I have just under a month left here at Custer State Park, and it's finally hitting me that I really should have been doing fun things on my days off instead of watching Netflix and blogging (though I'm sure everyone appreciates the latter). But honestly, that's what I would do on a normal weekend...absolutely nothing. Relaxing after a busy work week is always really nice.
But a few days ago Kaitlin had suggested that we go hike Harney Peak, which I had been putting off ALL SUMMER! I remember being here for vacation when I was little and my brother and father hiked it while my mom and I stayed behind and did who-knows-what. In my mind I had this picture of climbing Mount Doom from "Lord of the Rings", but I would have hated myself if I was out here for 4 months and didn't even try, so I hopped on board.
In the morning we took off in a group of 6 and headed up to Sylvan Lake (thankfully not on Needles Highway. No need to vomit before even starting the strenuous climb). We didn't get as early of a start as we should have, so we headed straight for the trail before it got too hot out. Luckily clouds and a nice breeze came out and the hike was AWESOME!
Looks pretty high, but just a small overlook in the bottom half of the trail.
Got out of Custer State Park for a day. Almost didn't know what to do with myself.
Finally made it to the top! After some rock scrambling we got over to this awesome spot.
We're pretty tough chicks.
I hope I didn't disturb it by taking its picture...maybe I should have asked first.
Tried to do the "object in the hand" thing. Almost worked, but still neat.
Impending doom clouds. Totally Mount Doom.
McGillycuddy!
Found a little cave...my inner Gollum came out.
Just kidding! It's me, Smeagol! Filthy hobbitses...
*singing* How much is that Kaitlin in the window?
It's hard NOT to feel powerful after climbing Harney Peak and having this all around you.
Definitely not as bad as I thought it would be. I wasn't even tired enough to skip my evening run later on. At night a group of us headed to the Black Hills Playhouse show "Children of Eden", which was semi-entertaining, but would have been more enjoyable if I wasn't completely pooped and up way past my bedtime.
That's all for now! Have a great day and a happy morrow!
My Sunday morning was switched up a bit by having to do our "Hook 'Em and Cook 'Em" program instead of programs at the PNVC, but who is going to complain about getting to fish for 2 hours, right? Plus I got an awesome above-knee tan with my new shorts. It's the little things, guys. Anywhoozles, straight after I jetted up to Center Lake to meet Kaitlin for canoeing.
Visitors that had been at fishing had arrived early and were anxiously awaiting the canoes when I saw it breaking the horizon. The glorious red truck. However, my joy was quickly dashed to the ground when I heard terrifying scraping noises coming from the canoe trailer. In one glance I could tell something was terribly wrong. The front wheel of the trailer was on the ground alright...but it certainly wasn't turning. The front bar had bent to, oh, I don't know, maybe a 30 degree angle when it's SUPPOSED to be straight. Awesome.
While the visitors were distracted by Kaitlin and signing their lives away with our waivers, I made an emergency call to one of our supervisors because there was NO WAY we were getting that trailer back to Sun City. Eventually we got Steve from the shop out there to check it out. He took one look at the trailer. There was no sugar-coating it...we were screwed. Steve managed to temporarily mend it enough to haul it off to the shop to possibly fix it when Kaitlin and I stumbled upon the realization that we were NOT getting that trailer back anytime soon, and we had no means of hauling all the canoes. Luckily Steve had brilliantly already formed a plan while we were running around trying to accommodate our 38 canoers!
At 3 PM the visitors departed and three heroes came to our rescue! Shop Steve, Campground Supervisor Mark, and Blue Bell Host Paul, all drove up in their state trucks to help us transport the canoes back to Sun City. (Oh, P.S., Steve brought us all cold sodas. He's the bomb.) After miraculously fitting the canoes in the truck beds and strapping them down we took off to Sun City. I can imagine the visitors were griping at our inefficient convoy, but thank goodness this isn't a common problem we have.
"COME ON AND JOIN OUR CONVOY...!"
At least we were trying to have fun with this...
Kaitlin has had TERRIBLE luck with driving the canoe trailer.
And although Paul was trying to get out of the way,
it simply looks like he's doing a Russian dance.
Tried to multitask. Was untying knots when the canoe started to fall...
"I'LL JUST HOLD IT WITH MY BUTT!" Classic Beth.
Six little canoes, all in a row. With nothing to wear and nowhere to go.
