tic toc the waiting game is no fun

well we just spent 2 days on a little fire here in the park. it wasa good fire but we are still waiting to go to a fire away from our station. It is hard to see all these fires on the news and know that we are just sitting around doing nothing. It can be frustrating at times just doing little projects around the station. oh well I guess it is just part of the job. Who knows how they decide who goes to what fires.

in other news the weather here has been really wierd. It was super hot and now all of the sudden it has been really humid and not as hot. I just don't know.

Well that all I got for now...hopefully I will have some pictures of the last fire next time I am on the computer

To dam hot

So it is way to hot here lately. yesterday it was 107 in fresno way to hot. It normally doesn't get to be that hot here until july and august. Here are somethings that I discovered when its that hot out
1. it takes a long time for the air conditioner to fire up and by the time it starts to get to a resonable temp you are at your next destination
2. my sterring wheel was so hot that I thought my hand was going to get burnt
3. I went to use some deoderant that was in my car and well it was all mushy and melted
4. hot weather normally leads to fires but we are still here in station (which kind of sucks)
5. this hot weather is supposed to last until thursday. the sad thing is that it isn't even the hottest part of summer yet

on a positive note I did get the chance to take my kayak out again today so that was a good adventure.

Stephies wedding pictures

Well here are some pictures from stephies wedding. The first two are of stephie as a very beautiful bride. I can't believe she is still smiling after tons of pictures and being out in the heat.


The third picture is of all the bridesmaids, plus stephies neices.


I am very glad that I got the chance to make the trip to Bad Axe to help stephie and jay celebrate and also it gave me a chance to hang out with everyone else.



And of course I picture of the sparks family to my blog. Casey is all dressed up had to add a and not tending to farm animals so of course he has to be on my blog....georgia was a very good baby all throughout the cemremony and reception so I am sure that she made her parents very happy.


Hopefully I will get a chance tommorow to add my pictures online so that I can send them out to people.

More south america pictures

Here are a few more pictures from south america. The tin houses are in a neighborhood in Buenos Aires where a lot of the buildings are made out of all different colors of tin. it is also an area where there is lots of tengo going on in the street. it was a pretty interesting area of town. its to bad that we walked through one of the worstneighborhoods in the city to get there....don't worry we took the bus back and we didn't know it was a bad area until after we had walked through it. it didn't seem bad the guide book just called to rough

The last two are pictures of this crazy cemetery in town. it was nothing at all like our cemetries and I don't really now how to explain what it is like.

Enjoy

Total Craziness...

So my Trip to MI this weekend was way to short. Stephies wedding was a blast. I took a ton of pictures but havent had a chance to load them onto my computer yet....but if any of you got randi's snapfish link those are the pictures from my camera. don't worry though I will post some them to my blog when the craziness dies down.

Anyway I made it back to fresno late sunday night after spending way to much time in airports....went straight to sleep cuz I was beat.....got up monday morining thinking that we were going to run at 7:00am like normal. well I discovered that we were going to run and then after that we were off to do a perscribed burn in Cedar Grove (another area of the park). I was definitly not mentally prepared for that one. Any way we burnt all day yesterday till like 9:00pm and then got up early this morning to go and finish the burn. It all went well without to much excitement (pictures will be coming) Then tommorow we have to go over to the park headquaters to watch a video confrence that our boss is in West Virgina for....should be interesting. it will be weird seeing brit live on a tv screen.

Then there is only one more day of work for the week s yippee!!! Well hopefully I will have pictures soon.

Creek Project

So a couple of days agomyself and two other guys got the job of going out and getting rid of a tree that had fallen across a trail that we run on. The other part of our assingment was called the creek project. well we took care of the log no problem. Then we go down to the creek and earlier when we ran by I didn't think it would be hard to remove the 2 logs that were blocking the culvert. Well I must not have been thinking (due to the lack of oxygen) earlier cuz it turned out to be a little harder than we thought. First of all we discivered that that logs were so water logged that they weighed much more than originally thought. Then we realized that the sand from the creek bottom had buried the one end of the log. But don't worry we used some alternative methods of log removal and got the logs out of the creek, and the creek is now flowing properly through the culvert and not causing a huge mess. Oh but wait I forgot about how when we finallly removed the log we had it sitting on the creek bank, but now that water was flowing properly the bank started washing away and the log that we had just removed almost ended up right where it had startedWhen I mentioned that the lake was kind of cold when I swam in it I was mistaking........the water in this creek was way cold. i was only in to right below my knees and well lets just say that my legs were numb....I wish I had a pic of all three of us in the water removing the log.

Thanks for all the comments about my pictures. Picture taking is something that i like to do and you never know where one day you may see them. If you go to my parents house you can see some big prints hanging on the walls.

