Hello!  I'm back!  It's been two weeks since the wilderness and I still haven't posted the second part yet.  Not too much exciting has happened since then, I think.  Oh wait, no, I went to Santa Fe...and Corrales.  But that was two weekends ago.  Last weekend was kinda lame.  Caleb Crump wasn't even on!  Ahh, that show cracks me up.  I hope it comes back on soon.  This week I went out in the field with my boss.  Woo-hoo.  We listened to Rush Limbaugh and country music.  It was a blast.

Anyway.  I got distracted.  I was going to write about Apache Cabin, which is where we stayed on our trip to the wilderness.  Last time I said we weren't sure what it was going to be like.  Well, unlike with the water, we were actually pleasantly surprised by the cabin.  Here's what it looked like from the outside.

Not too shabby, eh?  The inside wasn't too bad either.  Minus a few minor details....


There was also rat poop on the floor, which was the main factor in my decision to pitch my tent the night we got there.  I almost didn't, because it was raining and getting dark and I was feeling lazy.  But I thought that everyone else was so I forced myself to do it.  My boss did also but my three other co-workers decided to sleep in the cabin.  The first couple nights they talked about putting up their tents but they never did.  Near the end of our time there, they were all saying how great it was to sleep in there without the rocks and sloping ground (oh yeah, did I mention the cabin was built on a small bench located within a very steep slope?  really weird place to put a cabin) so I felt like I missed out a little, but I still think I did the right thing.

To give you a little bit of an idea of the slope we were on, here's the view from the door.



Maybe hard to tell from your perspective, but it's steep....  Okay, now more cabin!

This is the stove.  We never used it.  I'm pretty sure it didn't work and would have probably started a fire.


Here's where we kept all our stuff.


We used this table for eating dinner and playing cards.


At night, we used a lantern that my boss brought.  It was really helpful, but it was hung from the ceiling and I was the only one who could walk under it easily.  Micah kept hitting his head on it.  Ha ha.

Here's another thing that was hanging from the ceiling.


Ummm... what else?  Oh yeah, the fire safety poster!


It's kind of hard to read, but it says stuff like "Don't cut off your foot;" "Don't accidentally hit someone with an axe;" and "Don't leave a fire before it's put out."

In the evenings, from outside the cabin, this was my favorite view to look at.

Literally.  I bet Madonna can't say that.  Anyway, so, yeah, the wilderness...  not as scary as I thought it would be.  I seriously thought I would die during the first day of walking 9 miles just to get to our campsite.  Surprisingly, that was far from the truth.  It wasn't difficult at all.  In fact, I might even say it was easy.  This is due in part to the fact that there was hardly any elevation change (about a couple hundred feet or so) and also because I didn't carry much at all.  My coworkers all decided that they would bring their backpacking packs and carry about 45 lbs. each.  Why, I do not know, considering we had these guys to carry in our stuff for us.


My backpack weighed around 23 lbs.  And let me tell you, it makes a huge difference.  I never regretted my decision to pack light, but everyone else was saying stuff like, "Oh I shouldn't have carried all my clothes in my backpack."  Ummm.... ya think?   

There were several opportunities to take pictures on the way up, but the first thing I took a picture of was something I thought Matt might be interested in.  It's the remnants of a downed plane.  The plane was being used for drug trafficking so it's not like there were any heroic feats going on, but it's interesting nonetheless.

This is your plane on drugs (I thought of that about 2 minutes after taking this picture)

For the most part, all the scenery while coming up was just trees trees trees, and it was hard to see much else.  But there were a few rare times that we were able to see some stuff like this.


There were two main things that we were uncertain about at our chosen destination.  We knew that there would be a cabin, but we had no idea what the state of it would be.  Would it be a livable place to keep dry in a rainstorm or would it be a dilapidated, run-down shack?  We also knew based on the topo map that there wasn't a lot of room to pitch 5 tents around the cabin, so that was going to be tricky.  The other thing we weren't sure about was the state of the springs surrounding the cabin.  There were several on the map but in New Mexico that doesn't mean very much.  The spring could be flowing marvelously or it could be completely dried up.  We didn't know.

When the packers passed us on the trail as they were going back down, they said the spring looked good.  Actually, I think their words were "Not good enough for horses, but good enough for you," in terms of the amount that would be available to us.

It wasn't much longer before we reached the cabin and the spring, but when I saw the spring, I'm pretty sure I said, "wait, that's it?"


Upon seeing it, my boss was also a little concerned about our water supply.  Luckily, it looked like it would recharge itself if we pumped it.  Then, one of my other coworkers continued down the trail a little way and found a second spring that seemed to be a little bigger.  The only problem was, it was dirtier.

Mosquito larvae infested mud water.  Yummy!

This weekend, the weekend before the death march, I decided to relax by climbing to the top of a mountain.

Ok, I didn't actually climb it.  I took the tram.  Albuquerque has the longest tramway in the world.  It was built by the Swiss (so it has to be good) and goes all the way up to the top of the Sandia Mountains.   Pretty cool, huh?

