I'm Going To Be Inactive

[james8470 160]

Awww, who died?

 

( ° ͜ʖ͡°)╭∩╮

[james8470 160]

Week 3

 

Monday: Packed up truck and trailer and took inventory of our weekly supplies, arrived at Chiricahua National Monument campground again, set up camp. One of our crew of 12 had stayed home this week for some reason.\

 

Tuesday: Hiked to a trail we didn't get the chance to finish up drains a lopping on, we turned back half-way though because we were all feeling hot, and one of us would soon get heat exhaustion. As we were driving back to camp, we saw that our crew-mate with heat exhaustion hadn't returned yet, so we drove back to the trailhead. I was picked to go with the leaders who hadn't stayed behind with her to help escort her out. She had thrown up three times already and said her back was in extreme pain (unusual, for heat exhaustion).

Thankfully, she was fine, but was sent home for the week.

The Skunk from last week came back to steal food again e_e

At least this time I got a good look at it from someone's headlamp. It was cool.

 

Wednesday: It was my turn for Kitchen Patrol. Woke up early, helped make breakfast, and helped make dinner. During most of the day, I was had hours of free time, so I took a couple of walks. I ALWAYS saw Deer. I even saw a couple of Black Bears, the first time I've ever seen one in the wilderness!

This is funny; when I returned back and was telling the leader who was on Kitchen Patrol with me about the Bears, I said "I see deer everywhere at Chiricahua" gesturing out into the grass beyond our campsite. Right where I gestured was another fucking deer.

 

Thursday: Cleaned up the Visitor Center's parking lot. We had a lot of time leftover this day, so we played capture the flag in the woods/grasslands near our campsite. It was fun, although exhausting and I got tagged so many times. :mad:

 

Friday: Took a side-trip to Fort Bowie National Park.

It was an interesting experience. We saw ruins of the fort, which was in the middle of Chiricahua Apache homeland, we saw a spring which sustained both Apaches and American soldiers, and learned a bit about the historical Bascom Affair, which had occurred there.

Drove back to our own National Park, unloaded, cleaned, and organized our stuff.

 

Meme of the week:

* Driving to the pool to have some fun on Thursday *

Leader: This van needs some WD-40

Crew-mate: Hey (leader)! There's some on the road!

* Leader stops van *

* Crew-mate gets out of van and steals the WD-40 can off the side of the camp road *

Crew-mate: Wow! It's full, too!

 

* Literally 10 seconds later *

 

Crew-mate 2: OH man! I forgot my towel at camp!

* Crew-mate 2 runs out to get his towel *

Leader: We should freak him out.

* We close the van doors and start driving away *

* Crew-mate 2 is running after us, thinking we forgot about him *

I laughed my ass off :D

 

Next week, we're going to Gila National Forest!

We should be seeing some nice cliff dwellings.

 

See ya'll next week!

[james8470 160]

Well, if any of you out there actually give a shit, you may have noticed I didn't post an update last week.

I AM NOT LAZY (like, 30% of the time)

Actually, I couldn't because Rhododendron/Silence was updating the site on Sunday night, the night I was going to post, and the night before I left.

Here's the update for the past two weeks!

 

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Week 4

Monday: Drove to Gila National Forest (specifically, Gila National Monument). On the way, we witnessed a tire blow up and shatter into pieces as it rolled along the road ahead of us. IT WAS OUR TIRE. Actually the tire of our trailer, which we kinda needed to bring our stuff to camp. It took around 2 hours, and many back and fourth trips in the van between a tire shop and our immobile truck & trailer, but our leaders finally replaced the tire.

 

Tuesday: So, I think Gila is my favorite place we've gone to so far. It's lush with vegetation, the whole monument is a riparian area!

Anyways, on Tuesday, half of our crew of 12 worked on disassembling old wooden bridges, while the other half removed nails from the old planks they had pried out from the base of the bridge, and then carried them all the way back to the trailhead.

The work was actually pretty O.K., and it had a steady pace to it.

After work, we drove a little bit, then walked a bit longer until we arrived at some hot springs which pooled right into the river! It was relaxing experience, plus I (may or may not have)* found some wild mint and shared a few leaves with our crew.

