Home Sweet Home

I returned from my trip back to the East coast and what a wonderful trip it was! Dave and I both flew into Logan late Tuesday night and my wonderful brother and sister-in-law picked us up since I refused to take the T. :) I finally got to see their ADORABLE condo they just purchased in Roslindale. It's so awesome and I am so happy for them. They're all grown up now! Wednesday morning Chef Todd made us a delicious breakfast before we headed into the city. Since my Dad is in Sweden and flew out of Boston he, so graciously, left his car for Dave and I to use so we wouldn't have to rent one. Thanks again Dad, we really appreciated that!!

Dave has never been to Boston so it was a lot of fun showing him around and pointing out parts of the city that have been such a big part of my life. First we walked through the lovely North End and eventually over to Faneuil Hall to meet my friend Brian at a restaurant for lunch. It was great to see him again and for Dave to meet him. Of course we had to stop and pay our respects to the great, late Sam Adams, bless his heart. ;)

After that, I showed him where my school was and some frequented watering holes. We walked through the Common to the Public Garden's where we found a nice spot in the shade to take a cat nap. Andi had to work until 3:30 so we met up with her and Kim to grab some beers before the Red Sox game. We went to the Pourhouse for their cheap 22 oz'ers. :) Around game time, we headed down to Fenway, which was cool for Dave since he's such a big baseball fan and Fenway is so awesome. :)

We all met up with my brother and his friend Josh and had a great time at the game.



They played Kansas City, so obviously they won! :) No matter how hard I tried, Dave wouldn't take off his Cubs hat. ;)
Although, those Cubs fans are die hard - I mean, it's been 120 years...that's some serious dedication. I can't say too much about his hat because when we go to Wrigley, I'm definitely flying my Red Sox hat with pride!

After the game, Dave and I hit the road and headed to my lake house (we call it The Camp). I've missed it so dearly all summer long so I couldn't wait to get there. Especially to see my Mom and Nova! It was everything I had hoped it would be. Sunny, beautiful, warm water, delicious crab cakes and coffee bread made by my mom, hot coffee in the morning, early kayaking, relaxing, hanging out with Dave, Mom, Todd and Nova and beer drinking.

It was so wonderful to see my Mom and get those awesome motherly hugs you just can't get anywhere else! Only one additional thing would have made the camp visit perfect and that would be if my Dad was there. Next time though! Growing up, Dave had a similar place to escape to, so I think he really enjoyed being there. We stayed there until Friday afternoon before we had to keep moving on.

We headed down to Monroe, CT where my high school friend, Rob was getting married. It was a beautiful wedding and the reception was so much fun. Congrats to Rob and Melissa!

It was so good to see my friends from high school, too, whom I haven't seen since December! Of course, me, Cassie and Vanessa just danced the night away!


Ginger sandwich!
It was a late night and a lot of laughing was had. Saturday was dedicated to recovery. O:-) The girls and Dave and I decided, what better way to recover from a wonderful wedding than heading to the beach and ocean. The cure-all! We drove to Silver Sands State Park and slept and swam and relaxed until we got hungry. Where did we eat you ask? Well, why of course, Taco Bell! Poor Dave had to witness this tradition, but we ordered with pride.

After dinner, we split ways and Dave and I started on our 3 hour drive back to Boston to spend one more night at my brother and sister-in-law's. Unfortunately, we had flights out of Logan at 6:00AM on Sunday morning so Todd had to wake up at 4:00AM to get us to the airport on time. Thanks again Todd!! Love you!

Overall, it was an incredible trip and I am so happy I could manage to get back there for a bit. I loved showing Dave these other parts of my life too. It was wonderful to see all my friends and the family I got to see. I miss and love all you guys so dearly! I apologize to the family and friends I didn't get to see, but as you can tell, time was short.

Tomorrow, I leave for my LAST tour with the Nevada Conservation Corps. I can't believe it's been a year already from when I dropped everything in my life in Boston and moved to Nevada. Who moves to Nevada?! It'll be a bitter-sweet tour, I think, but I'll let you know for sure when I get back on Monday!

