Ok, here we go... photos galore!

Finally home and catching up on everything! First album... moose, moose, moose!
The fox, "Boots", outside of the Bears Den in Grand Lake, taken by my camera phone at night.

Always running errands... gets in the way of fun!

Quick! Go online and order plane tickets to visit me!

I got a Farewatcher alert from Travelocity - $175 round trip tickets to Denver! I don't know what the restrictions are or how long it will last... Do it! Do it! Do it!

It's absolutely beautiful outside right now; Joe is on his way to REALLY go for a hike this time. I'm online trying to catch up with everything I can't do while I am on the West side.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MATT! It's my little bro's 14th today!

Usually I work four 10 hour days... This week, since we have so much going on, I stayed in Grand Lake through yesterday (Friday). Even though it's always much colder and snowier on that side of the continental divide, I am really enjoying my time over there. Of course, I just had to go and get an overuse injury from tearing at those logs and slash with a little too much enthusiasm... So I spent the week mostly flagging trees to be sprayed or for pheromone packets to repel the beetles. By the time I get done flagging everything, I will have marked about 2,000 trees. Phew.

We also got this thing called an Air Curtain Burner - it's a big dumpster that blows air and incinerates logs - so I got to help out on that a bit. Also got a little bit of overtime checking on it in the middle of the night to make sure it didn't start a forest fire. 52 hours of work this week, yippee!

... And all that money is going to my new used vehicle I hope to purchase in the next few weeks. Probably a Toyota pickup, since that's THE vehicle of choice out here. I was accelerating in Focus today, and the engine just SHUT DOWN. I restarted the car and it was fine... but yeah, methinks it's time to move on.

The West side is just one big sleep-deprived party - we eat out every night (don't feel like hauling our cooking utensils back and forth) and usually end up at the Lariat Saloon to play pool or trivia (we formed our own team, The East Siders... and lost, but not by a lot! Next week is our week!!), and pet the wolf-dog Otis and everybody else's mutts. One evening, Sandy and Doug hosted a Mai Tai Party in honor of a former coworker, and also in honor of their friend Susie who used to work for Rocky... she went to Haleakala NP in Hawaii and died when a rock fell off a cliff while she was clearing a road. It was also a little tribute to Jeff Christensen, the ranger who died in 2005.  They went to visit their friend who actually got the job that their deceased friend Susie had... Very strange. Anyway, they showed home videos of their trip out there and served up the best Mai Tais ever! There were quite a few people there; of course, Ron, Cisco, Travis and I were feeling pretty good by the end of the night!

Oh, and Sandy and Doug invited me to Hawaii with them in February... the only thing I have to pay for is airfare (~$600 or less from Denver!) and food and drinks!  Heck, maybe I'll even try to get a job there. Why not?! I heard it's relatively easy to get a seasonal job there... but near impossible to stay. I'm up for a challenge! ;)

Scott, whom I worked with in 2003, and Dayle came over from the East side to help us out, so those two, Mark and I took over the pool table (and I adopted the juke box) and the bowling alley... and the story ends with Mark standing outside the truck with a frozen trout in his hand, decided whether we would go back to the bar or cook turkey-dogs over the fire at the Air Burner. It doesn't sound that funny, but it was.

Anyway gotta jet before Joe gets here! So much going on, I know I am forgetting a bunch. Probably getting my own apartment, since it looks like I will be getting a roommate in June. Yuck!

Oh, lots and lots of moose pics to add later. Also saw a pine marten but the little bugger was too fast for me!

Here is the obituary for Dick Ingalls:

"Age 45 of Redford. May 4, 2006. Loving brother of Kathleen Hefni (Mohamed), Joanne Ingalls McKay, Paula McCue (Mike), William (Kathy Taves), Thomas (Donell), Mary, John, and Barbara. Preceeded in death by his loving wife Robin, father Richard, mother Mary, and sister Shirley. Also survived by 14 nephews and nieces. Visitation will be at Harry J. Will Funeral Home, at 34567 Michigan Ave, Wayne, MI on May 7, 2006 from 2-7 p.m. Internment after cremation at United Memorial Gardens, Curtis Rd, Plymouth Township. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the American Cancer Society of Michigan in honor of Dick's wife Robin Ingalls."

