I Hate Tamarisk!

Tamarisk is an evil plant. We had to remove a shitload of it from Lake Mohave. My arms and legs are covered cuts and bruises; I had less injuries when I had a car crash!

The worst thing about the project is that you have chainsaws going the whole day, you have your earplugs in so you can't have a conversation with anyone, so 10 hours really feels like 10 hours.

The campsite was really nice though. We were camping on the shores of Lake Mohave, and it was so beautiful. Every night we sat eating our dinner, looking out over the lake at the sunset.

The worst thing (other than the Tamarisk) was that there were rogue donkeys around the campsite. They had been used for mining, but when they had finished with them the miners let them go wild - so now they have basically no fear and will approach humans. You could hear them making noises in the middle of the night (fucking terrifying) close to the campsite. One even chased Lucy when she went to the toilet at lunch. This is why I hate donkeys

Can't be arsed to write much more, here's a shitload of pictures:

Tonto Creek and Vegas

Hello.

I'm a wee bit tired and can't be bothered to write for an hour about what's been going on the last fortnight, so I'll mainly spend to the next hour posting photos. More info if I feel like it....

My third project was in Tonto Creek. We had to build structures in the river to in order to help out the population of trout (they prefer deep pools usually covered by rocks). This meant a full week of moving rocks, cutting trees, moving trees, drilling holes, moving rocks, tying cable and rock moving.


We were meant to leave on the Wednesday, but we had to turn back 45 mins down the road as the creek was frozen over. So instead, a few of us chilled out in Flagstaff for the day and prepared to leave Thursday. When we finally got there and got to work, it was fucking cold! Easily -10 C during the nights (almost certainly colder - my watch literally froze up and died)

 

Having Lunch

 

Number 2 - The first log is in place

 

If you look right at the back in the middle, you can see Number 2 completed! (Click to embiggen)

We managed to get all the sites finished way ahead of time - so the project partner gave us some more to do, which we also finished ahead of time, allowing us to leave a day early.

We got back on Wednesday, and headed straight to the Green Room (it was a quarter per drink night - as in literally 25 cents a drink) I don't think I've ever woken up the morning after a night like that with so much money in my wallet still!)

Thursday we went for a crew dinner at a Thai restaurant, then some more drinks at Collins Irish pub (a dollar a drink night - places in this town just want to get you drunk!). Got in around 3am but had to try and help 2 random American girls jump start a car (I tried pointing out I'd have trouble with this when sober)

Friday - we went to Vegas!! We left Flagstaff and decided to stop at Hoover Dam again on the way:

 

New bridge built last year

Then we got to Vegas!

Had a walk up and down The Strip on Friday night, then went back to our (massive) hotel room and drank into the small hours. Got up quite late the next afternoon (a few people had trouble recovering), then headed back to The Strip to get tickets to see Penn and Teller. They were brilliant!! Worth every single penny! Myself and Dan went onto the stage beforehand to inspect a box - which was a box - then when the show started, Penn ran on stage and Teller jumped out of the box! Very enjoyable show. I went alone to the Bellagio to meet some friends afterwards, where we saw a great fountain show (And I won a dollar on the fruit machine!)

Bellagio Hotel - famous for its fountains on the lake:

Dan's hilarious sleeping face when I got in that night!

Penn And Teller. Couldn't be bothered to wait for a picture with them (and I'd forgotten Monkey) so I took photos of them with random people.

The next day we went to The Stratosphere. I won 10 dollars!! Then we walked around Vegas a bit more and eventually drove home.

I WON I WON I WON!

View from the Stratosphere

The Strip

Ride on top of the Stratosphere

Outside The Venetian hotel.

Inside The Venetian. Actually nicer than Venice! Not as many tourists and doesn't smell at all!

They were celebrating the Year Of The Rabbit with this terrifying rabbit.

Overall it was a great project, followed by a great few days off. Though four nights in a row of heavy drinking are now taking its toll on my wallet. :-s

I might add some more words if I can be bothered.

Been here for a month now.

Hello! Been a while since my last update. Since San Diego I've been back to Lake Mead for more fencing, then down to Phoenix this weekend. So I'll write myself out of this intro and into the main narrative...

