You Do Have to Work Occasionally

So I promised to let you all know about the programs I do to prove that I AM working out here in the Hills.

CANOEING! Since canoeing is my favorite activity to do, I lucked out and got scheduled for it twice a week. YESSSSS! The program ran from 1-3 PM, and we provided everything a visitor needed, all the way down to instruction and advice.

We got 3 kayaks donated for this summer, so it was an exciting adventure for those that had never tried it before!

Showing this mother and daughter which way the paddle needs to face.

Making sure her waterproof camera is locked!

Since the on-top kayaks are a little easier to tip (especially for adults) it was important to brace your legs against the sides for more core stability.

HOOK 'EM AND COOK 'EM! Or as some of us like to call it, KILL 'EM AND GRILL 'EM.

I actually only did this program a couple of times, and this is the ONLY fish we ever caught. It was caught too late in the program and was too small to keep, but it's always fun to fish with families!

CARAVAN!
The caravan is always pretty fun when the bison are out, but most still enjoy it even if they aren't. What is consists of is me driving in a state vehicle while others follow in theirs. I point out wildlife along the way and stop and get out if they are at a safe distance. Some main stops are the buffalo corrals and the prairie dog towns along with the burros if they're out on the road! Otherwise when we get out to talk I'll answer any questions that people think of along the way and add in any random facts that my brain decides are relevant.

CHIP FLIP!

One day at the beginning of the season we got paid for 2 hours to go pick up bison poop. Yeah. During Open House Weekend CSP has its annual Buffalo Chip Flip where participants throw poop down the hill. People get pretty pumped about it.

DIGGING UP FOSSILS!
One of my Junior Naturalist programs. I talked about the different types of fossils and had an example of each. One of my activities was "Create-A-Creature" and the other (not pictured) was a cord with length tags on it. I would say a dinosaur or prehistoric creature and the kids would have to go and stand by the length they thought belonged to each. The purpose of it was to show that the perception about dinosaurs is that they were GIGANTIC while in reality most weren't that big.

This was for Melissa's program about fossils, but Jo and I colored them all. It's an awesome idea though! Dinosaur puzzles with tongue depressors!

Create-A-Creature activity where kids would have to draw a creature based on 3 clues of fossils that were found. Usually it was sharp teeth, long claws, and a long tail. It could be something that did or does exist, but I encouraged them to make up something completely new! They also had to decide what it ate and where it lived, and with any new species found, they got to name it whatever they wanted!

GEOLOGY!
For not having taken a geology class, I LOVED this program. (I also did a "Custer State Park Rocks! Geology of the Black Hills" evening program. This Junior Naturalist program consisted of talking about the rock cycle and showing kids all different types of rocks and minerals you can find in the Black Hills.

Rock Cycle activity I made! All the terms were passed out and as we talked about the different kinds of rocks, kids had to guess where their term went. After all terms were placed, we quickly reviewed the whole cycle in order.

Box of minerals found in the Black Hills. We also went over the difference between rocks and minerals.

Clever Catcher ball for a review at the end!

GPS!
This was my first patio talk so I don't have many pictures of it. Since PTs shouldn't take very long, I went over some quick instructions on how to use it and then we played around with them. I tried a scavenger hunt, but with such a small area at the PNVC it was difficult to get accurate directions. Instead we used the Trip Computer to see how fast people could run, how "long" their name was, and calculate the area of the visitors center. Most of the time the parents were just glad that I tired their children out for them.

STAMP-A-TRACK!

I'm actually pretty proud of this one because I came up with the idea of having kids create postcards instead of just stamping on pieces of paper. It took a while to get the design just right, but everyone had a great time stamping and decorating. The first few minutes I would go over the track flash cards to see if they could guess what animal made the track and told them a few facts about each. Then on the back of the postcard there was a section for a "track fact" or something they learned during the program.

BUFFALO PARTS!

I wasn't assigned this patio talk, but I helped Steven out one time during training and I clearly decided to have fun with it. The purpose was to show people all the ways that the Native Americans used the parts of the bison. I mainly just dressed up and danced around to get people to come over!

GOLD PANNING!

Gold panning was probably one of our most popular programs throughout the summer. Although sometimes participants were scarce, I once had over 40 people in my group! Usually this program was fun when the adults would ask me questions about the park while their children panned. It really helped to pass the time. The kids would also always come up saying they found gold, but naturalists are always the crusher of all hopes and dreams and tell them it's just mica. Usually I do that quickly and look for garnets, as almost everyone always had at least one in their pan.

First I talked about the history of gold in the Black Hills and the different minerals and rocks people would find during the program.

We have 2 tiny pieces of gold in some quartz, so I always show that to explain how tiny the pieces of gold are.

Our dirt pile has lots of big rocks in it, so there's no need to weigh down your pan with those.

Showing a couple techniques of ridding your pan of water.

Showing them the "sparkles" of mica that can often be mistaken for gold.

So yes, I DID work this summer, and although some days were exhausting, it was definitely the best internship that I could have had. It was always fun to spend time with a family and have them thank you for making their vacation one they would always remember. I feel WAY more confident about possibly going into this line of work if I decide during student teaching that the standard classroom is not for me.

You Become the "I Like Turtles" Kid

This, my friends, is how I felt the other morning. 7 AM, barely functioning, yet ending up having to do a turtle rescue. That is true dedication.

At 7 AM I started trudging down the basement steps and find this little guy. Now we have a turtle pond outside the visitors center that the turtles are ALWAYS trying to escape from...but there was the same number in there as the day before...maybe he just wanted an adventure? Silly turtle. Anyways, at first I was just bewildered in my morning state at HOW he got down the stairs until I realized that he FELL all the way down. Then the sympathy kicked in.

He didn't seem to be in a state of shock or anything, but really more of a grumpy curmudgeon. I checked him out, and although his shell was a little beat up, the only other visible damage was a small area on his head where it had banged against his carapace (top half of shell). 

At this point there was really nothing I could do. It's these moments where I think "Where is Ethan Brown when I need him?!" He's interning at a wildlife center this summer and would have known what to do! I was definitely NOT going to put him in the turtle pond to be mauled by children all day. He'd had enough stress for a while, so I put him in a state of the art ice cream bucket and took escorted him down the road to Game Lodge pond.

I feel like we really bonded over those 20 minutes that we spent together...plus we matched so I had to take a picture.

As soon as he hit the water he was off like Michael Phelps, so I hope he's doing well and not getting into any more trouble!

There's Only One Month Left So You Start To Get Your Poop In A Group

Wednesday, July 24th, 2013

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!

You Should Never Expect Smooth Sailing

Sunday, July 21st, 2013

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!