*Disclaimer: Don't forge in National Parks

 

Wednesday: This time, 2/3 of the crew worked on the bridges, while 1/3 of the crew, including me, brushed trails (removed vegetation on, or near the trail) with loppers. It was tedious, annoying work with little reward. And frankly, I don't like to seemingly needlessly mutilate plants, especially rarer ones which are restricted to riparian habitat.

After work, we simply walked from our campsite to the nearby river and took a nice swim.

When we came back, we discovered a ~2-year old boy just standing in the middle of the road, in tears. One of our crew mates lead him off the road, hand in hand (at which point he stopped crying), but failed to find his parents. A moment later, an old man simply walked by him. When one of our crew mates asked him to take his kid back, he said "he knew where I was" and that's it. The kid walked into the road again, again in tears, and when we asked the old guy to take his kid out of the middle of the road, he completely ignored us.

Eventually, he lead his kid, hand in hand, off the road and into his campsite, as he approached, the kid slipped and fell, but the man simply dragged his young body on the ground until they reached their camp table. :(

It wasn't our place to interfere anymore, our boss said.

 

Thursday: More fucking lopping.

However, we spent an hour taking a tour of some ancient ruins, built by the Mogollon people.

It was pretty interesting learning about their history and lifestyle.

We went to the hot springs again which was nice. Plus our leaders made us banana boats as a special treat. :coffee:

 

Friday: Drove back to base. Oh man, the leader who drove us back is a godawful driver who had already run over curbs, violated traffic laws (even ones which might've endangered the entire crew) and now, the drive back, almost made me throw up. Granted, it was a twisty-turny road, but I was only very mildly sick coming in under a different driver.

 

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Week 5

Monday: Drove to Tumacácori National Historical Monument.

It's the ruins of an old, quite large (back in its day), mission. Unfortunately, we weren't in mountains as we had been before, plus our campsite was out in the open, so we felt average temperatures of of 110º F.

Thankfully, we all got the rest of the day off as a special treat due to tomorrow being the 4th of July.

We spent it by driving to a nearby lake. The lake was amazing, the best I've ever swam in with both warm pockets and cold pockets.

In addition, we had cloud cover for part of the week, so it wasn't as hot as it could've been.

 

Tuesday: Drove to a nearby trail and picked up trash all day. Definitely beats lopping for me. Unlike my crew mates, I prefer to work with just gloves when picking up trash, as opposed to grabbers. It's much faster, satisfying, and efficient.

After work, since it was the 4th of July, we drove to Nogales to enjoy a mini-fair and watch a firework show! It was alright, I'm personally not a big fan of fairs, but everyone else had a great time.

 

Wednesday: Picked up trash again, this time we simply walked to the river from our campsite.

By the way, this is the Santa Cruz river, the one which flows from the U.S. into Mexico and then back into the U.S. There's not a lot of infrastructure in Mexico, including trash service (to be fair, this is probably due to the U.S., free trade isn't always fair trade, but that's as far as I'll go on this partially political issue) so, we we picking up trash in a highly toxic river littered with trash around every corner.

After work, we got to go to the Titan II missile museum to take a tour!

The only nuclear bomb base left from the Cold War in the U.S., now a harmless museum. It was pretty interesting, even though I'd already been there.

 

Thursday: Once more, picked up trash. After work, drove to the lake again and had a good time.

I swam across the lake 4 times! I slept well that night. Our leaders also gave us some cake, in celebration of one of the leaders who was leaving us. I was sad to see her go, she was really cool.

 

Friday: Drove back to base. On arrival, we split up into teams in order to prepare for our 10-day hitch. I was in a team which drove out about 30 min in order to clear out an area for a helicopter to land (which would carry our stuff up, so we don't have to hike with all our food, tools, and other stuff for a 10-day trip. It was very stressful work for awhile, at least once we arrived back at base, but we managed to get most of it done in time.

 

Meme of the weeks:

Crew member: "My girlfriend at the time legit vommited all over her pacifier at the rave and then I was like 'fine, I'll clean it off' and I legit licked the vomit off and gave it back to her to suck on"

Me: "Kinky"

 

Now, whenever someone says something which could be erotically interpreted, someone always says "Kinky". The deed is done. (° ͜ʖ°)

 

Tomorrow: 10-day "hitch"! We're hiking up a mountain in our own National Park (previously referred to as "base"). Should be a little cooler than last week, at least.

I've never camped for 10 days in a row, so wish me luck xD

 

Bye! ;)

Edited July 10, 2017 by james8470 (see edit history)