Lamoille - Week 5

Due to my trip to the ER and my early departure from tour because of Bronchitis, I ended up having 9 days off to do.....nothing. It was utterly frustrating to be sick and forbidden to do anything remotely physical for 9 days straight. Needless to say, my week off was extremely uneventful. However, with a combination of drugs and rest, I did manage to get better rather quickly and was reared up and ready to go come Monday morning.

Week 5 - my second to LAST week of my NCC career. Very exciting! This week working in Lamoille Canyon was hot. The temperatures got up into the upper 80's and low 90's most of the week and when you're in a long sleeved shirt with Carhartts and chaps while chainsawing, it feels a lot warmer than that. It took a toll on us and we immediately sought shade and a nap during our breaks.
One of the sections of trail that I had to cut this week was an Aspen grove in a wash that was unbelievably thick. I couldn't even walk into it to see where I needed to cut. It was hot and tedious and rather tricky, but I managed to get through it.

Aspen's are beautiful trees and I am a big fan of them and do feel badly when I need to cut them down. The cool thing about them, though, is that they grow in clonal colonies. This means that generally in an Aspen grove, all the trees are genetically identical, stemming from a single seed. New stems (trees) can spring up at a distance of up for 30-40 meters away from the parent tree. Because they grow in this fashion, cutting a single tree down is only like trimming off a branch that will inevitably spring up elsewhere in the future.

Besides my sawing, most of the tour was spent working on timber walls on the lower portion of the trail. It was a lot of fun and a nice switch up from constantly digging new tread or sawing. I learned a little bit more about how to build these walls. For the initial tier of the wall, you need to use a rock drill and drill down into the bedrock. 4-holes per timber. These holes are used for rebar which is pounded into the timbers and into the bedrock to secure them.

As you stack the tiers, the timbers need to be staggered so the breaks are not all in the same place, which would severely weaken the structure. Each timber on each tier needs to be rebarred into the lower tiers as far as it will go. On the second tier, you place a deadman or two, which is a 5 ft timber that goes perpendicular to the wall, back into the mountain as a sort of anchor. When all is said and done, you get a nice, neat, stable switchback such as this:


This is obviously a different wall and switchback, but the same idea none the less. The last day of our tour when we were working on the above switchback, all of our tools started dying. The rock drill died, the Cobra Combi died, the Poinjar died and even our little power drill started smoking. This is our luck with power tools..

The tour ended with my awesomely amazing supervisor, Amanda, treating us to Dairy Queen! And so ends my 5th of 6 tours at Lamoille. I only have one single tour left, then I'll be homeless and jobless. Good thing I have a college degree........

I am very excited about this 6-day break though. I am heading home to Boston and CT with Dave. One of my good high school friends is getting married on Friday! Dave and I are making a trip out of it! We're stopping in Boston to see my brother and Amanda and catch a Red Sox game at Fenway with some friends, heading to the lake house for some much needed dock lounging with my Mom and Nova, seeing all of my high school friends as we celebrate Rob's marriage to Melissa and then hitting the beach for a recovery day with my bestest friends Cassie and Vanessa! It would be a perfect trip if only my Dad was in town, however, he's on his own awesome adventure in Sweden!

I am looking forward to this trip home and will hopefully keep you updated!

Lamoille - Week 4

So my fourth week at Lamoille ended early because of my bronchitis but prior to that I did manage to get some work done. The infamous timbers that I mentioned before finally showed up. We had been told week after week that we'd be seeing them soon and this week was it. Initially, there were supposed to be about 50 of them and I'd say half showed up this week on the trailer. They were all cut in half and carried up the trail to various switch backs that needed to be fixed. I was excited to carry some of these monsters, however, I seemed to have missed my opportunity, though after hearing stories, I'm kind of glad! I heard they were heavy but it was more of an uncomfortable thing on your shoulder more than anything.
While most of the crew was hauling timbers, I was busting rocks! I got to use an 80lb rock hammer, which is kind of like a jackhammer. It was awesome! It was a lot of work and I definitely got a workout using it, but it was worth it. We had to hike up the trail with it and bust up any rocks that were in the path of the trail.