The most amazing part about being on the top of the Sandias is that you're in the wilderness (aka no road access) but you can see the city at the same time.  It's wild.

We stayed up there pretty much all day just enjoying the scenery and taking pictures.

As those of you who read this on a regular basis already know, I spend a lot of time outdoors.  It's part of the job description.  There are so many things I like about being outside.  Waking up to the rippling sounds of a stream with the sun shining in my tent is very relaxing.  In the forest, there is beauty all around in the form of vibrantly colored flowers of all types and tall trees stretching up into the clear blue sky.  Sitting around the campfire with a cold beer is the perfect ending to a long day.

A lot of people, when I tell them what I do, are very envious of my job.  I get to be outside all the time, and get paid for it!  But I'm here to tell you that it isn't all sunshine and roses.  There are monsoons, often with hail.  The temperature can go from scorching hot to freezing cold in what seems like minutes.  I have to drive between 4-6 hours just to get to the part of the forest I'm working in, often alone.  Even though waking up to the sounds of the stream is relaxing, the real wake up call is crawling out of my sleeping bag and into the cold morning, bright and early, to go to work.

I get the impression that many people think I get to frolic around in the forest willy-nilly, doing whatever I want like it's no big deal.  But there are a lot of things to think about in my position.  First and foremost is safety.  Out in the woods, there is the potential to fall off a cliff, get your vehicle stuck in the mud, be bitten by a poisonous spider or a rattlesnake, get heat stroke, or hypothermia, get a cut that could become infected, and so much more.

About a month ago, a girl I met in a training last year was killed in an ATV accident while at work.  It's been on my mind ever since.  Also recently, a University of Michigan student fell to her death while descending from a peak in the Grand Tetons.  She got ahead of her hiking partner who thought she had already made it back to the camp.  I cannot emphasize enough the importance of sticking with your hiking partner at all times.  In potentially dangerous situations, two heads are always better than one.  Plus you never know what could happen along the trail, and by the time the person ahead of or behind you figures out what's going on, it could be too late.  Some of my co-workers do not follow this policy and it really bothers me.  While it is important to finish the job in a timely manner, nothing will get done if you get too excited and make careless mistakes.

I'm not telling you all this to scare you away from ever going outside again.  The world is a beautiful place with lots to explore.  But it can also be a dangerous place if you don't know what you are doing, and even if you do (or think you do).  I've been camping and hiking regularly for several years now and I still make plenty of mistakes.  Luckily, none of them have been too serious, but it has made me aware that problems can and do occur.

That said, if you don't hear from me for a while, it's because I'm off to the wilderness for an extended pack trip starting on Monday.  I should be back the following Tuesday night, and then I will have five wonderful days off!  Something to look forward to.

There are a lot of really good restaurants in Albuquerque.  I'd say there are more local dining options here than anywhere else I've lived.  It's nice, but lately I've been feeling like I'm eating out a lot, which can get expensive (and is not always the healthiest option either). 

So this weekend, I decided to make an effort to get to the grocery store and make up some tasty, inexpensive dinners at home.  One New Mexico staple is the green chile cheeseburger.  Yesterday, when I went to Sunflower Market, they were roasting chiles out in the parking lot.  They smelled really good.  So I picked some up, along with 93% lean ground beef, sliced yellow cheddar (both on sale), a red onion (75 cents), a few slices of bacon, and whole wheat hamburger buns.  

Last night, Matt and I cooked the burgers up on the grill.  We also grilled the bacon, which worked out really well.  And toasted the buns with a little butter, garlic and red chili powder.  In the end, we came up with this.

A green chile bacon cheeseburger that would rival any burger at a restaurant, and for about a third of the price.  We took a look at the grocery receipt and decided that we spent about $3 per burger.  At a restaurant, the same thing would cost around $9. 

And tonight, we're using the rest of the meat to make sloppy joes.  Yum!

I didn't take too many pictures at Ben Lilly last week, but I thought this looked pretty cool.

Recently, my blog friend, Chloe, gave me not one... but two neato awards!

So I thought I'd play along and share some things about me, seven things to be more specific.

1.  I cannot eat avocados.  They make my stomach upset.
2.  When my sister is in the shower, I sneak in to the bathroom, put a hairbrush behind the shower curtain and scream "It's a snake!"  It scares her every time.
3.  My brother, sister and I all have different colored eyes.
4.  I like modern art and ancient Chinese art best.
5.  I have been craving Dairy Queen like no other for the past month now.   MMMM... Chocolate crunchy shell...
6.  I don't really like driving.
7.  I took piano lessons for 10 years, and by college I could play Moonlight Sonata, but I can't remember how to play it anymore.

I think I'm supposed to pass this award along to people, so here's what I'm going to do.  If you're listed on my sidebar blog list, and you ever care to read this post, then you win!