After unloading all the canoes our heroes departed and Kaitlin and I went on our merry way, as it was thankfully the end of our work days. I don't know if I could have been trusted to do something functional after that. In fact, we went and got ice cream. Complete win.
So I hope your day was just as eventful, but maybe a little less hectic than ours. Have a great day and a happy morrow!
I'm amazed by many things that we get paid to do, but today it just happened to be hiking. I went on an adventure to Prairie Trail during my plan time because I had NO IDEA what ANY of the flowers were and I have to lead a guided hike tomorrow. Oops. I'm going to upload all the plants in a special prairie entry so it can be at least semi-educational.
But as I was exploring I narrowly evaded a thunderstorm by about 10 minutes. Good thing I got bored and realized my work day was done so I hurried the last part of the trail. I caught some great glimpses of the clouds/storm over various parts of the southern end of the park, so I'll put those down below!
Update:
The hike went "hikingly"?! There was definitely no swimming. Before we hiked we took a detour onto Fisherman Flats because the bison herd was out. The family of 5 I had REALLY enjoyed that, and let's be honest, so did I. I can pretend to be sick of the bison, but it's still neat to be caught in the middle of the herd and just watch them.
And I must be doing my job because I got a $10 tip! Of course we have to put it in the donation box for the Visitor's Center, but hey, the gesture still counts!
Ran into some pronghorn and their little ones!
"I whip my tail back and forth!"
If you look close on the left you can see what would be a failed mating attempt. I tried so hard not to laugh. I did not succeed.
That's it for now! Have a great day and a happy morrow!
Alright, so if you know me fairly well, you'd know that I'm not a huge prank person. I don't particularly like having them pulled on me, so I don't like to pull them on anyone else. But today marks a new era. A time of pranking that will never die! Okay, just kidding, what happened today wasn't even a prank. For this recipient it was definitely a gift.
As Melissa and I were headed back to the shed from canoeing we were stopped by our fellow naturalist that had found a tiny dead bull snake while fishing. Naturally I wanted to oogle it, and pretty soon we were back on the road, me with one hand holding a dead snake out the window and the other trying to keep the pickup and canoes on the road.
It seemed as if the poor little guy had gotten run over by a bike and when he died his face was frozen like he was waiting for a response on a bad joke he just told. And it was really neat because you could see all of his teeth!
Although you can't see it very well in the picture. :(
So next we decided that there was no one better to give this snake to than Jo! But unfortunately she wasn't at home so...
We both just got done telling a horrible joke. What else is new?
I haven't seen Jo yet tonight, but I'm sure she appreciated the present we left for her. Honestly. We thought she could use it for one of her programs! I swear!
Is it bad to say that this was the most exciting part of my day? Okay, so canoeing was pretty great, too. We had a fantastic turnout but our family numbers were a smidge off so I got to steer a couple of canoers around Center Lake for an hour. Not bad!
It's just another day off to get stuff done. Somehow I lucked out and the 4th fell on a Thursday (which is part of my "weekend"). Most days I'm so exhausted after work that I only have energy to stuff some food in my mouth and then travel to La-La Land. But alas, I have lots of stuff to do to get ready for school next semester and new programs to prepare for this job!
Even though it's pretty busy, this is definitely my dream job. Literally...I have at least 1 dream per night about Custer State Park. The other day it was about tracking mountain lions and putting collars on them. But really, this job fits me like a glove. It's like a working vacation! Of course there are those days where it's my Friday and I just want to take a nap, but helping visitors enjoy CSP always seems to help.
ANYWAYS! I have lots of things to share because I got so behind. I know, shame on me.
So this would be a hairworm (specifically Nematomorpha) that...wait for it...squirmed its way out of a cricket that somehow got into Willy's tank. Basically it's a parasite that makes the host (a cricket in this case) extremely thirsty. As in seeing-a-mirage-of-a-blossoming-paradise-in-the-desert thirsty. The cricket will commit "suicide" and jump into the water where the worm can continue its different life cycles.
Here it is in action.
Gross.
Now on to better and brighter things! Every Sunday and Tuesday I do the canoeing program at Center Lake, and I've got to watch this gaggle of geese evolve! These little goslings used to just be little fuzzballs, but last time I saw them they could almost pass for adults! These shots were a few weeks ago.
