Atom
)