Here I am, nearing the end of week three here in the Mt. Hood national forest. I've been a little bummed this week, spirits aren't necessarily high(if you will) because my family is on our yearly trip to Snowbird this week and I've never missed it before this year. All of us interns are getting a bit of cabin fever. Stick a bunch of city kids from around the nation in a huge forest and thats bound to happen.
Thats not to say we haven't gotten to do a lot of cool things since we got here. I've had some great experiences and learned a LOT.
Last weekend we all took a trip down to Portland and got lost in the Powell book store, which is absolutely huge. I didn't even know where to start when we walked in because there were 3 floors of books. The store takes up a whole city block and is really cool. After we were all booked out, we headed to the River to the Saturday market, which was really cool because the annual Rose Festival happened to be going on that day. It was like a giant carnival with rides and booths of jewelry, wood carvings, food, soaps, clothes etc. to look at and buy. There were also dragon races going on on the river which we all wiggled our way into the crowd to watch.
This week has not been super eventful. But you know you're in Oregon when you take your Forest ranger Expedition out into the back country to explore and find a lonely truck stuck in 2 feet deep snow and have to work together to dig the truck out so the driver isn't stuck there for days and days. That was interesting. Good old snow capped volcanoes of the Cascade mountain range.
The other day, another intern and I went over to Wildwood, which is a pretty nature park a couple miles away. We walked on the boards they have over a giant marshland and watched a beaver making his dam. We also watched a bunch of Rough skinned newts swimming around. They are SO cute to watch swim because they sort of waddle through the water. We also watched a family of ducks swim around and there were plenty of birds chirping and flying by, which we are now able to identify pretty well because of the training we've been going through.
Tomorrow I lead my first official tour of the Timberline lodge which I'm glad to finally be getting over with. Now I'm just working on several other presentations I'll be doing with visitors starting within the next couple of weeks.
Well thats it for now. More updates from the beaver state are coming.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Monday, June 1, 2009
Pictures from Oregon. Week #1
Picture #1 is my cabin. Where I chill when I'm not out and about having adventures in the Mt. Hood National Forest
Picture #2 is the view from Mirror Lake, where I'll be hiking to a bunch this summer. I took this pic my first trip to the Lake
Picture #3 it Tamanawas Falls. Notice the cave behind it where we hung out for a while.
Greetings from the Beaver State!
Well, with Mom's wedding come and past, I find myself here at the base of Mt. Hood. It is beautiful here but SO different from life back in Utah.
I've been here about a week now and it has been an adventure for sure. I've already gotten to do so many great things.
There are 5 of us interns. 3 girls and 2 boys. We are from North Carolina, Missouri(2), Michigan, and Utah. We are all so different and it took until about Thursday for us to really open up to eachother, but we're having fun now and starting to be ourselves around each other. Being LDS, I stick out from the group as well as the locals like a sore thumb. I'm not saying thats a bad thing, it is just taking everyone some getting used to because I live differently than the others here.
Here are some of the interesting things I've gotten to do since last Monday...
- I have hiked miles and miles. My favorites include the Beautiful view from the top of Hunchback Trail, and Tamanawas falls- where we interns were stuck in a HUGE hail storm.
-We also got to help the Mt. Hood fishery with their smolt traps. Smolt traps are traps in which the forest service catch young fish such as Steelhead trout, and Coho Salmon and study them to make sure they are healthy and abundant in the rivers that flow off of Mt. Hood. We got to hold the fish in order to weigh them, measure them, and give them tatoos so we can track them.
-We also have spent time up at the Timberline Lodge, a ski lodge built halfway up Mt. Hood in 1937. It is an amazing lodge where we as interns will be leading tours and working a lot this summer. Mt. Hood is the second most climbed mountain in the world. I've been halfway up it!
-We have spent a lot of time exploring the area and have visited some beautiful waterfalls and tourist areas around the Columbia River Gorge. Including the Columbia River Gorge museum, where we met a bald eagle who lost a wing and is kept alive and in good care. We also met some injured owls and a Paragen Falcon.
-Some other things on our to-do list for the next several weeks here at the ranger station and around the mountain include... snowboarding at Timberline Lodge, Bungee jumping at the Ski-bowl recreation area nearby, leading some campfire talks and hikes for tourists, backpacking, CPR training, researching multiple topics concerning the mountain, and kayaking the Salmon river! We looked into some Kite Boarding lessons on the river, but at $180 per person, we were quickly detered from the idea.
Well friends, those are my adventures so far! I'll be back and willing to share my upcoming adventures soon!
I've been here about a week now and it has been an adventure for sure. I've already gotten to do so many great things.
There are 5 of us interns. 3 girls and 2 boys. We are from North Carolina, Missouri(2), Michigan, and Utah. We are all so different and it took until about Thursday for us to really open up to eachother, but we're having fun now and starting to be ourselves around each other. Being LDS, I stick out from the group as well as the locals like a sore thumb. I'm not saying thats a bad thing, it is just taking everyone some getting used to because I live differently than the others here.
Here are some of the interesting things I've gotten to do since last Monday...
- I have hiked miles and miles. My favorites include the Beautiful view from the top of Hunchback Trail, and Tamanawas falls- where we interns were stuck in a HUGE hail storm.
-We also got to help the Mt. Hood fishery with their smolt traps. Smolt traps are traps in which the forest service catch young fish such as Steelhead trout, and Coho Salmon and study them to make sure they are healthy and abundant in the rivers that flow off of Mt. Hood. We got to hold the fish in order to weigh them, measure them, and give them tatoos so we can track them.
-We also have spent time up at the Timberline Lodge, a ski lodge built halfway up Mt. Hood in 1937. It is an amazing lodge where we as interns will be leading tours and working a lot this summer. Mt. Hood is the second most climbed mountain in the world. I've been halfway up it!
-We have spent a lot of time exploring the area and have visited some beautiful waterfalls and tourist areas around the Columbia River Gorge. Including the Columbia River Gorge museum, where we met a bald eagle who lost a wing and is kept alive and in good care. We also met some injured owls and a Paragen Falcon.
-Some other things on our to-do list for the next several weeks here at the ranger station and around the mountain include... snowboarding at Timberline Lodge, Bungee jumping at the Ski-bowl recreation area nearby, leading some campfire talks and hikes for tourists, backpacking, CPR training, researching multiple topics concerning the mountain, and kayaking the Salmon river! We looked into some Kite Boarding lessons on the river, but at $180 per person, we were quickly detered from the idea.
Well friends, those are my adventures so far! I'll be back and willing to share my upcoming adventures soon!
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