Monadnock and SPNHF

I have less than a week left in my hitch, and I'm enjoying my last day off, which is much deserved. We finally finished a bridge in McCabe forest for SPNHF out of natural lumber, so a rustic bog bridge. The only bad thing that happened, besides the bugs, was that both of chainsaws broke the day we were going to start canting the logs to flatten out the logs and actually make it into a bridge. Thus, we had to do all of the cuts that were 2 inches apart on 2 17' logs by hand, with a bow saw. Luckily, our site contact, came to visit us and bought us two more bow saws, which made things go a lot faster. We're really proud of that bridge, but it took forever and the bugs were horrible. Not having a chainsaw literally added on a day and a half of work. But it's done, and we got to get pizza afterward with the gift certificate our site contact gave us.

We also had yesterday off, and so I hiked up Mount Monandnock, the most hiked mountain in the country, and the second most hiked in the world. It was lots of fun, and I really enjoyed hiking the second half by myself to the very top. It was very peaceful. I took a ton of pictures, which will go up once I'm done with this hitch and not on a library computer. Tomorrow, we go back to work, and we'll be putting together another bridge for SPNHF that will probably only take us a day to do, and then they're going to find us more work to do. But in the meantime, on Saturday, we're going to go back Heald forest and work with Bart on clearing more blowdowns from the trail, which is always lots of fun. We worked with him last Saturday, and totally wore him out, because we're used to working all day, and he normally only works half days. We would be totally cool with only working a half day this Saturday, and then chilling out elsewhere for the rest of the day.

I'm really excited for my parents to be coming up to NH between my next two hitches, and especially beading with my mom on Wed and Thurs.

SPNHF

I just got done with my first 8 straight days of my third hitch, and so far we've worked in two different sites, one in Concord and one in Wilton (Heald Forest). It's been tons of fun. We've built two bridges, did one trail reroute, and fixed another bridge. Some major hightlights of the past eight days:
*Temperature drops the first night in Heald
*Swimming in our underwear in the Connecticut River during our lunch break
*Jumping stones to get across the river while we were building the bridge in Heald
*My first backcountry camping experience, and all that entails
*Jim falling off the bridge and into the water, because we sat on the edge of boards that weren't nailed in
*Flying the stringers for the bridge, which were old telephone poles
*Watching a group of runners come through with 5 dogs, and watching the dogs try to decide whether to use the stones to cross of to just jump in the water
*Getting dumped on Saturday, and having to still cross the river with no bridge, when a lot of our rocks were underwater
*Working 8 days straight, and then getting 2 days off for all of our hard work.

I'm going to work on putting pictures up from the first week, so check them out!

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.