More Santa Rosa Please

West side of the Santa Rosa Mountains

So, as I previously mention, I worked in the Santa Rosa-Paradise Peak Wilderness area during the month of August. Which means, I've been done with that job for about a month. However, early in August I went to a friend's wedding where I met a person who works for the Forest Service in the Santa Rosa Mountains. He monitors and treats noxious weeds. We got to talking and it turned out they really needed someone to help them with their weed projects--apparently they have been trying to hire someone for months, but for some reason none of the people have worked out--so, they asked me to apply. I applied early in August and found out in mid September that all my paper work went through and I could officially be hired on to help with the weed issues in the Santa Rosa Mountains. I accepted and now I'll be playing in the Santa Rosa Mountains until the end of November!

I started about two and half weeks ago, but I took last week off to baby sit the Oz monster (my mom's and sister's dog--who is kind of my dog too, but not as much as mom's and bear's). Yesterday, my first day back since my vacation, we ended up not working on weeds at all, but on fires. Over the weekend there were quite a few fires in the area, the whole southeast end of the Bloody Run Hills has turned black. Yesterday we did what is called "back hauling." We drove around to areas where firefighters had their staging areas and picked up supplies that needed to be returned to the BLM warehouse. We also took all their trash to the landfill. I had never been to the Humbolt County Landfill before, but I ended up going 3 times yesterday--the lady at the window and I became well acquainted.

Well, I have to say, my first day of working fires was not as exciting as I thought it would be, but all in all it was a good day. Today will be back to weeds, we should be headed to the Quinn River for some Canada Thistle (Cirsium arvense) action, we'll see how it goes!