Day One

So this time at Lake Mead we were on the Nevada side; this meant that we moved into Pacific Time; gaining an hour. For reasons I can't be bothered to go into, this project ended up being 6 days rather than 8. We were camping near Overton Beach, in the garden of adandoned Government housing. They were abandoned within the last few years as the water level of Lake Mead (which is created by Hoover Dam) has dropped so low that "Overton Beach" is no longer a beach. Our worksite was quite far away from the base camp; we had to drive to a town called Overton (A big Mormon town*), leave the minibus there, then drive quite a way in the 4x4 over tricky ground. The car could go no further than the fenceline, so we had to hike for about 2 miles to work.

Day two

Began with a stretch circle near centre of town; locals gave us strange looks. We drove to the end of the dirt road (this is what 4x4s were made for!) then hiked for an hour carrying 5 T posts on our shoulders (not TOO heavy, just f'king awkward to carry!). We had to pound them along between the braces (which was not easy as the braces were wonky as shit). Here's Dan's drawing again:

We had to clear quite a lot of vegetation - at least a metre or so from the fence-line on either side, for the purpose of wiring. There was another team working on this (Americorps - Basically Americans who were getting paid for the work. Grr.)

Day Three

Started off with the same hike to the dump site; then we were taken to an archeological site.

This Native American settlement is believed to be over a thousand years old; rather large number of people would live here - up to 30 in this settlement. The lake used to cover this area - it was at its highest level in 1998, but has since receeded.

Onto work; James and I started where we'd left off the day before - going over a rocky mound. Luckily we managed to find spaces between the rocks and didn't need to use the Pionjar.

James pounding.

We had lunch when we got to the corner brace; after lunch we had a team of 4 pounding Myself, James (Hull), Lawrence (Holland) and Steffan (Denmark) - 2 lining up with the sighting posts and 2 pounding posts. This was really efficient. We did keep swapping around the roles, but by the end of the day we managed at least 60 posts on that stretch. Altogether we did at least 80 between the four of us!!

Chris (project partner) was so chuffed with the work of the foreigners that he bought us a drink at McDonalds!

Day Four
Can't remember much about Day Four -  all we did all day was stretching wire between the braces; approximately 400 metres. This took bloody ages! We ended up finishing the last bit of fence after sunset - clipping in when it was dark, then hiking out in total darkness. Took some rather nice photos:

 

The Sun shining on the mountains in the background; The whole scene looked like a painting. Not very good quality sadly (taken on my phone)

Day Five

Chris didn't want us to work today; instead we spent the day re-packing the car and moving camp. There was an unbelievable amount of stuff to get in to one tiny car; Eight people, their rucksacks, big cooking stoves, two big (BIG) cool-boxes and a shed load of tools. Somehow we got it all in, then went to our new campsite at Temple Bar (Back in Arizona - losing an hour). On the way we stopped off at (what we were told was) a hot spring by the side of the road. Turned out it was just warm, though it was full of little fish that came and ate the dead skin off your feet. And it did look rather pretty:

 

When we got to our campsite in the dark, no-one could be bothered to pitch the tents, so we decided to sleep under the stars. I haven't done that since Switzerland, but I think I might do it more often from now on! It was brilliant!

Day Six
We drove home and cleaned the car - nothing more to say.

 

 

James, Bas and I rented a car this weekend and went down to Phoenix. Nothing much to write home about; there's bugger-all to do in Phoenix it seems. On Sunday we did go to the Zoo - which was shit! I've decided I don't like or agree with zoos, or at least this one. They had all sorts of animals, but they had tiny enclosures. They had a Rhino living in what could only have been 10 metre square area that looked utterly unhappy - there was a sign saying it was under medical observation. The elephant also looked unwell - it had a rash on its ear and trunk and was moving its legs on the spot. The whole thing just felt wrong. And the Americans were just going "Wow! An Elephant! Click!" and moving on. Tossers.

Prairie Dog - cute!

Anyway, I'm now back in Flagstaff. We had snow today and are expecting some more tomorrow. On Wednesday I'm off to Tonto Creek (I'm told it's helping trout to mate - more info soon)

Ian

* Fun Fact #1 - Mormons aren't allowed to drink caffeine, yet they own Pepsi!