Pipe Spring Arizona

Last week I worked in northern Arizona at Pipe Spring National Monument.  The monument was created in the 1920s when the first head of the National Parks Service Stephen Mather decided it was a good place to situate a rest stop between the Grand Canyon and Zion National Park.  Before that it was an abandoned fort surrounded by miles of sagebrush.  Before that it was a fort run by the LDS church as a place to keep livestock received from tithing.  Before that it was the biggest of several springs in the area used by the Kaibab Paiute, deer, antelope and others and it was surrounded by up to thirty miles in all directions of waisthigh grass--to a horse.  Today it is a property the size of a Walmart on the Kaibab Paiute  Reservation with a very informative visitor center, a couple of little exhibits about the grass that used to be there and traditional Kaibab structures such as a ramada and a kahn (which we worked on and slept in) and the restored two-story fort that comes with an orchard, a vegetable garden, a horse named Princess, two longhorns, a chicken coop, a pond with three ducks, two bunkhouses for cowboy ranch hands, and a short trail up onto the mesa with several edible plants, including currants and lemonadeberries.

Evening view to the west from the mesa (zoomable, like all my pictures)

It doesn't matter where you are, Pipe Springs is far away.  But that gives it its barren look.  In the picture below, you can barely see the highway that runs from left to right.  It is the only way to get to Pipe Springs.  Also, the golden color from the sunset makes it look how it might have been all the time when it was all grass, instead it is sagebrush and tumbleweed, which takes over when grassland is disturbed.  In this case, it was a ten year combination of heavy grazing and drought in the 1870s.

The Arizona Strip to the south

The fact that Pipe Springs is far away and no longer has good grassland (the spring mostly closed up after an earthquake in the 90s and the National Park Service owns the right to a lot of the water that comes out of the spring for the monument) draws the few people who live in the area.  Off the highway past Pipe Spring is the town of Mocassin, which is completely surrounded by the reservation, meaning that the only way in is to wait for someone to die without a will.  It is a Mormon town with no stores of any kind and no police either.  To the west on AZ-389 is Colorado City, which is known for being a polygamist colony (locally known as pligs).  It is a creepy town with huge, simple, unfinished (for tax evasion purposes) homes with several minivans out front.  Neither is an inviting place.  The Kaibab Paiutes are also not very inviting, although the do run a nice, albeit windy campsite, on which we stayed.    Non-natives are not allowed on the reservation after dark, which left us little to do but hope we didn't offend any skinwalkers.  With that said, the nearby Kanab Canyon and Kaibab plateau look like incredibly scenic places to do some backpacking without the crowds of the Grand Staircase areas.

We drove down on Monday, July 4th.  We had the opportunity to stop in Kanab, Utah for their fireworks show.  Small towns who do a big fireworks show are awesome.  And we were lucky because most towns in Utah don't do much on Independence Day and instead save it for Pioneer's Day on July 24th.  Kanab must be a place full of people looking for a reason to have a shebang at the park instead of going to the Pizza Hut.  On the way we drove through Fredonia.  Both are really charming little towns.  We stopped at the Fredonia Fire Department for some fun.  Luckily, my swollen poison ivy-covered face didn't attract too much attention.  At first I just like a skinny fat person.  A few days later I looked like I might be Native American.  People out there don't talk too much to newcomers anyways.

Used the timed-shutter on my camera.  Set the camera on top of the van.

Sophia's bummed and Hillary laughs when they realize they can't steal the old firetruck because the don't know how to drive such an old truck.  This is good news for the Volunteer Fire Department of Fredonia, but probably bad news for the town's good people.

Laughably, our work the first few days was landscaping the yard at a bunkhouse for monument volunteers.  We were accompanied by a 13-year-old juvenile delinquent on a work study project through the tribal court.  We also got to learn a lot about the history of the area.  Interestingly enough, the fort was only built because the first person in charge of the Mormon Ranch was killed by raiding Navajos who were taking Kaibab Paiutes to sell to slavery.  The Ranchers didn't know the difference.  The Kaibab were exceedingly peaceful (to the point of being encaptured by other tribes), but they had a beautiful world-view that couldn't contrast more with the view of Brigham Young that the resource of the spring and pasture must be utilized to supply every want of the future Mormon children.  The existence of the orchard and garden (both of which are open to harvesting by visitors) seem ridiculous in this place, dry as it is with the cattlemen and Kaibab Paiutes stuck on the land they have with limited access to water.  But the people must have a place to rest their autos while visiting other more magnificent places!

