Workin' for a Livin'

The Sata Rosa-Paradise Peak Wilderness

Sorry it's been awhile since my last post, I've been working for Friends of Nevada Wilderness in the Santa Rosa-Paradise Peak Wilderness Area and it's been keeping me busy.

The Santa Rosa-Paradise Peak Wilderness Area is just north of Winnemucca, NV, between US 95 and Nevada 290. It is a gorgeous wilderness, 31,000 acres, with stunning phylite cliffs low in the canyons and granite higher up. There are no lakes in this wilderness area, but there are quite a few creeks; Rebel Creek, McConnel Creek, Horse Creek and Singas Creek--just to name a few. The creeks are surrounded by cottonwood and aspen forests and are quite lush, at least for the Nevada desert.

August is a little late for wildflower season, but I still saw quite a few, including; horse mint, lupin, columbine, monkshood, monkey flowers (my favorite), baneberries, elderberries, and many more.

The first week I was out, the butterflies were amazing. There were so many and they were everywhere, I wish I knew more about them and how to identify them, but I did identify some Mourning Cloaks and some Western Tiger Swallowtails.

Well, I'll post more about the Santa Rosas soon, but here are a few photos to tide you over:

Elderberry flowers

A cool rock formation that reminded me of the Moai, monolithic statues, of Easter Island

The view in Horse Creek Canyon

Multiple Indicator Monitoring - MIM

Team 1, minus me, measuring pools

Two weeks ago I traveled to Elko, NV to take a week long class on Multiple Indicator Monitoring. I was planning on camping two nights and getting a hotel the last two nights. My plan was to camp at South Fork State Recreation Area, which is about 14 miles south of Elko. The first night was really nice. It was great to be camped out next to the water and have a nice quite campground with clean bathrooms and water. The second night however, I got back from class to find that the wind was crazy intense and my tent was pretty much leveled from the wind--not broken though, thank goodness. I sat in my tent for about 2 minutes and decided there was no way I was going to be able to sleep like this, so I decided I'd get a hotel a night earlier than planned.

The first two places I looked at were extremely expensive. At one of the expensive hotels the front desk lady was super apologetic, saying that they charge those prices because apparently Elko gets a lot of contract workers, whose companies pay for their rooms. Luckily, I was able to find a nice, clean, room at a reasonable price at the Econo Lodge, which happened to be about a block from the BLM office where the class was being held, so that was awesome!

Alright, back to class! Multiple Indicator Monitoring (MIM) is a protocol used in riparian management, it is designed to be a tool used in monitoring streambanks, stream channels and streamside vgetation. During our training, we got to go to two creek sites in the Elko area--nothing better than walking in a creek in the middle of a hot summer day! The creek we spent most of our time at was Trout Creek. We monitored two sections of Trout Creek. One section of the creek was outside of an enclosure, and has had heavy grazing occurring in and around the creek. The second section of the creek was within the enclosure and used to have heavy grazing, but not any longer. Unfortunately, I do not know how long the enclosure has been up.

In the MIM protocol, there are 10 indicators that can be looked at (you don't need to use all 10), 3 are short term indicators and 7 are long term indicators. The short term indicators are stubble height, streambank alteration and woody species use. The long term indicators are greenline composition, woody species height class, streambank stability and cover, woody species age class, greenline-to-greenline width, substrate and residual pool depth and pool frequency.

The MIM class was a lot of fun, the people were really nice and I learned quite a bit--especially that I need to work on my riparian grasses.

Anyway, here are some pictures from my MIM adventure:

The class making the plant list

A cute little gopher friend!

Where's that greenline?

The deepest pool in our DMA--Designated Monitoring Area

The Past Couple of Months

Okay, where to begin--where to begin? Well, I've been on quite a few different trips as of late; Deer Creek Hills in Sacramento, CA, Opal Creek in Oregon and then back to Deer Creek Hills again. I discussed these trips briefly before, so I'll just post some pictures from the trips and talk a little bit about them.

Deer Creek Hills: We took students on field trips to learn about water and rocks!. This first trip was in mid April and, as you'll see in the pictures, it was quite green.

A group of students at Deer Creek Hills

Deer Creek Hills, with some amazing students

Deer Creek, some of the water we tested.

Opal Creek: I went to Opal Creek Ancient Forest Center in Oregon to renew my Wilderness First Responder Certification. This was the second time I made the trip to Opal Creek to re-certify. It is an amazing place with great scenery and great food. I highly recommend it.

Snow on my way to Opal Creek. This was in Oregon, I couldn't believe it was a blizzard in Oregon! The weather in the Reno/Tahoe area was beautiful when I left.