Today it was super chilly here. I was suprised. I even had to start a fire in my cabin tonight. hopefully it warms up again soon or else it could be a long season of doing crazy projects.....liker the creek project

kayak fun

Well today I finally got the chance to take my Kayak out. I just went to a little lake that is really close by. It was nice to get out in paddle eventhough it didn't take long to get from one end of the lake to the other. After I was done kayaking I decided that I would go for a swim all I can say is BRRRRRRRR!! The lake gets it water from the snow run off in the mountians and well there is still snow in the mountians so it is still pretty cold.

Well tommorow is back to work so that is no fun...well actually it is fun but you know work is work.


I can't remeber if I told everyone or not but my sister got a job down in LA. As of june 17th laura will have her PHD in Physical therapy and will finally be done with school. She is going to be working in a Clinic in Palos Verdes (in LA area) starting in July.

Well we will see when the next fire call comes..............

Iguazu Falls

Here are some pictures of igauzu falls in Northern Argentina....let me just say that the pictures don't even do them justice. The falls are right on the argentina's border with Brazil and Paraguay. There are even trails/bridges that allow you to walk right over the top of the falls. We didn't get any pictures of those trails, becuase an afternoon rainstorm came in and soaked us... but we were happy about that since it was very humid and very warm there.

Enjoy

Enjoying my day off....

I love living in the park...since we are at a fairly high elevation here it is almost always at the perfect temp during the summer.... today for example it is in the high 60's here with hardly any humidity, while down in fresno it is probably almost a 100 degrees. so I must say that I am lucky to live up here.

Today I have been lazy just cleaning up my cabin, doing laundry, cleaning out my car and relaxing after my crazy day in fresno yesterday. I was thinking of taking my kayak to the nearby lake but I might save that for tommorrow. Maybe after I am done on the computer I will go hang out in a hammock for awhile......hmmm

Well I am finally able to add pictures to my blog. we are back at home and i am fina;y posting pictures from my time in AZ. the first picture is of the grand canyon......from the north rim.
Its not the best picture I have taken but that is the canyon





The next picture is of a bunch of the guys drinking beers on the veranda of the north rim.......they are looking at the view in the picture above.....there are chairs that are even closer to the edge of the rim but they were sitting in the back row





This is a view of the colorado river. we are standing on an old bridge looking at the new one. before these bridges were built you had to travel a huge distance to get across the river (because of the canyon) it was cool because near the bridge we saw a bunch of Calofornia Condors, which are an endangered species and are being reintroduced into the wile. they are huge birds and it was cool to see them


Look its me getting ready for our helicopter ride home from the Romero fire (the 1st fire we went to) they make us wear our chinstraps so we all look funny





This is from the La Barracha (not sure on spelling) fire. It is my friend jake cutting a piece of fire line. there were lots of cactus and other prickly plants on this fire along with the crazy bugs that I had talked about before.





The last one that I have for now is also from the La Barracha fire. the red that you see is a retardent drop that an air tanker just finished dropping. it is supposed to prevent the fire from spreading when the fire reaches it, but most of the time it doesn't work and just turns the hill red.

I am super excited because I also just got a CD with all the pictures that Cara took on our trip to South America. so eventually I will post pictures from that trip.....but not today since I have had enough of this internet cafe to last me for a long time. I am on a day off, but am getting paid so that makes me happy...but at the same time I have a ton of stuff to do and haven't done any of it yet and since my computer battery is about to give out will get going.

I am super excited that I get next weekend off for stephie's wedding so I can't wait to see lots of people there.

time to venture out into fresno.....not fun but oh well

Another fire under our belts

Well we just got back from another Airizona Fire. This one was down by sedona....if any of you know where that is. Anyway we got there thursday nigt found some grass to sleep on and got up bright and early on Friday morning to head out to the fire. The fire started the afternoon before and had burnt quite a bit of land alog with almost burning down lots of mutli million dollar homes but I don't think any of the homes burnt and we had the fire pretty much under control by that night. But there were these horrible little beetles that come out after fires that almost killed us. Normally they aren't that bad on fires but this fire was something else. I think that I lost my sanity numerous times because these stupid bugs were trying to attack me and cause me to go mentally insane. Thankfully we didn't have to go back out there today cuz it was bad enough with the 103 heat yestrday and today was even hotter.

we are back in the grand canyon today and are going to work tommorow on the fuels project and then we are heading home on tuesday morning. so i will finally get some days off on thursday and firday. One of the good points of my job is that we cant work more than 14 days straight( not including time that we travel) so really it will be like 18 days of working straight, but then on our days off one of them will be a paid day off.

well it is time for me to go see if I can find any hot guys to hang out with tonight (prob wont happen) really i am going to go and have one more beer and then hit the hay.