This past week, while I was working, I stayed at a new campsite by Snow Lake.  Everyone else was staying in a hotel (wimps!) and my mapping area is a lot closer to Snow Lake than Ben Lilly.  So, it was just me and my boss.  Camping.  For three nights.  Fun.

Here's where we camped, along with a group of drunk male college students, who said "Dude!" to each other like a million times within a 5 minute period.

On our last night there, I finally had a chance to get some pictures of the lake.  Here it is in all its Snowy, Lakey glory.


In Michigan we would call that a pond, but we also would call hills "mountains," so you win some, you lose some, I suppose.  It's still really pretty, though.

On my journey to the lake, I found a really cool looking rock.  It looks like obsidian but it also has some weird silvery-white stripes on it.


Believe it or not, I did some actual work last week as well.  Every year, we have a field review to show an example of the work we did, and for that we dig a big 1m x 1m pit so the main boss can look at it.  Here's the first one I dug. 


It was NOT fun to dig, because, as you can see in the pile next to the pit, there were about a thousand rocks getting in the way of the soil.  Want to know the best (aka worst) part?  After we had finished digging, we found out that the plot didn't fit the map unit we wanted to put it in because there were no oak trees around.  So I got to go down the hill and dig another, much deeper one.  It was AWESOME.  I didn't take a picture of that one.

One pit we dug was in an interesting looking flat area mostly covered with iris and a grass called spike muhly.


Another day, I saw a cool frog and tried to take a picture but I was too close and it turned out all blurry.  Too bad!


Not to be deterred by my poor photography skills, I ended the week with a cool misty morning picture of the campsite.

For the past four weeks, I have stayed at a lovely little campground in the middle of the forest called Ben Lilly.  I have no idea why it's called that.  Probably after some old rich dude who gave the forest a lot of money.

Anyway, it's pretty.  Here's what I woke up to one morning when I looked out of my tent.

The stream that runs through here is called Willow Creek.  It's a smaller stream that feeds into the Gila River.  There was record snow pack on the mountains this year so it's flowing really well.  It was nice listening to it rushing by as I fell asleep at night.  Very peaceful.

The camp site is pretty high altitude so there are a lot of cool trees I don't usually see like Engelmann and Blue Spruce.  But the elevation drops off pretty quickly as I get more into my mapping area and it looks really different.

A lot of what I'm working in is in the Ponderosa Pine forest, which is a couple columns, or climate zones, lower than the Spruce/Fir forest.  It's different looking, but still really pretty.


Then there's a huge part of my mapping area that is really weird.  I'm still trying to figure out what's up with it.  It's a lot like the Ponderosa forest in terms of grasses and forbs (flowering plants) but there are hardly any Ponderosas at all.  Instead, there are scattered junipers and a bunch of open grassland.  Here it is with a storm brewing overhead.


A possible reason for all this open area is fire.  There are a lot of areas with burned trees, so it's definitely prone to it.  This part has just had enough time to get back to a juniper grassland, and the Ponderosas in similar surrounding areas indicate that it's trying to get back to a Ponderosa forest.  This is what I am trying to show with my mapping. 

So that's just a little bit about where I'm working and what I'm doing.  I won't bore you with all the details but hope you enjoy the pictures.

In theory, I like to keep things clean.  When I first moved into my apartment, I said "I am going to clean a different room in the house every weekend.  That way everything will stay clean all the time!" 

Even though that didn't really happen, at all, I still have the desire to have a nice, clean apartment where I can invite people over, if I ever had any people to invite over.  Oh well.

Anyway, it's hard to clean up after myself especially during field season when apartment life consists of walking in with muddy boots, dropping all my stuff somewhere in the living room, finding something to eat in the freezer and collapsing on the couch.  Stuff can get a little dirty.

But I found a simple, free way to (partially) remedy this problem.  And all I had to do was renew my lease.

Remember the muddy boots?  Well, muddy boots make for muddy carpets.  I've been thinking about renting a shop vac or something to clean up the drippy, muddy spots that have accumulated over the two years that I've lived here.  But it's a funny thing how working hours seem to coincide so well with business hours, so I don't really get much of that stuff done.

So imagine my surprise when I find a note stuck to my door announcing that if I renew my lease, I will get a FREE carpet cleaning.  What?  A carpet cleaning that costs no money and involves no work for me?  I'm in!

I scheduled an appointment for this past Friday morning, between 8:30 and 9 a.m.  This was an added bonus because I got to sleep in while waiting for the carpet cleaner guy to arrive.  By 9, everything had been picked up off the floor and the dude shows up with his special clean-y vacuum.  I waited while he did his thing, which couldn't have lasted more that 15 minutes, and when he walked out the door, I had a fresh clean carpet under my feet.

A guy I knew in school once told me that he would vacuum his room every weekend because he liked the way the lines looked on the floor.  Now I see what he means.  And now that my carpet is clean, I'm going to work hard to keep it that way for as long as I can.  And who knows, maybe I'll get another free cleaning next year!