One of the creeks, either Battle Ax or Opal. I forget which one this was a picture of, but regardless, they are both beautiful.

Some of the WFR Re-cert crew, there were 10 returners from two years ago--that's how much people love this place!

Back to Deer Creek Hills: This trip was in mid May and it was not nearly as green as it was in April.

Back at Deer Creek, not quite as green as it was in April

The stewards took us for a hike after one of our programs to see some of the sights we were not able to see with the students. The pictures that follow are from that hike:

The pond at Deer Creek Hills

Woodpecker acorn storage holes

Grinding holes, this one is thought to be an oven because of its elongated shape.

I should be in Reno now for sometime--with the exception of going to the Ranch for Memorial weekend, but at least that is still in Nevada.

Euskadi; The French Side

Erin and Dan in Garazi

On Friday we met Jose Luis in Donostia. Jose Luis does the book design for most of the books published by the Center of Basque Studies and he lives in Donostia. He really wanted to take us to the French Basque Country for lunch. The town we went to was called Garazi. The drive there was long and windy. It got me feeling car sick, I was so glad when we finally got there and I could get out of the car. Although it got me feeling a little ill, the drive was beautiful.

Erin, Jose Luis, Dan and me in Garazi

We got into Garazi around lunch time so we decided to eat first. Jose Luis really wanted to take us to this one restaurant, but it was packed and had a fairly long wait so we decided to go to another little restaurant. It was good we all got the pasta with interesting steak sauce, it was different than anything I have ever eaten before, but it was very good.

After we ate we took a walk around town and explored the city. It is a neat city with a lot of pretty buildings. It is amazing how different the French Basque cities look, you can tell by the scenery when you cross the border.

Buildings in Garazi

The River in Garazi

A beautiful house on the coast

We didn't stay too long in Garazi because we were going to have dinner at Sabin's, a friend of Dan's, house. We were also going to spend the night there before we drove to Madrid to catch our flight home. Sabin lives just outside of Bilbao in a cool house with his mom and wife. Dan went to Sabin's house for dinner before I got to Euskadi and had a great time. I had met Sabin for two seconds on the Friday I was super sick and he seemed really nice. I was really looking forward to dinner at his house and getting to know him better.

However, when we left Getaria we realized that there was more snow on the ground than we had expected. Drivers were going very slowly, it took us over a half an hour to get to Zumaia which is not that far from Getaria. We discussed it for awhile and decided that it would take us too long to get to Bilbao at the speed we were going and it seemed that the road was only going to get worse from Zumaia. So we turned back and stayed one more night in Getaria.

The next morning there was still a lot of snow on the roads so we decided to go to Donostia, return the rent-a-car and take the train to Madrid instead of driving. The train ride was easy and smooth, we were glad we choose that option. We got into Madrid late and stayed at a hotel that was right next to the train station. The next morning we got up and took the subway to the airport. Erin went with us to the airport, although she stayed in Madrid for two more days before she went back to Romania. Erin stayed with us until we checked in, then she headed out to explore the city. The plane ride home was smooth, but long.

It was a wonderful trip, I'm so glad I decided to go with Dan. I hope we get to go back next year and explore more.

Euskadi; Baraibar

The day after my sister arrived we decided to head over to Baraibar, a small town where another one of Dan's bosses owns a home. Originally we thought we might spend a night or two there, but we ended up deciding not to. Baraibar is about half way between Donostia and Iruña and is at the base of the Aralar mountain range. At first, we wanted to drive up into the mountains and go for a hike. It had snowed the night before and as we drove higher, the roads became sketchier, especially for our tiny rent-a-car. So we ended up turning around and heading back down.

Snow on the way to Baraibar

Snow and fog in the Aralar mountain range

We stopped in Baraibar and decided to do a little hike from Baraibar to the neighboring town of Iribas. It was a nice walk, pretty mellow, but the scenery was beautiful. There were cows on the trail and when we got into Iribas we met a dog who was super friendly and followed us for quite awhile he was really cute and sweet.

Church in Baraibar

Cute cow on the trail

Bear, Dan and me on the trail

After our hike, we headed back towards Getaria. We stopped off in Zarautz to have lunch and walk around a bit. Zarautz is the city to the east of Getaria, there is a nice path that goes between Zarautz and Getaria and we wanted to walk over one day, but we never made it. It was nice to stop there though and walk along the beach.

Bear and me on the beach in zarautz

After lunch we went back to Getaria and decided we hadn't had enough walking so we decided to take Erin up the Raton. It was amazing how much easier the hike up the Raton was this time compared to last time. I was definitely starting to feel a lot better.