Hillary about to throw her nether garments at an oncoming thunderstorm.
It was the ultimate taunt.

One last thing of note about Pipe Springs was the weather and visibility.  At all times while we were there a thunderstorm was visible somewhere.  They usually stayed away after being threatened by Hillary the Harrible but it was so cool to watch the rain or see flashes while driving or even stargazing.  Also the wind was fierce.  Two tents did not survive.  Mine did.  I highly recommend the Marmot Limelight.  It is a beast.

Parley's Canyon aka the Dog Park and trailbuilding

For two weeks after Zion we worked at Tanner Park in Parley's Canyon, which is a dog park in a neighborhood of Salt Lake City next to I-80.  In two weeks I met at least forty different breed of dog, and got to know the many dog-owners who frequent the park.  It was definitely a big change from Zion the week before.  It just so happens that the park has an EPA impaired waterway that is also the only creek in Utah with a native population of Bonneville cutthroat trout, which is used to stock all the lakes and rivers in the area.  Dogs own this park and are obliterating the riverbank and filling the water with E. coli, to the outrage of environmentalists.  The situation playing out in City Council is a smaller version of a huge battle going on right now about public land management.  The Intermountain West has a ton of public land as a vestige of old ranching policies where it was decided that with homesteading it was best for ranchers to own just enough land for a house and public lands would be kept undeveloped to provide for enough grazing for everyone.  Now there is recreation, oil exploration and still ranching on public lands while old ranch houses are being replaced with neighborhoods.  Every different use is ruining it for all the others and no one wants to accept that you can't have it all.  The decisive city council of the city of Salt Lake, however, has decided that dog access will be restricted in Tanner Park to help out the creek.  It was our job to move the trails and designate dog-friendly areas.

Building a new trail is pretty straightforward.  First you clear any vegetation in the corridor of the trail with loppers, saws, and maybe an ax.  If that vegetation happens to have poison ivy vines on it, then you hope you don't get unlucky, I guess.  I don't know I've yet to figure that one out.  Next you cut the walking surface.  You use the pick mattock, the pulaski and the McLeod to break up hard dirt, rip out stumps and roots and to make a smooth surface free of grass and vegetation.  Finally you make the surface level and add in any water control measures to make the trail more durable.  You use the plants that were removed to cover up any side trails to help keep people on the trail.  Then you take a ride on a nearby ropeswing!

The first week we stayed at Legacy Nature Preserve, which is newly designated and does not yet live up to the name.  It is out by the airport near the lake and has buzzing power lines running through it and it gets sprayed regularly with mosquito pesticide by airplane.  It does, however have beautiful sunsets out to the West.  Those are the mountains the Donner Party and thousands of other Oregon trailers and 49ers crossed on their way out west.

Sunset at Legacy

We could also see Salt Lake City and other towns along the Wasatch Front (as well as the oil refinery near our campsite).

The Wasatch Mountains behind Salt Lake City

 The second week at the dog park our project sponsors at the SLC parks and rec let us stay in their conference room.  It was nice to get away from the heat, bugs, and pesticide of Legacy, even if it meant being locked in the compound at night.  We all seemed to be a little more photogenic while we were roughing it at Legacy.

Janepus, Mitchosaurus Rex and Abzilla the Killa wishing they could be part of our crew

Hillary and the navigator from Zion being rebels

Adventure in Zion: Kolob Arch

Our last day in Hop Valley we decided to go on a hike to Kolob Arch because we were in backcountry Zion and wanted to go see something awesome.  So around 5 o’clock after work we stashed our sprayers and we started walking down the valley.  At the end of the valley the stream winds over boulders and drops down to La Verkin Creek, which runs perpendicular.  It is like one steep-walled canyon T-bones another that is hundreds of feet below.  The trail leaves the stream here to go down the canyon wall.

The path of the stream, not the trail.

