Day 4- more service work at Ruby. Camping at hidden Hand

Day 3 - Service work at Ruby Pasture

i've never been there before, but i imagine it will look like this

Day 2 - hiking to hidden hand

Day 1

the next 14 days

The next 14 days are going to be a little out of the ordinary. First, I will be attempting to run 15 miles tomorrow (fingers crossed that i make it!) and then I head off to the wild yonder of Ross Lake to spend time with some teenagers.

So, I will not be around for a while... but in lieu of my departure, I will by trying something new. Each day I will have a photo posted of where I will be on that day... and you can just imagine.

Also, while i'm out on the trip, I will have my SPOT with me and will have it on tracking each day, so you can definitely follow along. The link is
http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0DW1tozVjOWgd1AlXyghQAlYqLXkS8Xyb

In the mean time, please send the red head birthday wishes! He turns 28 this saturday... slowly catching up.

utah

talked to my quasi-manager at OIA this morning and will be going to OR again this August for more Eco-working group stuff. I'm pretty excited to still be involved a year after I left my job and i'm even more excited that I'm more involved now then when I was at K2. So, i'll be flying down to Salt Lake for a day and a night to enjoy a good old fashioned mormon time.

hoooozah!

paddln'

Last week I departed for a 4 day recon trip with the summer youth leaders to scope out life on the lake. It was a wonderful week that was jammed packed with smiles, curriculum, camp food and paddling. This was our big prep trip for what lies beyond this summer: Taking kids out into the wilderness and providing them with a sense of place.

I'll be working on one trip for NC Wild. NC Wild has a goal of taking under-served and diverse youth out into the woods to provide them with leadership skills and a sense of stewardship and accomplishment. We work with the park on various service projects to improve the park for future generations use. We also assign one student as "leader of the day" that allows them to explore what it is to be like to be a leader and begin forming the skills to be successful. Oh, and we get to be outside on Ross Lake for 11 days!!! I leave on Tuesday June 28th for my first trip and will return around July 8th. I know the 28th will get here way before I expect it to. Anyway, here are some shots from our recon trip:

loading all our gear to get up and over the dam

Views from Ross Lake Resort

Lake's still low. 1st nights camp at MacMillan

Rafting up

Sailing!!

Fathers Day!

I'm very lucky that I have an awesome dad... no complaints from this kid... just that sometimes I wish we lived a tad bit closer... but that just results in epic vacations when we do hang out. Anyway, here are some shots from the past dad decade. enjoy and happy fathers day!

ARRRRR

Spring Break 2011 - paddling in florida

Dad overcoming his fear of heights during his 2011 visit

Learning to snowboard -2010

Boise 70.3 Ironman Support team - 2009

Utah Ski trip - 2007

Golfing - 2009

First Seattle visit - 2006

Pondering on the Salmon - Idaho 2006

Driving West - 2006

Boat Life - 2004

St. Johns - 2003

Some island somewhere - some year

Hog Island - Grenada 2002

the great beyond

As mentioned previously, I went to the east side to enjoy the birds frolicking in nearby wooded areas and the beautiful shrub-steppe habitat. I kinda gotta cut this post short, so here are some photos. The reason this will be a short update is because I need to pack for a 4 day recon trip on Ross Lake.

This summer I will not only be an interpretive ranger at the park, but will also lead 1 session of NC Wild. This is a group of diverse youth descending on the north cascades to go canoeing & backpacking for 12 days while leading service projects in the park. So, tomorrow all of the staff/leaders leave to go stow some gear for the summer and learn the ropes. I'll be back on Friday with hopefully some time and the ability to fill you in on how it went.

For now, enjoy the photos!

Orchid: Striped Coral Root

Views of the North Cascades from the desert

Bitter root - pretty rad little plant. the flower comes right out of the rocks!

Hikers, away!

Still a lot of snow up at the pass!

birds!

So, last weekend I spent three days out in the field with amazing people honing my birding skills. I know this sounds pretty dorky, but in the grand scheme of things, birds are pretty darn cool. I've started talking about them more frequently on this blog, so if you'd like to hear my stance on why birding is cool, i would like to direct you to some older blog posts.

Anyway, for spring birding weekend, we set out with the amazing teacher and birder, Libby Mills. I highly recommend that if you enjoy the outdoors, and want to learn about nature, you sign up for one of her work-shops. She has classes through NCI, Skagit Audubon & Methow Conservation Society. So, on this fine sunny weekend, our class set-out for the east side where we birded in a ton of fantastic locations, including Klipchuck Campground, Sun Mountain & the Methow valley community trails. It was a beautiful spring (felt like summer) weekend where I definitely got my fill of both plants and birds. Tomorrow I'll report on some of the plants and talk more about where we went... but for today, here are the birds!

Cedar Waxwings hanging out in a Dogwood tree

Cedar Waxwing

Common Warbler

Grey Jay

Red Breasted Sapsucker

Tree Swallow in a hole!

MBB - Medium Sized Bird (can't remember what this is)

The weekend was very successful and I also had the opportunity to learn some bird calls. More on the trip tomorrow. Enjoy the photos for now!

sorry

it's kinda been a long day. I had a laundry list of things i wanted to do today:
run
laundry
update this blog
get photos off my camera
read

and yet i just got home after 13 hours of training today and absolutely none of those things are going to happen... so i'm sorry i've been neglecting this as I know I have incredibly dutiful followers that are on the edge of their seat daily to see what is happening in my microcosm

Alas, you must wait another day... but i leave you with a list of things I will start talking about:
1. park ranger training
2. three days of bird stalking
3. NC wild training
4. the naturalist/runner dilemma

until then, i suggest you look at one of the blogs on the side of this panel and see what fun updates they have to offer

brief update

1. it's raining again
2. send socks
3. i need to go running... losing motivation as the tempo of the rain increases
4. must plant an oak tree (literally)
5. only 8 page left to go on my research project
6. finished 1st in my division at ski to sea for females (!!!)
7. still raining
8. still tired from ski to sea. must sleep more
9. running out of things to put on this list
10. last session of mountain school... then i'm finished with my teaching practicum

update finished.