Saturday, June 27, 2009

St. Gauden's National Park

I've finished my first week working in St. Gauden's National Park and it's been lots of fun. We're camping out in the Blow me down Mill house (I think that's what they said it's called) and it's absolutely gorgeous. Our view is off a large green lawn, the Connecticut River, Mt. Ascutney, and a bald eagle that likes to perch on a dead snag right on the river. It's absolutely amazing! We don't have access to the big house, but we do store our food in the pool house that's right next to us. The only thing that sucks is that our tents in full sunlight and we roast in the them. We have to keep our rainflies on, because it rains at least a little bit each night, but not enough to really cool us off. The highlights of this week have been:
*Cutting down a large hemlock (~26 DBH) after it got hung up in other trees (it took us 3-4 hours total to get it down.
*Watching one of the logs we had cut roll down the hill towards all of our belongings and tools (it didn't hit them, a downed log stopped it)
*Running three large and heavy logs down a high line to stop #1 slowly, but safely.
*Showing up at an SCA building opening ceremony and not knowing ahead of time if we were going to be welcome, and then walking away from it with 2 giant containers filled with meat that we couldn't possibly eat.
*Getting invited to a dinner party at the house of a lady who works in the park.
*Adventuring with Kacie to find access to Connecticut River and in the process rescuing a crayfish, discovering and feeling stinging nettle, walking through a cornfield, and walking up a hill and attempting to avoid the patches of poison ivey
Luckily, I have not gotten a rash from poison ivey yet, but I still have 3 more weeks here and it is all over where we're camping and working. It's pretty crazy.
I've taken lots of pictures up here so far, both of us working and where we're living, so those will go up when I get back from this hitch. I'm currently in the Lebanon, NH public library using their internet on my day off.

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