We (with the exception of our navigator who had the map) didn’t know this and we started following the now dry streambed down to La Verkin.  We made it down, but an hour behind schedule after descending the rock and ledge obstacle course, to find that La Verkin Creek still in full-on Spring Rage Mode.  We were not on the trail, any crossings had been washed away, and we needed to cross to find the trail.  We eventually hop skipped and fell in across La Verkin and after about five failed attempts at bushwacking in the direction of the trail, we managed to find it.  On cue, two seconds later behind a boulder we stumbled upon a cranky rattlesnake.  We tiptoed around it and rushed on our way.  It was now about 7:30, we had gone a little over a mile in over two hours (by the trail), and Kolob Arch was still half a mile away.  Ominous clouds were approaching and like the brilliant outdoorsmen we are, none of us had put up our rainflies.  Chris ran ahead to make some dehydrated food at the arch so we could have a quick bite for the walk back (we had planned to have dinner at the arch, although why we planned to have dehydrated food for dinner doesn't much make sense anymore).

not sure where those leaves came from in the top left.  This is about as close as you can get to the arch, which by the size of the trees on top, is massive.  It's high up, too.

Kolob Arch impresses, but it definitely wasn’t what I imagined when told it was the largest “free-standing” arch in America.  Kolob Arch is up a side canyon off La Verkin nearly opposite Hop Valley. This whole area of the park is backcountry and has very few visitors, which is in stark contrast to the main canyon and its paved trails, shuttles, and hotels.  The vantage from the arch back out towards La Verkin shows an impossible intersection of steep-walled canyons meeting at right angles with wildly different elevations and wall heights.  Unfortunately, I messed up the shot, and can't show a picture, which is a drawback to using film. Sometimes the shot you are most excited about doesn't come out (at least the scanned version), and sometimes you find unexpected gems when you get your film back in the mail.  After a quick bite we rushed back and had a much easier time following the trail.  However, the hike back up to Hop Valley was a switchback onslaught and it slowed us down considerably after a full day work and four hours of difficult hiking.  Our project sponsor called us on the walkie talkie several times to make sure we were alright.  Resigned that rain would had soaked our stuff (it didn't because our project sponsor had put our rainflies up for us-->so if any of you go to Zion, tell the rangers that you love what the veg department is doing with the park), we trudged back into camp around 10pm.  We filtered water, grabbed a snack and then passed out before having to hike up and out in the morning.

The place where no one is poor

A view of Logan with the Bear River Range behind.  Taken from near Gossner's Cheese Factory, which sells smoked cheese curds, which can only be described as "dairy funk."  Below, a view of the smaller, steeper, and more rugged Wellesvilles on the opposite (west) side of Cache Valley

The Wellesville Mountains.  One solid ridgeline defining the western edge of Cache Valley

Cache Valley, which rhymes with stash and rash (both of which I am sporting right now), sits in the far north of Utah near Idaho and Wyoming.  It runs north into Idaho to Preston of Napoleon Dynamite fame.  Towns cover the slopes of the ranges that line the east and west side of the valley while farmland, landfill, and wetland make up the lowland.  It seems that nearly every city along the Wasatch Front (the west-facing slope of the Wasatch Mountains that rises up from the Great Salt Lake) has a prominent Mormon temple that is visible from miles out on the valley floor.  All of the temples are immaculate.  Mormon settlers and the LDS church loom large in the history of this area as I am finding out, and to no one's surprise they are highly present in the area still.

Logan Temple

Logan is no exception.  Grocery stores and restaurants can sell alcoholic drinks only up to four per cent by volume.  The only liquor stores are state-run liquor stores.  Nothing is open on Sundays except for Walmart, which is powerful beyond any religion.  The temple is the oldest temple still in use with original construction in Utah or something like that.  Near the temple up on the hill in Logan is Utah State University.  It has a beautiful campus and has some very cool programs.  UCC is run through the department of natural resources.  They have a campus bike shop that lets you do free maintenance on your own bike plus they do free three-month checkouts to students.  It's awesome.  And with all the hysteria over BJ pints, I haven't even had the chance to try the campus ice cream shop.  The locals are wild about Aggie Blue Mint ice cream.  Below I put a picture of Old Main Hill, which is on campus right next to my house.  It is asking to be iceblocked.  Although there is no student-led farm, there are some apricot trees by the football stadium that I will raid mercilessly when they get ripe.

The A lights up at night

PS. The title of this post was meant as a pun.  Either way, there aren't really any homeless people in Cache Valley.  Which almost makes dumpster diving an ethical mandate by the tenets of no food waste... almost.
PPS. My crew will be eating thirty bagels this week found fresh near Einstein Bagel Co.

