Trail Maintenance Trip, Feb. 3-4
From some of the pictures I've included you may think this post is more about how not to use a digital camera than it is about the "trail pickup" trip. As you know, I got brave and asked someone from work if they would be interested in helping out on this weekends trip. That someone was Gerald or Jerry as he's recently asked to be called.
We left work at five O'clock Friday and headed to his mobil home to drop off his car. At this time he asked me to look over some of the items he has set aside for the trip. I suggested he leave a few things behind and after a moments thought he removed a few of the items I'd suggested. We then loaded the car and headed to my place to pick up a lantern so we would have some light. You see I only found out about the ban on camp fires once I was at work. which meant I had a trunk full of firewood and no lantern. So... There you go. We stopped at my place. Then made the wonderful slog through rush-hour traffic, which had us heading south on I-44 at about 6PM.
We arrived at Camp Doris at about 7:30 and immediately set to work setting up the tent.
El crappo pict. of Jerry. Our camera doesn't like the dark very much.
For those superstitious members of the board, I looked all over
the above image for some sort of face looking area... Thinking that
surely there's some kind of evil looking down on us in a creepy
picture like this. This was the best I could come up with.
Oh yeah! The tent. Well here it is.
We put up the tent, made our beds up, prepared some hot chocolate, and sat in the dark and talked for a while. Mostly about Jerry's recent filing for Divorce after 36 years. But he's doing quite well. He's learning to do things that he's never done before. And in March he's planning a trip to go cross country skiing in New Mexico. This would be his first vacation alone since he went to France before starting college.
It was at about this point, I noticed that our neighbors at the camp ground had started a fire. Ordinarily I don't give too much of a crap what other campers do but, I was cold. Did this guy know something I didn't? I quickly marched over to his campsite, "Excuse me, did the campground host say it was 'OK' to build a fire? Last I knew we there were no fires permitted in the state." The guy came over and replied, "No. That's for wood fire. This is charcoal." he pointed to the nice warm Orange and yellow flames licking up the sides of a pile of charcoal. I was jealous and pressed the guy, "The park host told you this?" the question sincerely asked.
"No. But the burn ban is just for wood fires." he answered. Ah ha! I could tell he was making this up, and said as sarcastically as I was capable, "Really? Hugh. Ok." and turned to walk back to my camp. Halfway thinking to drive to the hosts' and tell on the guy. Instead I just walked back to my camp. Jerry and I ate our dinner by battery operated lantern light and watched as the camp host hurriedly drove up to our neighbors camp site, parked the car, go out and talked to the guy for a while. I didn't hear what transpired but I kind of felt a little vindicated. Shortly after the host arrived the fire was put out. And just so's you know, I've since looked and the burn ban includes charcoal! No open fires in the state.
A little better pict. of Jerry.
Self portrait at bed time.
We woke late and packed up. It was pretty cool Saturday morning and Jerry looked particularly uncomfortable, piling on almost every article of clothing he'd brought with him.
Jerry doing... Something. Camp is almost packed away.
We first went to The Elk Mountain Trail, a 0.6 mile trail that's a very popular area of the Wichita's. It'd been a couple of years since I'd picked up on this one so I thought we would start out on it and then refocus our attention on Mt. Scott. The weather was great; in the upper 40's to lower 50's while we did our work. We started with the parking area then turned our attention to the trail. It was pretty clean (this was not unexpected) as this is one of the most popular trails in the refuge it likely gets more attention from paid crews than other trails. Still though we pulled 2 full bags of garbage out of the area, most of the trash we collected was found off trail, under trees or tucked away in rivens.
When we pulled up to the parking area at the Elk Mountain
trail head we were greeted by a flock of wild turkeys.
Jerry didn't have a pack so he borrowed Katie's fanny pack,
which was big enough to hold the items he needed to carry.
Taking a little break about half way up the trail.
Not since Jerry was is Boy Scouts had he camped out. And to his knowledge he had never done any kind of trail maintenance. But he did really well while he was out there. On our way back down we came across a group of (presumed) Cub Scouts. One of the leaders with them asked Jerry if the bags we were carrying were full of trash we had collected. As we continued, we could hear the guy behind us telling his charges that they should never throw trash on the ground. I looked behind us at the group and caught a glimpse of Jerry's wide smile. I was smiling too.
Remember kids: after using the cameras Zoom feature
to take a picture of your companion taking a break, you
should return it to normal, before trying a self portrait. I call
this one; Part of head with trash sack and blue glove.
We ate a good lunch on top of Elk mountain at about 12:30, after which we took a short break (about 15 minutes) to lay down on the grass and soak up some warm sun, out of the way of the increasing wind.
Jerry heating up some lunch, out of the way of the wind.
We then packed up and headed to our next destination, Mt. Scott. For years now I've been wanting to tackle the the parking area at the top of Mt Scott. This time we managed to make it. It was a pretty discouraging time though. It would take 20 people a week or more to clean up that amount of trash. It's all over the place, tucked in to every conceivable nook and cranny. More then once, I had the feeling Jerry and I were attempting to window-dress an outhouse. Still in the hour and a half we were up there we pulled out 3 FULL bags of trash before heading back to the city.
I've asked some other people at work if they might be able to attend the next outing, (probably the first weekend in march) and I've had 3, yeses. How sincere they are though will probably become increasingly apparent the closer we come to actually going.
I really hope some of you will consider coming on the next outing. I will pay for the campsite, and I have tents enough for 6 people. Nine if nobody minds being
really really close to their tent mate. If you have any questions or comments regarding the trips let me know. I'll do my darndest to answer them.
Taxably yours,
rickus