Later in the week, I was put on another rock project. This one was a little....bigger. In an attempt to save some timbers and prevent more hauling, our project sponsor thought it'd be easier to move this big boulder on the left down to the right corner of the picture.


Now it might be hard to see, but that rock is enormous. We estimated it at about 6 tons. And it was like an iceberg, there was a whole belly of the rock under ground. We used a device called a griphoist, which is just a system of pulleys, wire cables and nylon straps. By rigging this rock up and using the base of a pine tree as an anchor, we were able to move this rock. Of course, it was inches at a time and a very slow and time consuming process but it was really cool to see this monster of a rock move.

Unfortunately, since I got sick, I was unable to finish moving the rock into the spot it needed to be. I've heard it looks great though and maybe this next tour I'll have some after pictures for you to see.

Another cool thing I did this week was save a baby robin from Satan's spawns. Where we are camping is, unfortunately, next to a very white trash trailer. I'm talking beers cans in the lawn, confederate flag on the car, and at least 6 or 7 kids that live there with, from what I can tell, only the mother. Well, one day after work we were all sitting around waiting for dinner and I hear these three demon children laughing and cheering along with high pitched chirping. I look over and this little boy has a baby robin in his hands and is about to swing at it as if it were a baseball. I go over to the fence and ask him what he is doing and his two little sisters respond for him with huge devilish grins on their faces, "He's going to kill it!" In total shock, I am almost rendered speechless by the lack of concern in their voices while at the same time, simply perplexed by the joy they are receiving from this but I do manage to get out, "Absolutely not! Give me that bird!"

It took a little convincing and a promise on my part to give the bird back but I eventually got it away from the hellions and released it far away from their house and murderous little hands. As I was walking away I heard, "I hate you! I'm going to find that baby bird, rip it's head off and throw it at you!" Oh, the youth of America. Think these kids have some violent video games in that trailer of theirs? Once I released the bird and the spawns retreated back into their cave, I saw the mother robin freaking out and looking for her baby. I then realized that maybe they wouldn't be able to find each other again. Frantically, I looked for the baby robin where I released him but with no luck. For the rest of the night, I had the mother robin chirping in my ear reminding me that I possibly split these two up for good. :(

The next day, while I was sick and laying in the hammock half dead to the world, I awoke from one of my many naps. What woke me up? A baby robin had landed on the edge of the hammock near my shins and was looking at me and chirping. It flew down to the ground where it joined it's mother, they both chirped and flew away. It was as if he was saying thank you. I had a huge grin on my face and I felt so much better knowing that they had, indeed found one another again.

4th of July with Dave

For as long as Dave and I have been together, this 4th of July is the first holiday we've actually been able to spend together! It was wonderful. I actually had that Monday, the 4th, off so I flew out to Madison on Tuesday and spent all week with him until Monday when I had to fly back for work. He had to work a little bit while I was there, but that gave me time to keep training for the Tough Mudder! He found a park by his place that has a Frisbee golf course and also a pretty long, steep hill - perfect for training! So while he was working, I went to the park and ran that hill, over and over and over again. It felt great (minus the humidity, which I don't miss at all).

We have a little tradition of going to the Hubbard Avenue Diner for breakfast or lunch. It's a cute little diner in Middleton with delicious food, great people watching and excellent Slug Bug opportunities. We play slug bug (I'm the reigning champion, by the way) something fierce every time we're together. It's a no holds barred type of competition that can often lead to bruises, trash talking and sometimes grudges. :) The rules we play by are: new bugs are 1 point, old school ones are 2 points and dune buggies are 3 points! Out west here, you see more old school ones and dune buggies, so it's easier to rack up points.

Once Dave was done with work we headed northeast to Sheboygan (which is fun to say, btw) to go camping on massive Lake Michigan. We parked and walked around taking in the views of the water and the boats. We found a board walk and a cool surf shop. We camped at the Kohler-Andrae State Park which is right on the lake. It was a lot of fun and reminded me that camping can be fun when you're not doing it for work!