More on invasive weeds

Spraying weeds in Zion for a week I learned a few of the most noxious weeds in Utah.  Tamarisk and Russian olive are replacing cottonwoods and willows along riverbanks.  Dyer's woad, white top and various thistles are taking over fields while native grasses are being replaced with cheat grass.  Some of these renegades, such as russian olive, are pleasant to look at.  That is, until you know they are invasive.  Now I drive down the highway and see nothing but invasives.  However, you can't mess up an area much worse than putting a highway through it; the ugly foliage along highways is usually there because the highway messed up the land in the first place.  In more pristine areas, like the Mt. Naomi Wilderness in the Bear River Range, you see almost exclusively the native plants to the area, and the tendency of humans to make ugliness out of natural beauty doesn't seem so automatic.

On another note, I still haven't figured out what exactly is the problem with all of these invasives necessarily.  Although tamarisks (unruly trees in America that are small bushes in their native China because of various checks and balances) have mostly replaced willows in the streambeds in the Arizona Strip, they don't remove them in Pipe Springs National Monument because the local Kaibab Paiutes use them in place of the willow for traditional uses.  Birds too have switched over to using the tamarisk for nests.  Willows and preservationists it seems are the only ones concerned by the presence of this new water-loving plant.  Sometimes it seems, that the problem species are the ones that are uglier than the ones they replace.  In most cases, these invasive species were brought here for some commercial purpose before being abandoned and allowed to colonize large areas.  I guess they are like secondary conquistadors and now we have to get used to the brave new wilderness.  (A great example is the Ogden Nature Center and Preserve, which is about 80:20 invasive:native plants right now)

BJ's for everyone!

Ben and Jerry’s pints only cost 2.79 at Smith’s grocery stores all over Utah, instead of who knows what ungodly amount.  I am not asking questions.  Mitch, whose ability to find cheap ice cream is unrivaled, first found this out.  As for which flavor to choose, I offer this quote from John Muir: “All the world was before me and everyday was a holiday, so it did not seem important to which one of the world’s wildernesses I first should wander.”  It's so delicious that I find myself keeping a spoon in my pocket at all times... almost.

First Trip: Zion National Park and Weed Control

Walking to Camp

Our first project was in the backcountry setting of Hop Valley in Zion National Park.  We camped in the side canyon shown above next to a stream.  Zion is in red rock country where the canyons are made of red sandstone with a few splashes of white "Navajo" sandstone in there (turned white by calcium carbonate and other marine minerals that accumulate in sediment on ocean/sea bottoms).  One day, similarly impressive canyons will form in what is now the Sahara.  Hop Valley is in the northwest arm of the park.  It is small and flat-bottomed with high walls.  The trail runs it's length towards La Verkin creek and the Kolob Arch and was used by about 10 people per day while we were there in mid-June.

Our job was to spray for several invasive weeds, namely mullein (which is not considered noxious in Northern Utah) and bull and scotch thistle.  We used a homemade mix of Roundup, which I was surprised to find out is very friendly on the environment for an herbicide.  It doesn't drift to neighboring plants and it degrades in hours.  Plus it sticks to dirt much better than it dissolves in water so it doesn't runoff.  We used backpack sprayers, so we looked like shoegazing ghostbusters as we walked in lines across the canyon floor.  The area needed spraying because it was actually privately-owned land next to the park owned by a certain Mr. Lee.  He lets Zion run a trail through his property and spray for weeds to protect their own lands.  Zion hopes to purchase the land if/when the Lee family ever decides tos ell the land.  Many National Parks actively try to acquire new lands next to their parks.  Even if that weren't the case, there is plenty of reason for the Parks to be on good terms with their neighbors.  Mr. Lee owns thousands of acres next to the park that he uses for grazing his cattle, who carry the seeds and burrs of invasive plants far and wide.  An angry neighbor can cutoff access to sections of a park by disallowing use of roads on their property and the like.  Land in Utah is a complicated mess of private parcels, refuge and wilderness land and more open-use for commercial and recreational use public land.  The success of Zion National Park is partly due to the limited use for commerce and recreation on the three large neighboring private land tracts (Mr. Lee owns one).  Zion has a nice buffer of quiet surrounding properties that helps for the deer and water quality and light pollution and that type of thing.