And if you haven't guessed by now, I'm LOVING all the wildlife I get to encounter at this job. However, my favorites have to be the snakes! I just know my mother is cringing at this very moment. We finally let our bull snake (Ash) go. As the critter caretaker, I kept hinting that we didn't have the necessary equipment (including food and enclosure) to take care of him, and a healthy bull snake needs to be out in the wild anyways. He was definitely fun to have for a short while though!
I found this garter snake on my run the other day. It was a delightfully sunny day and he was simply basking on the paved path. The picture may not show it too well, but he was GORGEOUS! Lots of brilliant orange mixed in with the black. If only I could have snagged him so Willy could have a friend in the basement.
I mean, come on...look at that face! He definitely needs a friend. Of course Rusty is across the room, but sometimes she can be a bit standoffish one minute then spastic the next. A little high-strung for Willy here.
Baby corn snake!
Alright, so now it's time to get down to business. Sometimes I get so excited about what happens off the clock that I don't always explain what I actually DO for my job! If you can believe it, we've already been working for 2 MONTHS! Sadly that means that we only have less than 2 months left. All of the naturalist staff has certain programs that we do.
Mine for the first half of the summer were:
"Diggin' Up Fossils" Junior Naturalist Program
"GPS" Patio Talk
"Custer State Park Rocks! Geology of the Black Hills" Evening Program
"Creekside Trail" Guided Hike
Coming up next is:
"Geology Rocks!" Junior Naturalist Program
"Stamp-A-Track" Patio Talk
"Custer Critters: Wildlife of Custer State Park" Evening Program
"Prairie Trail" Guided Hike
I think I'm going to snap some pictures so I can explain them a bit more, so stay tuned for a blog dedicated to those! But along with those we all do more generic programs such as Gold Panning, Hook 'Em and Cook 'Em (or Kill 'Em and Grill 'Em as Dennis thinks we should call it), and my personal favorite...CANOEING! Yes, I get to canoe for my job...and get paid for it. It's pretty awesome.
Also, we get to make fake snow during planning time. Okay, so we don't do that all the time, but Kaitlin found it in her program box and you can't just NOT make snow...
We help each other out quite a bit here. Mostly when we don't want to work on our own programs. An excellent example is when I colored Melissa's dinosaur puzzles for her. She goes around doing a Fossils program at libraries in the area, and she just didn't have enough time to color them. Luckily for her I happen to love coloring!
So if you haven't guessed, we find time to have fun even when we're working. It helps that we have an AWESOME boss. Julie is so fantastic, but she is a VERY busy woman. I'm lucky if I run into her 3 times a week. Anyways, I was busy 3-hole punching canoeing waivers at Julie's desk when I thought, "I wonder what exactly goes on in this office?"
Julie calmly doing things when we walk into her office.
Julie frantically trying to get things done when we leave.
But really, she's the Wonder Woman of Custer State Park. We all appreciate her so much for all she does!
Another job we have is taking people on a Wildlife Loop Caravan. Sometimes we're lucky enough to run into the bison herd, but we all know that the begging burros are everyone's favorite part.
I was also lucky enough to get the job of doing the special Monday night programs. A few weeks ago it was Reptile Gardens, then Badger Sett Band, then Sylvan Rocks Climbing School, then Joyce Jefferson, and now this week it's Black Hills Raptor Center!
Badger Sett Band put Badger Clark's poetry to music. Badger Clark was known as the "cowboy poet" and was South Dakota's first Poet Laureate.
Joyce Jefferson as "Aunt Sally", the first non-Native American woman documented in the Black Hills. She talked (and sang) about what it was like on the Custer Expedition of 1874.
And now for some fun to end this entry. Everyone, meet Dennis. Dennis is probably one of my favorite naturalists, but don't tell him that. It'll go to his head. He'd be that guy living up in the mountains for years on end. But you know how it seems as if there are opposite-sex versions of everyone? Well, he's one of them. Sometimes that's great, but other times we just want to strangle each other.
This particular non-strangling day he found giant girly sunglasses in the car and drove the whole Wildlife Loop wearing them. It was only when we got back to the Visitor's Center that we realized he drove through a whole herd of bison and visitors like this. Oops. Oh well, they do look pretty FABULOUS!
And although I do enjoy the wildlife, sometimes they can be pretty inconvenient. We have 2 bulls that like to come hang out by the dorms, but that's a problem when you're trapped in your car in the parking lot. Luckily this time we were all inside!
Keep it classy, everyone! Have a great day and a happy morrow!