Sad news about an O.P. coworker

Joe just called to tell me that one of our O.P. coworkers died of a heart attack at work yesterday. I was on the tree crew with Dick for a few weeks; he was a quiet, laid-back guy who always managed to keep his head above the negativity and crap at work. His dad had just passed away earlier this winter; a few days later, his wife died - she had cancer but was expected to live at least 6 months. Right before I left for Colorado, he came up to me and said "Want to see a picture of my girlfriend?" and handed me a photo of his 1940-something Indian motorcycle - a very sweet bike.

Wow, I am really glad him and I had a chance to talk a little bit before I left. He was just so quiet, but one day we just started talking. He was trying to get money to go to HVAC school and move up north. I kept trying to convince him to move to Colorado, because it's the place to be!

Very sad. :(  And just shocked. I have lots to type and pics to put up, but not really in the mood right now. He didn't have any kids, but 2 dogs. Those poor puppers. Yeah, don't know what else to say, just shocked. Dick was such a good guy...

Trail log and photos from Susan's Birthday

Fern Falls breaking through the snow

The photo album for today is from Susan's birthday back in March. We went to Friday's... and I guess when you tell them it's somebody's birthday, they come by all throughout dinner and tie balloons all over the person. Needless to say, anybody that knows Sue can imagine that she wasn't too keen with people trying to tie balloons to her arms and her head... She put a stop to that very quickly, but it sure was funny to watch her get ticked off!

I am going to keep track of the trails I hike this year. I had done it in 2003 but I can't remember how many gazillion miles I logged that year.

Today's Trail: Fern Falls, 6.6 miles round trip (trailhead was closed so added 1.6 miles to distance). Originally planned on hiking to Fern Lake but the weather kept changing from blue sky and fluffy white clouds, to total cloud cover and light rain, then nice again. There is still some snow along the trail when you get near the falls (and probably all the way to the Lake), but was firm enough that I didn't post-hole at all (which would have sucked, since I was wearing shorts!) By the time I returned to my car, the mountains were enclosed by clouds - good thing I turned around!

I had planned on doing this hike yesterday with Joe, but he forgot his hiking boots! GOSH! He's not a very good mountain man, ha ha! I gave him the grand tour of the Park and we did some hiking around Lumpy Ridge... where he found a dead elk, which was kindof neat in its own morbid way. Coincidentally, we were eating deep-fried ice cream at Ed's when the bartender introduced us to the guy right next to us... who owns the only official tree company in town, Mike's (and the guy's name was not Mike, but Adam... he just bought the company). It's a small world up here!

...Now, I'm talking to a few bikers here in the coffee shop about winter here - guess it's really really windy, but they ride every month of the year up here too. Don't really get snow accumulation either. It's great talking to locals! Don, Marcy and Steve. Need to remember that!

That's all for now, I've got my Sunday routine to follow - Desperate Housewives and Grey's Anatomy tonite, pack up my stuff so I can head West again for the week, catch up on email, blah blah blah.

Enjoying the peace and quiet while it lasts...

I have a little bit of  time this morning to not only catch up a little better on this journal, but also call everybody that has been great enough to try to get ahold of me lately - been so busy with work, play, and life in general, time just flies when you have phone calls to return! So I'm back in the coffee shop, drinking a mexican mocha (with cayenne pepper)! Can you tell I'm having fun?

A little tidbit of Rocky Mt. National Park information:  They just released the Elk Management Proposal for public review this past week. It might not seem like a big deal, but the day they released it to the press, the park was swarming with news reporters and video cameras. There's just too many elk in the park, plain and simple. Hunting is not allowed and they have no real natural predators here (though I've heard the coyotes sometimes hunt in packs like wolves and have taken a rare sick or young elk down), so the population has exploded and taken quite a toll on the vegetation and resources in the park. The park has been working on this before I worked here in 2003, and their recommended action is to cull the herd through hunting - not just for the general public, but by rangers and/or other private individuals doing it at night, as not to disturb people. The scientists and employees in general, including myself, all favor this choice. A few of us are really into the idea of reintroducing wolves... but that's a bit more complicated.

Unfortunately, the general public doesn't want to see Bambi get shot, so to speak. It doesn't help when the news plasters personified images of "baby elk sticking its tongue out to catch snowflakes" and portreys hunting as murder. It will be interesting to see what happens. I'm pro-wolf in general, but there's gotta be good science and good management to deal with the complications of human-wolf interaction. The park needs that natural balance of predator-prey, and until/if ever wolves are "welcome" here, hunting is the best choice. Read it yourself if you feel so inclinded and see what you think! It's out there for public comment, and if you have an option, let them know! Unless you don't favor hunting. Ha ha just kidding. :)  The National Parks belong to everybody, and we all have a say in how they are managed.