We set up our camp, a tent and hammock and then headed down to the lake to take in the views. The lake is amazing and I forgot how big it really is. The last time I saw it I was 8-years old. It really does look like an ocean with the beaches, waves and no land in site across the way.



For some reason there were a lot of little dead fish on the beach - we never found out why. For dinner we had some Pad Thai. It was actually really good for coming out of a "just add water" bag.
As the sun went down, we broke out our head lamps and made a camp fire, had some beers and just hung out and laughed and laughed and laughed. I loved it!

The next day was a lazy relaxing day. We took our time waking up, had some fruit and laid in the hammock. We made some lasagna for lunch (same as the Pad Thai) then got back in the hammock. We didn't have to be out of the campsite until 3pm so we took our sweet time, enjoying the woods. We headed back into Sheboygan and watched some surfers (in full wetsuits) catching some waves, walked along the piers and got a little fishing in.

Before we headed out back to Madison, we got some food at a restaurant called the Mucky Duck Shanty. Dave said the food was good and I wish I could agree, but a seagull stole my sandwich! Can you believe that?! We drove back to Madison and had a wonderful movie night in, popcorn and ice cream and everything! It's those little, simple things that mean so much when I only get to see my boyfriend about once every month and a half. Those little things that normal couples get to enjoy whenever they want. I've learned to cherish them.

Because of the holiday, we had a few get-together's to attend. First we headed down to Crystal Lake, IL, which is where Dave grew up and went to his brother Tim's house. He was having a BBQ with some friends, family and dogs! It was a lot of fun and the dogs were awesome. There was Annie, which is Tim's yellow lab, another yellow lab named Wally, a bull dog named Sally and a massive Bernese mountain dog named Putty. They were all so cute and got along so well with each other.
After that we went to his twin sister Heather's house. We spent the night there and went out for brunch the next day at a restaurant where Dave used to cut school! Tisk tisk. Who does that?! ;) We had another picnic to go to at his other sister, Tracy's house. It was nice and there was a lot of delicious food, not to mention two black labs! :) Before it got dark we headed back to the lake to catch the fireworks. We got to cuddle on the back of a pontoon boat and watch the show on the water. It was perfect. I loved being able to actually spend a holiday with him, it meant a lot to me that I was able to do that.

Lamoille - Week 3

After Kim and Andi left, I headed out on my third tour - marking the halfway point of my summer season and nearing the end of my AmeriCorp term! Again, this tour I didn't get any pictures of the actual work we're doing. (Sorry, I don't know why I'm so bad at this). So instead, I'll give you some background on the canyon and the town of Lamoille, where we're camping. One cool thing about this week, however, was that we were able to actually venture up the 13 miles into the canyon and see the rest of it. We're working on the very beginning so we haven't been able to see the really beautiful parts that we've heard so much about, until now.

Lamoille Canyon is located in the Ruby Mountains, which lie on the eastern edge of the state and is the largest valley in that mountain range. It's about 20 miles east of the town of Elko. The canyon was created by glaciers in past ice ages. Because of this it is considered a U-shaped valley verses the more common V-shaped valley which is created by rivers or streams. It's tallest peak is Thomas Peak, which rises 11,325ft. This canyon is also home to the end of the Ruby Crest Trail, a 38-mile trail which runs along the upper elevations of the actual crest.

The trail we're working on now is called the Secret-Lamoille Trail. It's designed in 4-phases and we're currently working on Phase 1. In the end the trail is going to be about 55-miles long running from Secret Pass to Lamoille Canyon entrance. If you take a look at this document it's an excellent overview and history of the whole project and you can read where we came into the plans. This trail is designed for mountain bikers, hikers and equestrians. The need for this trail came because of the lack of hike-able trails in lower elevations. This will allow access to the mountain range and beautiful canyon more months out of the year, while the upper canyon's snows melt away late into the summer. On the first day of our tour, our drive day, we were able to drive up to the top of the canyon. I'll leave you with some beautiful pictures to enjoy.

