Yellowstone

June is going by fast...

I'm in Yellowstone now, and am enjoying my first weekend off after my first week of work. My schedule is pretty cool, we work 9 hours days but then get every other Friday off, so I'm looking forward to having all that time to explore the park. I've spent my evenings so far pouring over maps and 12 weekends isn't even going to make a very large dent in the amount of things one can do here. This place is huge.

I'll write more about my job when I actually know what I'm doing, I'm still getting introduced and feeling out my projects. I did get to go on a couple field assignments this past week, which was fun. We were mapping some lake and stream features with a GPS, though the tourists kept asking us if we were tracking wolves. This park was set aside for the thermal features, but has really become much more of a wildlife park I feel. And the wildlife doesn't disappoint either. In my first week here I've seen Moose, Bison, Elk, Black Bear, Coyote, Badger, Osprey, Big Horn Sheep, and Sand Hill Cranes.

I had a great drive to get up here too. Stopped by a couple NPS sites in OK and NE and otherwise got accustomed to driving my new Subaru. More posts to come as I get more settled, this is going to be a great summer.

The Jeep is Dead. Long live The Jeep.

I knew this day would come. I knew it was getting closer and closer with every mile I drove, but the inevitability of the Jeep's demise did nothing to stop me from becoming more and more attached each time I loaded it up, ready to set off on our next adventure. If it is possible to love an inanimate object, I loved The Jeep. That vehicle was as much a part of my college experience as any building at Dartmouth, or any dorm or apartment I've ever lived in. It was the perfect car at the perfect time, and I will miss it dearly.

This past winter the Jeep had a terrible time starting in the cold and altitude of Colorado. There's a chance I might be in Colorado this coming winter, and I knew the Jeep didn't have another cold season in it. The Jeep would not see 2010. This put the cost of repairs for it on a very short leash. This past week at its latest oil change the inspection turned up $500 worth of fluid flushes and leak fixes, and that was enough. The Blue Book value on the Jeep is about $800. I took it for a drive on Wednesday to get it over 190,000 miles, and then my mom and I traded it in for a new Subaru Forester. The Jeep was 15 years, 8 months old. Old enough to drive itself under adult supervision.

The Jeep was born in Colorado in 1993. It had an exciting early life with numerous trips to ski areas, off-roading in the Great Sand Dunes, and road trips to the Dakotas and Pacific Northwest. It spent the years 1994-2003 primarily in Oklahoma as a commuter vehicle, escaping briefly a few times a year on road trips to Colorado and New Mexico. In 2001 I learned how to drive in it. In 2002 I became the primary driver of the Jeep, and drove it to school every day of my Junior and Senior years of high school. It allowed me to commute to the other high school in town to take a class not offered at my school, and was often taken to lunch since it could hold 5 people a lot more comfortably than my best friend's Civic.

The Jeep surpassed 100,000 miles in September 2003 as my Mom and I drove up for my freshman year at Dartmouth. Sophomore year I took sole possession of the Jeep. The Jeep almost met its end in April 2005, but I convinced my mom to fix the transmission for 3 grand as opposed to buying me a new car. My sophomore, junior, and senior year at Dartmouth the Jeep attended nearly every tournament with Dartmouth Ultimate. It went on spring break. It hauled a pong table. It moved nearly the entire capacity of 311 Mid Mass in one trip. It drove between Oklahoma and Dartmouth 10 times while I was an undergrad. It carried me through snow covered roads on the way to Killington, Stowe, and the Dartmouth Skiway. It took me down to Boston to visit Tyke God only knows how many times. The Jeep could hold all the food, cones, and other supplies necessary to host a frisbee tournament for 30 teams. I'm willing to bet 4 out of 5 people who see this post have ridden in the Jeep for at least a few hours.

The Jeep moved with me to Wisconsin. It went over 150,000 miles in Madison in June 2007, and quickly became legend amongst the Pimpdags, especially those who spent 2 hours in it sitting in the parking lot of a porn shop in the middle of nowhere when the serpentine belt broke on Spring Break. It did the most serious off-roading of its life on the Como Road in August 2008 in Colorado. The Jeep spent its last weeks residing in Guadalupe Mountains National Park, before embarking on its last road trip ever to bring me back to Oklahoma.

In its life the Jeep made it to 43 of the states in this country, and reached the highest point in 6 of them. And the Jeep's life is not necessarily over. The Subaru dealer will sell it to a smaller auto shop, where it will be either scrapped for parts or sold to a new owner. My hope is that someone sees the Jeep as I have seen it, and it gets to live out the rest of its days on a ranch, or helping a teenager learn how to drive and maintain a car, or I can only hope, somewhere, anywhere, where it can face the west, the orange light of sunset glinting of its red hood, and imagine the mountains that must lie just past the horizon.

The Jeep is dead. Long live the Jeep. R.I.P. October 1993 - June 2009.

The Five Coolest Things I Saw in the Guadalupe Mountains

My internship at GUMO is now over. I departed in glorious fashion, giving my geology patio talk to 4 people at the visitor center in my last half hour work. One of the interp rangers asked me as I was leaving that day if it felt anticlimactic, but actually, thanks to that presentation, and how smoothly it went compared to the first time I gave it, my end felt quite climactic and conclusive.

I have some time at home now, so I'll write a couple wrap-up posts before heading off to Yellowstone next week. Today, the subject is the coolest things I saw, by which I mean singular moments, not certain sights.

#5: On my 17 mile hike of Bush Mountain I stumbled upon 2 Barbary Sheep. Barbary Sheep are similar to Big Horn Sheep, but are actually from Africa and were imported for hunting in the early 20th century after the native Big Horn went extinct in this region. The on-alert pose for a Barbary Sheep is a classic, majestic, thrusting out of the chest with the head held high, but I couldn't get a picture of it because they quickly dashed off into the oak thickets near Bush Mountain before I could get my camera out.

#4: While hiking the Bowl one weekend I saw my first and so far only rattlesnake, a black-tailed rattlesnake to be exact. It was sitting on a stump next to the trail and saw me first and started rattling. I had never heard that sound before, but anyone would know that sound when they heard it. I jumped a couple feet in the air and quickly backed off to a safe distance. The snake still thought I was too close though, and kept rattling and sitting a striking posture, allowing me to get a great picture from about 10 feet away.

#3: One day the park fire crew decided to do a prescribed burn in the park along the ridge next to the highway. I was off that day and was returning from Carlsbad at night when I saw the mountains glowing with flame in the darkness. It was an eirie sight to see the park on fire as I stood outside my house. Apparently the burn took a little longer to put out than was predicted. My friend in the fire crew said she worked 16 hours straight that day.

#2: On the night of the full moon in May one of the park employees had her annual mother's day bash at her ranch house near Dell City, TX. I stayed there until 1 am and ate 4 plates of the best BBQ brisket ever while meeting the locals and watching the moon rise over the western escarpment cliffs. I got back to the park at 2:30 and managed to sustain the will power to take a one hour nap before getting up and setting off on the Guadalupe Peak trail at 4am under the full moon. I summitted just before 6 am, in time to see the run rise from the highest point in Texas. I took about 40 pictures in 15 minutes before taking a 2 hour nap. All in all I had the top to myself for 4 hours.

#1: In mid May we had an abnormal amount of rain for 3 days straight. That was enough to flood McKittrick canyon for 2 days. The waters washed away entirely one of the steam crossings on the canyon trail, which was closed for 3 days. It was spectacular seeing the stream full of water after hiking it when it was dry so many times. Talking to the rangers who have been in the park for a decade or more, flooding of this extent only happens once every 3-4 years.