It was hot, and we spent the day walking around in full leather boots, work pants, long-sleeves, non-breathable gloves, and safety glasses, but it was worth because there is treasure in Hop Valley!  I found a leatherman, and Chris found a twenty dollar bill (off the trail up a side canyon no less).  Below is a picture of a sandy part of the Hop Valley floor.

The sandy streambed of Hop Valley

We worked with a team of national park workers.  One of them, Ben, is the dude on the right in the top picture.  He only uses ultralight gear that is either dehydrated or multifunctional.  Over the last few weeks, I've gotten a taste of the different types of people who are attracted to the outdoors.  There are the wannabe manly-macho men, the high tech gearsters like Ben, the spiritualites like John Muir, and finally really dirty gorp lovers.  All of them have some hippy tendencies.  All of them typically want some wilderness experience, where wilderness is an area not affected by human activity.  Such a place a doesn't exist.  And actually, some of the better preserved parts of Utah are actually the overgrazed rangeland governed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).  In Zion, I thought about the wannabe manly-macho men who thankfully are in other groups and gearster Ben trying to be cutting edge in their ability to handle the outdoors.  Wilderness is kind of a joke (not a fact, but my opinion right now), but that doesn't mean that places aren't tame or that the outdoors isn't scary.  In my four days in the backcountry I saw eight rattlesnakes, one of whom twice came right through our camp.  It seems so arrogant to try to take your gear or your ego into the wild to live some idealized rough life on the trail.  There are impressive sights out there to be sure, especially if you accept that they are gifts to be discovered by those with a healthy caution and respect.

Here's a little rattlesnake that warned me that he was about to cross the stream and that I was coming too close. (zoomable--like all my pictures)

Team Big Bowl and friends

Crews are made of one crewleader and three crewmembers.  My crew goes by various names, such as Bad News Bears, any combination of two words that start with B with "and" in between, Team Blowin', Autobots, Star Team, and my personal favorite of Team Big Bowl.

We are led by crewleader of the year Chris "Honkytown" Mullen (his words).  He knows his stuff and he used to work in a restaurant.  We eat well.  I told him about No Food Waste and he has taken it to heart.  So much so, in fact, that he made me eat a whole bowl of jalapeños and raw onions with him in Zion at a restaurant.  He is 26 and is from Vegas.  He currently lives in Logan with his girlfriend who is known to the rest of us as "my girl."  That hole in his shirt has since grown and created an oval sunburn on his shoulder.

On the left is "Sloppy Sophia" Ochoa (her words).  She is a rising junior at Utah State studying biology.  She has the biggest smile I have ever seen.  Her family lives in Riverton on the south side of SLC and she periodically brings fresh herbs and veggies from her garden.  They are magical and she knows how to find the best produce in the grocery store.  She loves oldies music, especially Harry Belafonte.  She is still unsuccessfully trying to teach us how to cha cha.  She is 20.

On the right is "Hilarious Hillary" Hiatt.  Hillary is soo jaded because she did UCC last year.  She lives with her sister and her boyfriend in Logan to get away from her parents and the LDS church.  She is a fellow vegetarian and an intense hipster.  She loves horses and she showed me how to properly wield a lasso.  She is chief DJ for team big bowl and has a special penchant for Fleet Foxes, Harry Nielsen, and Kristoff Krane.  She is 19.

This is my crew.  I have also befriended two members of another crew with which we frequently travel.

Mitch "The Mange" Fosnaugh (my words) is from Bainbridge Island although he is too much a wanderer to really have a home.  After high school, (about which he has crazy stories such as how for one class he had this insane teacher who drove them on a bus wildly through back roads in the forest to fill bear feeders) he got a one-way to London and turned it into backpacking and farming all the way to Bulgaria.  He has experience with trail work in the North Cascades, and he has been to many other places.  He keeps his trusty silver spoon in his pocket should ice cream ever be made available and he keeps the rest of his belongings in the thule on his subaru.  He plays clawhammer banjo in addition to guitar.  He occasionally has crazy eyes and is 20.   He looks strikingly like John Muir.