Summer is Flying By...

So far my summer has been back to back non-stop work and fun, hence the lack of blog updates! ;) But, with a recent development of Bronchitis, returning early from my tour and pretty much not being able to do anything without hacking up a rib, you'll get the full update of the past month or so that I've been behind! Now where did I leave you...?

Ah, yes, the trifecta. Lynne, Andi and Kim. What a week! The first morning we got up early and hit up a diner down the street called Joe's that has $1 mimosas from 7-9. We decided to take full advantage of that. :) Later in the week, we smartened up and just purchase bottles of champagne and a bottle of OJ. We did some pool lounging and of course ventured up into the mountains to see beautiful Lake Tahoe.

Later in the week we took a trip to San Francisco. It's only about a 4 hour drive from Reno so we left early Thursday morning to catch a 12:30 A's game in Oakland. Lucky us, it was Free Hot Dog Thursday! We were in the upper deck in the outfield but it was perfect view of the whole field and you couldn't beat the $8 face value ticket price.

Not a whole lot of people showed up for the game, it really threw us off coming from Fenway where every game is sold out. They were playing Kansas City too, and really, who watches them?! Also, the A's are just no where near the Red Sox. :-D It was cool to see Coco Crisp play again too, a former Sox player. It was a lot of fun to be at a baseball game again, my first of the season, sad to say.

After the game we drove downtown to San Fransisco to stay at our hotel, The Mandarin Oriental, thanks to Andi! We were instantly upgraded upon arrival and our room was AWESOME! We were on the 45th floor and had an awesome view of the bay and the Bay Bridge. We also got hot tea, cookies and chocolates just for arriving! What service!
Once we lounged around on the wonderfully comfy pillow top mattresses and took advantage of the incredible shower and bathroom, we hit the ground running. We walked down to Fisherman's Wharf for some dinner and drinks.

We even stumbled upon Pier 39 and saw some of the Sea Lions that are famous there! They were adorable and sounded so funny. It made my day just being by the ocean again and seeing marine life up close like that! :)

The next day we walked down and found the Full House house! It was cool to see and we were glad to see that we weren't the only people there taking pictures of this random house. There were a few other people there so we knew we had the right house.


Unfortunately, the door is no longer red. I feel like it should have been in the lease for the house that they had to keep that door red! Little Michelle or Comet didn't come running out like I had hoped though. I'd even take Uncle Jesse. ;) While walking back we checked out Presidio and Golden Gate Park and got a great view of the Golden Gate Bridge.

That night we headed back to Reno and spent the night in with some beers and played cards. I think we may have scared my roommate Chris by how gaseous we were, but I was glad to show him that I'm not the only girl that farts! O:-) It was fun just staying in, playing cards and laughing all night!

On Saturday, we took part in Reno's Wine Walk which was a lot of fun and something I've been meaning to do but just never got around to. About 30 or so local business's take part. You start at one of the locations where you purchase a wine glass for $20 (we learned too late, but the cool painted glasses are at the Gallery if you ever take part in it) and you're given a map. So you walk around town, check out these local shops, restaurants, bars and art galleries. They give you a sample of wine, red or white, and sometimes a little something extra depending on the place. We got some free samples of pizza, Thai food, hookah and egg rolls. It was a great way for me to discover a lot more of Reno than I had previous been exposed to. It's definitely worth the $20 and a nice way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

That night, the Reno Rodeo was in town so we thought, what the hell, why not?! None of us had ever been to the rodeo. It was interesting and definitely great people watching! It was cool to see the horses and how well trained they were but I did feel bad for the calves they were roping and tackling. :( One part I really did like, however, was when the announcer came on and reminded all the first time rodeo goers how well they treat their animals. They let all these mothers and babies into the ring to just run around. They were beautiful!


The last day of their visit we decided to just chill by the pool and take it easy. Unfortunately, I had to go grocery shopping for tour but I left the girls at the pool and promptly joined them when I returned. It was a great visit and I loved having them hear. I miss those girls! Fortunately, I get to see them again at the end of July when I head back East for my friend's wedding!