Went for a hike!

Today was a great day, I spent most of the day in the visitor's center answering questions and giving tours, all the fun stuff rangers get to do. But to top it all off I took a hike after work with some of my fellow rangers! It was great. We saw quite a few wild flowers, one of the rangers I was with is giving a guided hike tomorrow and needed some ideas of what to talk about on the trail...either way I took a bunch of pictures of the wildflowers because they are starting to bloom! It is quite beautiful! We also climbed some buttes...as usual haha. Enjoy the pictures!

This is a cotton wood tree

notice the cotton!

We got rained on a little

This is called the Jones-Creek Trail...dont know why exactly

The creek water is pretty gross...it is because of the coal, clinker and mud it flows through

Ok well I don't know the name of any of these flowers exactly soo just enjoy how pretty they are!

I liked the pictures I got of this flower, which is why there are several...sorry

Me, and my two ranger friends on top of a butte.

These are some sort of prairie plum, apparently they are edible.

We had to climb it.

Haha

Itch Itch Itch

Wish I could have gotten a better view of the sunset cus it was beautiful.

Cotton from the trees.

COTTON!

As I promised...

Finally I have a picture for all of you....me in my brand spankin' new uniform!! 

Last couple days

So the last few days I have been super busy and haven't had a chance to take many pictures, SORRYYY. My uniform finally came so I will have a picture of me in uniform soon I promise lol. It looks pretty sweet, I have been working really hard on my programs and I was actually able to give three tours of the Maltese Cross Cabin yesterday (wednesday) I wore a uniform from the uniform cache and I had a blast! I wasn't even nervous! I have my first scheduled tours on saturday so I am looking forward to that. Besides being very busy with my programs, I am thoroughly enjoying myself here in Medora. I may go for a short hike tomorrow so if I do I will be sure to take some pictures. I have been eyeing up this butte that I want to climb =).

Also I have had a few people ask me this, but just to clarify. This is my first job with the National Park Service and I am a seasonal employee...I work full-time all summer basically. After this summer I will have one last year of school and then I hope to pursue a career with the NPS. Also because i have this job and if I do well here I will have a better chance at getting a permanent job when I do graduate. I am very excited because even if I do work seasonally for a few years I will be able to move to any park that I want! The NPS works solely on experience, so the more experience you have the more likely you will be hired, also you have freedom to apply to any park you want, and move wherever you want! Like you don't get assigned a park.

Also for those of you who don't know, I am working as an Interpretive park ranger and that means that I am the person you would see at the visitor center when you first come to a park, I also am the person who would lead you on an interpretive tour of whatever and also I am responsible for creating, researching and presenting several programs throughout the summer. Basically a perfect job for me! I can choose what to talk about and research it then teach people and inspire people! I am excited for my first program it is this next Wednesday and well I havent finished it yet but I plan to talk about Roosevelt and Boy Scouting, but my main goal of the program is to inspire people to be better citizens. TR was like the epitome of an upstanding citizen and I want to correlate BSA with him to express to the visitors that our country needs more men like TR. I am working on organizing my ideas/thoughts and figuring out exactly how I am going to present it. I need ideas for props if anyone has some please let me know! I was going to find some pictures of scouts and TR and have those but I could use some other ideas. So please let me know!

Sooooo today I was told to take a car and explore the park...How sweet is that! Either way today was pretty awesome and I am very tired lol. I did a lot of hiking and driving today. I drank like 5L of water too! (I am still thirsty). So Check 'em out! June 19, 2011

This is the butte that I climbed today! I looked for the tallest one I could find and I climbed all the way to the TOP!

This is a pissed off bull snake...they are pretty intimidating actually...they make a lot of hissing noises!

I had lunch on top of this mountain.

Bull snake prior to being pissed off.

Itch Itch Itch

This guy was right on the side of the road..I was able to get like 10ft away from him...I didnt want to get run over so I stayed about 10ft away lol.

This looked cool. It is at the coal vein trail, basically this clay got fired because a coal vein was on fire and it cooked it.

More from the coal vein trail...that stuff is called clinker..locally

There is a coal vein

This is the first rattle snake I have seen! He was all kinds of squished.

Self explanatory 

This was the trail leading to the place I had lunch.

Again toward my lunch spot.

This is looking off of the Butte that I climbed this morning! It was sooo cool...the pictures definitely do not do it any justice...You could see forever!

More from the Butte!

Where I climbed up

Again, self explanatory...Btw scoria is the same thing as clinker.

My BUTTE!

The neighbor butte.

On top again..if you can't tell I liked the Butte.

That little white car is where I started my expedition to the Butte!

North Unit

Today (June 18, 2011) I was able to take a car and go explore the North Unit of the park...The park is divided into three units, the North, South and the Elkhorn Ranch (which I have yet to see, pretty excited about that!) Anyways I was driving up to the North this morning at like 8am mountain time  (it is like 75 miles or so, soo about an hour) and on my way there I pretty much realized how much I absolutely LOVE this job. I love the west and the wild and well I can definitely see myself doing this for the rest of my life...haha anyway enough of my jabbering, I was able to snap a few pictures of the NU, but unfortunately my camera died...forgot to charge it last night. =( Enjoy!

 More Buffalo lol

 This little cabin was pretty awesome, it was built by the Civilian Conservation Core like 75 years ago and it is still standing strong. The view from here was amazing! I guess there was a mountain lion footprint there last week but the rain washed it away. 

 This is looking out from that viewpoint by the CCC building. It is called the Riverbend Overlook

 This is called Battleship Butte, because it kind of looks like a battleship, I guess. 

 This is called the Oxbow Scenic Viewpoint, it is the end of the 14 mile road in NU. It was pretty amazing here.

 This is also at Oxbow, that man standing in the photo is a ranger at the park. He has been working at this park since 1975 and he knows everything there is to know about this park. Honestly that guy was my favorite person I have met since I have been here. He is like the epitome of park ranger haha. I was able to chat with him for around 45 minutes and well he sure was inspiring. He also gave me an idea for my night program so I was pretty excited. 

 This is a cannon ball...but seriously they call them cannon balls. (apparently they are some sort of geological phenomenon that occurs because of crystallizing sediment or something.

 More cannon balls!

 Doesn't it look like wood? Well it isn't.

 I had to throw a few more shots of that cabin thing in there.

 =)

 Grazing Longhorn! They are actually part of the park, because the longhorn grazing trail ended in this part of the park...like the long drive thing.

 Again haha...sorry I thought it was cool.

I threw this one in there because I actually helped the chief ranger guy fix the flag rope. He didn't know how to tie it together and attach the clips for the flag. So I gave him a quick lesson in knots and he was very impressed. lol....actually all the rangers at the visitors center commented on it. =) I felt special. lol.....Yes I am lame.