"Jet-powered" Janet Zarate is in a similar situation to me in that she just graduated in Engineering from Swarthmore (which is apparently a Quaker matchbox.. read: swatties marry swatties) and has no conservation experience.  She hails from Boise and rolls around in her olive Honda Odyssey that goes by the names of The Buffalo, The Bear Box, or Home depending on the setting.  We travel together often on weekends.  She laughs more than anyone I have ever met.  After the summer she will go to Cape Cod to do a year of Americorps researching marine biology and teaching.  She hopes to get there via a road trip in a diesel car that will be powered by diesel that she makes herself with old oil, methanol, and silica gel.

next week:

It's getting late, my face is swollen with poison ivy, and I'm trying to make sure they let me in the van to go to Pipe Springs, AZ in the morning.  Next week I will write about our hike to Kolob Arch in Zion, going hiking on the Jardine Juniper trail in the Bear River Range, working at the dog park in SLC, and going out to City of the Rocks in Idaho.  Hopefully I can comment on some land management issues and give a better description of trail work.  Stay on the trail everybody! PS the upcoming posts will be the ones with the good pictures.

Training and a walk with a Naturalist

After the first day of training, local naturalist Jack Greene took whoever wished to accompany him on a short hike in Green Canyon in the Bear River Range.  Ten or so of us carpooled out to the trailhead and got there a few minutes before he did.  He rolls up in his Prius (silently because it was in electric mode) which was odd already because we were about 3 miles up a pretty rough and rocky dirt road and its Utah, not LA.  He gets out with his Chacos and his binoculars, says "hello" and then immediately points up to the sky to show us a pair of golden eagles circling a thousand feet above us.  He then told us about how in Alaska golden eagles will dive bomb mountain sheep to knock them off precarious ledges so they will fall thousands of feet to their death.  He knows because he has been to Alaska.

We did a more lengthy introduction and then started walking.  About ten steps in he veers off the trail through the trees next to us and starts walking through a meadow.  Muttering "leave no trace??" we follow, and he replies with assurances that this is a durable "hard" meadow with rocky soil as opposed to an easily trampled "soft" meadow.  Over the next hour he shared all kinds of knowledge about the plants around us: "This is edible, it takes like strong parsley (it's terrible).. this is rocky mountain juniper.  It's berries taste like gin becasue gin is made from juniper berries.. this is curly-leaf mahogany (which he could tell apart from the identical straight-leaf mahogany).. notice how that north facing slope is a douglas fir monoculture and this side is a mix of mahogany and bigtooth maple.. I found an Anasazi arrowhead that I could keep because.. when i was in Tanzania last weekend the black mamba snake.. oh my! this morrel mushroom is very uncommon here.  I have never seen it in this area before.  This is a wonderful surprise."

This was my first full day in Utah.  I was very impressed with how Mr. Greene could know so much about the place he lives.  I was also impressed with how much bland greenery he nibbled on over the course of the hour.

Welcome!

Thank you for joining me.  I have this blog to let all of you--my dearest friends--know what I'm doing now that I hardly see any of you.  I will post pictures and describe my adventures, so that when we have a chance to talk, it won't be pure "this is the town and these are the people" kind of stuff.

I am in Logan in the far north of Utah.  It's a quiet Mormon college town with an ag school in a valley enclosed by Wellesville Mountains to the west and the Bear River Range to the East.  I'm working as a crewmember for the Utah Conservation Corps (UCC).  The first two weeks were training, and for the rest of the summer we work on weekly projects.  Monday morning we drive out the worksite.  We work 10 hour days and come back to Logan on Friday afternoon.  We typically car camp, and share meals.  The type of work ranges from weed spraying to fencing to trail building to habitat restoration.  Weekends are pretty much free to hang out in Logan or to travel.  Here in Logan I found a room in a house for the summer.  Three people who work for UCC live here, as do two others.  It's a pretty typical looking dirty college-town house, although out here in LDS territory, college life seems pretty subdued. In one corner of the house, we get wifi from one of the neighbors, which allows me to write this blog.

My motto for this summer is "along for the ride."  Work can be incredible or frustrating, anything from ripping out roots to make a trail to walking around in a line to spray thistles, and it sends me anywhere from a dog park in Salt Lake City to a little used backcountry area in Zion National Park.  Either way, it's a new and welcome experience for which I am not that well prepared.  My main hobby is taking pictures with my parents 35mm Pentax SuperProgram.  It takes a while to get my film developed, my slides scanned and what not, especially given that I'm only around on weekends and everything closes on Sundays.  As soon as I get pictures I will write posts about my adventures and jot down my thoughts on wilderness, outdoorsmen, the places i visit, and land management.  Thanks again for making it this far!  I have plenty more to say about any one topic covered here in the future