Guided Hikes and Reporters...

I'm planning a guided hike this Sunday--four miles round-trip. The Public Information Officer got in touch with a reporter who wanted to do a "preview" of the hike. Our volunteer and I had already been planning to walk the trail and talk about what we were going to do, so we invited the reporter and photographer to come with us and it ended up being a really fun day!

Unfortunately the day they showed up the power was out in the whole park so touring Buckland Station didn't really work out...but the rest of the hike was fine because we were outside the whole time. We hiked from the museum to Buckland Station, where my office is. The power was out so the alarms were going off and I couldn't make them stop completely. The reporter wanted to plug in his phone to charge it but he couldn't do that, and the beeping alarm made it so he couldn't have done any recordings anyway.. Neither the reporter or photographer had brought water, but thankfully I had a couple small bottles in the fridge in my office. They wanted to hurry back so they could charge their equipment to get voice-over recordings for their footage so we took a short cut back.

We ended up sitting in the reporter's truck so the phone could charge and we could get the recordings, which worked out pretty well--it was quiet at least! He called me tonight to say the article was finished and I could look at the video link. I think it turned out really well, and you would never know we had technical difficulties that day! Click here for the video!

Just for fun...

I was out with the camera last night just before dark, walking one of the park's trails...thought I'd share a few "just for fun" pictures I took.

Looking up...

Cottonwood stand in the campground.

Waxing Gibbous Moon (looked it up on earthsky.org)

Parks Academy Pictures

I got an e-mail with a bunch of pictures from the Parks Academy...so now I have a few pictures of me talking in front of lots of people and I don't look scared! (in most of them...)

View of the crowd from the front of the room...

Lots of park rangers, park supervisors, park interpreters, maintenance staff and administrators...and I actually think that's me in front, just to the right of the screen. I looked over at my boss and his friend and they were laughing. Later they told me they were laughing because I'm not much taller than the podium...at least I can make people laugh :)

...and me, standing in front of all of them with a microphone! It ended up being a lot more fun than I thought it was going to be and now I know that speaking in front of a group of people that I know and work with won't kill me after all.

Parks Academy: Part Two

Well, my talk at the Parks Academy went way better than I expected it to! It was Wednesday morning, and it started right around 9:45 a.m. I talked for a solid 1/2 hour (I think) and it seemed like people were paying attention...except a few who were laughing because I wasn't quite tall enough to really be seen over the podium...!

I was really, really, really nervous for the first few minutes. Then I had a skit that I added at the last minute--a law enforcement ranger and a misbehaving park visitor. After that it was like someone flipped a switch. The nerves went away and I started having fun. The chocolate chip cookies I passed around helped a little too...

Anyway the rest of the Academy was fun--good presentations and two field trips that were great. We went to Oatman, AZ. It's a historic mining town sort of like Virginia City, NV with not-so-wild burrows walking around the town looking for handouts. Of course, I had to spend $1 on burrow food (compressed alfalfa)--big mistake! They follow you everywhere and if you ignore them, you get head-butted or bitten. One head-butted my knee so I ended up dumping the rest of the food on the ground for whoever wanted to fight over it. Oops....

The 2nd field trip was to Big Bend of the Colorado State Park and a rock art site close by.

...so I guess that I learned speaking in front of a group of 60+ people I work with won't kill me after all :)

Park Academy

Yay! I get to do a talk in front of 65 park rangers on Wednesday morning at 9:30! (I'm trying to be excited about it...) I can do the talk without my notes right now, I just have to not get nervous and forget everything I've worked on for the past month and a half :)

Parks rented two inmate vans from the Nevada Division of Forestry so we are all carpooling down to Laughlin. They're picking me up in Yerington at 6:45 a.m. and we're supposed to be there by around 4 p.m. I've never been to Laughlin so that part is cool! There are other presenters--it's like a giant staff meeting where everyone gets together every couple years. Because of budget cuts it's been 6 years since the last park academy.

Me talking to a group of Boy Scouts...interpretive program.

 

Me on a full moon hike in the summer...doing interpretation.

 

I'm going to be doing a 30 minute slide show on interpretation--what it is and how to do it. I've got about 60 slides so I'm hoping it should go by pretty fast. Then there is a 15 minute break and I'm breaking everyone up into 8 groups to start developing their own interpretive program with props that I'm going to give them.  There are two of us doing this talk--Dana is going after me with a lot more information about designing interpretive panels, using the sign manual and developing an interpretive plan for each park. My presentation covers the who, what, when, where, why and how of interpretation. This was a surprise too--one day I got an e-mail saying I was a speaker at the academy and "here's the agenda!" haha

 

I'm always nervous before a presentation like this--mostly because it's people I know! So wish all of us presenters luck!! (I need it!)

Lake Tahoe with the Fam

Around the middle of July, my step parents, Norm and Judy, came to visit. They stayed at Lake Tahoe for a week and I took 6 days off work to stay with them and sight-see. Dave had to work for a few of those days, but then he joined us for the weekend. It was great being up in the mountains while the temps in the valley reached 106 and 107!! Of course the day I had to drive back down the mountain it was 106 and then 107 the next day at work...I could have stayed up there!

My first time ever swimming in Lake Tahoe!! The water was awesome...and so clear!!

Hanging out on the beach...

For a park ranger, I have really, really white legs!

Spent some time at the Tallac Historic Site. We were surrounded by these fancy old estates and other buildings--what do we take pictures of? The cute chipmunks!

Dave joined us for a dinner cruise for their 15th anniversary on the Tahoe Queen. Good dinner, great views and live music!

Short Update

I can't write long today but I realized it's been a LONG time since I posted last! Work's going pretty well, keeping me busy...and recently it's been decided that we all need to learn Spanish so I've been having fun with that. I took Spanish in Jr. High and high school, but that's about it. I tried to learn German while working at Dead Horse Point, and that was fun, but haven't really done anything here language-wise. We have online classes and I ordered CDs from the library so that should help. So far I'm up to 3 hours online.

I've been at this job almost 2 years now (wow!) and have lost about 15 pounds!!!!! I've got 5 more to go before I can celebrate losing 20 pounds and getting back (almost) to my pre-Dave weight...but I finally can fit into a size 6 again--Dave finally made me go shopping and get some clothes that aren't baggy on me. Soon I will be able to post a picture--once I learn to use his computer to post pictures on here!

We're going to his sister's wedding this weekend at Lake Tahoe and I managed to get 4 days off work for it--so excited!