Erin and Dan on our hike

Another rock carving on the Raton

Bear in the fort on the Raton

View from the Raton

That morning, before we left for Baraibar, we ran into Barbra, the wife of Javier who we met in Reno at the Center for Basque Studies, and she invited us over to dinner that night. They have a house in the hills just above Joseba's apartment. Their house was so neat, they are remodeling it, so only a couple of the rooms were livable and the kitchen and living room were really nice. We had a wonderful meal and conversation. It was nice having a home cooked meal and hanging out in a local atmosphere.

Euskadi; My Sister Joins Us!!!!

On Wednesday my sister met us in Donostia, she flew into Madrid and then took a train up to Donostia. It was great timing because Dan had a meeting in the morning with people from Elkar, the main Basque bookstore, that morning. Erin's train wasn't scheduled to come in until until about 1:30 pm and Dan's meeting was early. So I took the morning to walk around Donostia on my own and do some sight seeing. Here are some pictures from my wanderings:

At the coast in Donostia while I was sightseeing

The coast in Donostia

The Basque flag on a hillside along the coast

Rent a bike, soooo awesome!

I strolled around town for awhile and then headed to the train station to wait for Erin and Dan. Dan wasn't sure when his meeting would get done, but he thought it would be right around the time Erin was to show up ~1:30. I sat and read for a bit and Dan showed up right before Erin's train was to arrive. Soon after Dan arrived, the train appeared, but Erin didn't get off the train. She had warned us that if things didn't go smoothly she might miss the first train and would have to take a later one, one that she thought wouldn't get in until 9:30 pm. However, Dan and I saw that there was a train coming from Madrid that would be getting into Donostia around 4:30, so we figured we would check back then.

Dan and I decided to go ahead and rent the car, it went smoothly and was cheaper than we had originally planned for, so that was good. The people at the rental agency were nice, they let keep the car parked at the rental place so we didn't have to pay for parking, which was super cool. Dan and I walked around town for a few hours and then headed back to the train station around 4:30, we were running a bit late so right as we were crossing the street to the station we saw Erin walking out of the station, yay!!! We were glad she was on that train and we didn't have to come back at 9:30pm, I was still suffering from lack of sleep and 9:30 was way past my bedtime.

All three of us walked around Donostia for a little while, but it was siesta time and not many of the shops were open. We headed back to Getaria fairly early and had a delicious dinner at a little place right on the coast (I can't recall the name). At the restaurant there were a few people at the bar, but we pretty much had the dining area all to ourselves. We then headed home and went to bed fairly early. Thursday was going to be a big day.

Euskadi; Flysh Fun

After our wonderful day in Donostia we decided we wanted to go back to Zumaia and check out the flysh up close and personal. This time we didn't hike to Zumaia, we took the bus both ways. Dan and I walked around Zumaia for a bit, we wanted to find a bank so we could exchange some money. At first we had a hard time finding a place, but we asked a few folks and in the end we were able to find a bank that could exchange our money.

At a church we passed as we walked around Zumaia

Dan found a new lady :(

After we got our Euros we went for a walk in a beautiful, green valley that we saw while we were playing on the cliffs the last time we were here. We walked by several neat old homes, one of which had a huge, beautiful garden that I was, of course, absolutely jealous of. At the end of the valley there was a staircase that led down to a small beach. Dan and I went down to explore the beach, Dan took a bunch of pictures and I collected sea shells. The beach was so tiny that when the tide is high, it's under water. It was a really neat, cool little spot.

One of the neat homes we passed in the valley

Dan going down the staircase to the small beach

The small beach we hiked down to

Cool flysh layers

We decided to hike back up to the cliffs we were at on Sunday and make a loop rather than go back through the valley. It had been raining the last couple of days so it was quite muddy and a lot of fun.

Dan and the muddy trail up to the cliffs

Dan and me on the cliffs

We then decided to hike down to the big beach, where we had a blast playing on the flysh and taking a bunch of pictures. Just to remind you, the flysh in Zumaia is the longest set of continuous rock strata in the world. They date from the mid-cretaceous period to the present, over 100 million years. The flysh is so cool when you see it up close, all the layers are like works of art and they hold so much history and information, it's crazy.

Dan and the rock horse sculpture

Flysh up close, it reminds me of a mountain scene cut from paper scraps

Dan on the flysh

Flysh in the water

Dan can't stop taking pictures, even when the tide is threatening to trap him

We had a wonderful day playing at the beach. This is such an amazingly beautiful part of the world, exploring is sooooo much fun!