**********************************************************

Didn't plan on spouting off dorky science stuff, but I love this place. The park is so central to this community, my livelihood, my social life, and my hobbies... it gets a little personal sometimes. :)

I think I was briefly explaning what I've been up to and why I've been so busy. Cisco and I are the only people devoted to Mountain Pine Beetle (MPB) and hazard tree work... and since the problem is so severe, we have our work cut out for us. We are given a lot of freedom and not much supervision to accomplish our tasks, because we just have SO MUCH to do - it feels good to be important and trusted enough to have say in how and when things get done, despite that we are both only seasonal.

The next couple weeks are hectic. We have until mid-June at the latest to accomplish any active MPB work - that's when the beetles fly, and once they spread to new trees there isn't much that we can do. We are getting this huge dumpster-like bin called an "air curtain burner" on Monday on the West side, where we will be burning the mass quantity of beetle-killed trees for the next month. And we all know how much I enjoy a good bonfire! Next week, the pesticide contractors are coming to spray the trees we have been marking to protect them... we've been so busy though that as of right now, we still have 700 trees to mark. Not sure how that is going to work out, with the Air Curtain Burner going on, plus we need to supervise the contractors on both the East and the West sides... Then, there's always hazard tree work that pops up unexpectedly.

Oh, and it makes it a lot harder when the park goes from being relatively quiet in April (~67,000 in April last year) to busy (I think ~117k in May) to insane (~600k+ in July??) and we have to shut down roads or work in campground areas. It makes it that much harder. Should be fun! :)

For 4-5 days a week, I live in an apartment in Granby and party with the laid back, great folks on that side. Met a lot of cool people - Mark, Keith, Doug and Sandy, the trivia team - drank a few and watched too much Denver sports... I miss the Wings! On the weekends, I live in Estes at my "real" apartment, you know the one with all my stuff. This weekend, a lot of people are moving in and starting on Monday, so our housing area will no longer be as quiet as it as been. Probably the weekly/nightly bonfires and too many parties will start up. As if I'm not already sleep deprived! And I mean that in a good way! :)

Speaking of sleep deprived, I finally got to hang out with one of the former crew leaders, Lonnie. It was a pleasant surprise to find out that he is still around. Him, Cisco and I tore it up until 4 am Thursday night, watching the Nuggets and catching up at Kelli's Dance Club (real hoppin' place too, with like 6 of us there, ha ha!)... I left my car downtown because I don't drink and drive, so Cisco drove us all home. Of course, the next morning when I biked the few miles from my apartment to my car, it decided to get cold and snowy again. That's what I get for being a responsible drunk I guess! Anyway, Lonnie is big into running so if I get up to speed I'll have somebody to train with. It will be a while before I can keep up with him though!  

Now I'm just hanging out, waiting for Joe to show up so I can introduce him to "real" mountain living up here! The weather is cold but I think we're going to go for my first hike in the park since I arrived. Hell, I haven't even driven all the way up Trail Ridge Road to where it is closed yet either... probably do that too!

Speaking of TRR, I met the guys that drive those HUGE plows and rotor-snowplow thing (I need to get a picture of it on here) and they said they are 4 miles from the Alpine Visitor Center - the top of the road. At this point, the snow is SO DEEP that it's a matter of how many FEET closer they get per day - 25+ ft. snow banks, a little at a time. I am going up there and if I am VERY nice, Doug might let me operate some of the equipment. They hope to open the road by Memorial Day, like usual.

Oh yeah, one more cool funny thing (at least to me) - I got trained how to operate a 13 speed dump truck last week! The ones at my last job were all automatic, and I never drive standard CARS... so it was quite a treat to learn how to deal with that split-speed transmission, old school beast! Jake brake and everything! I gave poor Ron whiplash at least a couple times but picked up on it pretty quick I suppose. Let me say this - it is honestly a work out to double clutch and shift through all those gears!

Off to adventure into the wilderness! Miss you all! And I have to give a big thank you to the people that helped me through my last week in Michigan - Linda, for driving out to help me move and drive back and forth too many times, my stepdad for his last minute life-saving help fitting everything in storage and cleaning my apartment, and a certain somebody who took off work to help me chill out and relax while playing Grand Theft Auto... That was a rough week and without them, I would have never gotten everything done and kept my sanity. And of course everybody else who took me out for my birthday and all those going away parties and for understanding when I just left without really saying goodbye... Thanks for being so awesome!