Pawtuckaway

I'm now on my summer break for 9 days in Oklahoma City. It's a whole lot hotter here than it is in NH, but my parents house is awesome and the lake makes everything better. Some of the highlights from my month in Pawtuckaway are:
*Eating dinner in the van because the bugs were so bad
*Renegade, our friendly skunk walking through our campsite at random times of the night
*Finding out that you can't effectively paint when it's really humid
*Finding out we had the wrong color paint, and the new paint takes a solid 2+ coats to cover anything
*Dinner at the beach on the lake
*Running into the water when we knew it was getting ready to storm and then having to get out 2 minutes later when the lifeguard realized it was thundering
*Belting out random 90's songs with the radio very off key

After this hitch, I found out that I'm going to be co-leading one of the next hitches, which is really exciting. Especially since I just applied to lead in the high school program through SCA for the summer. For that position, I would lead with another person 6-8 high school students for about a month at a time. That would be pretty fun, I think, and I finally got everything done with my application. But now off to lunch with mom and Nicole then looking at floors for the house.

All Corps

So I'm back from All Corps from Hawley, MA. It was really awesome and I had so much fun that I didn't sleep as much as I should have. But the highlights were:
*Contradancing for hours on end
*Jumping in the pond after contradancing
*Meeting lots of awesome people!
*Going to a peat bog
*Hiking to the top of Crawford Ledges and seeing two dogs up there and some climbers
*Swimming at the local "beach" and entertaining kids by jumping off the diving board
*$1 ice cream cones
*Dominating the talent show with our musical abilities
*Rocking the All Corps Challenge and bringing home the horns!
*Rocking the log walk during the challenge and being the only team not to fall off.
Basically, All Corps was awesome and we won, so that makes it even better.

Hitch 2

I'm currently in the middle of my second hitch at Pawtuckaway State Park where I'm painting buildings fun colors, like brown. Some of the highlights of the first week are:
*Getting free food from an AA event
*Getting free food from two different camp groups
*Running into the lake when we know it's thundering just to be made to get out 2 minutes later because the lifeguards realize it's thundering
*Finding out we have the wrong color paint for our main building
*Knowing the difference between Cabot Redwood and California Redwood paints
*Becoming a member of the Fugly Strokes
*Watching loons pop out of the water at random times
*Eating dinner in the van because it's too buggy to eat outside
And now I'm off to All Corps in Mass for 3 days, won't that be fun!

Americorps recognition day

I spent all of yesterday at Hampton Beach on the Seacoast of NH. It was amazing and full of speeches, free schwag, free food, the ocean, and sun. I came back with full belly, a new americorps mug, and a nice sunburn. I totally forgot all about putting on sunscreen the entire day. It was not good, and I'm paying for it now. But at least I had fun. I've also been working on applying for jobs after this SCA position. So far I've applied to High Trails near Big Bear, CA in the San Bernandino forest. I'm pretty psyched, and hopefully will be interviewing with them next month after my next hitch when I'll actually have constant cell phone and internet access. I'm pretty psyched right now.

Pictures from Saint Gaudens

I've posted some new pictures in a new photo album on Picasa. There's a link on the side of my blog, so everybody should check it out. There are pictures from where I was camping and the work I was doing in Cornish, NH. And now I'm off to enjoy my 4 days off.

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.

Second Clean up hitch

We're about halfway through this hitch now, and it's been lots of fun so far. I've participated in 1 volunteer event and helped to organize another one so far. The first one was in the White Mountains, which a group of high school seniors, who wanted to do a service project with SCA during their senior week. That was lots of fun. We cleaned up campsites by picking up any trash we found, cleaning out the fire rings, and "downsizing" all fire rings to a manageable size for backcountry camping. It rained the entire time we were there, and of course none of us thought to bring an extra pair of clothing with us to change into when our clothing still got a little wet, even though we were wearing rain gear. The next event was one that our group planned entirely. We had about 25 City Year interns come out and help to clean up various trails in Bear Brook State Park. That was lots of fun, because in order to plan the event, we had to hike all of the trails in the park, so we knew what needed to be done and where. It was pretty sweet, although it also rained for the majority of the day. One of the best parts during that event, was when we were eating lunch at Smith Pond Shelter, and we watched the sun breakthrough the clouds over the lake. It was pretty awesome. For the beginning of this week, we've worked on various projects around camp like creating new raised garden beds and planting our whole garden with over 100 plants that a local farm gave us in exchange for us doing manual labor for them on random weekends. We've also worked on organizing and inventoring parts of the toolshed for hitches that are coming up and sharpening tools that are in the toolshed. I'm pretty sure that that's all that I've done recently, but it's been alot, and really tiring. Tomorrow we're going to go back over to the school I taught at and doing a workday outside with our students putting in and reviving the butterfly garden. That should be really fun, and it'll be awesome to have it over with finally. Then we have the Great Parks Pursuit on Sat that we're volunteering at and then we get Sun and Mon off, which will be amazing!!!! I also got a new sleeping bag, it's a wiggy bag, and it's awesome!