Day 7


July 13th – Friday

We started out with Tom Walker over at Goose Creek. It was another service day, my tool of choice was a cute little shovel. Background on the Creek; the culvert needed to be fixed. Recently they replaced a giant metal pipe that was previously there, with a better stream simulation creek. During the reconstruction the equipment and works left the former grasslands rocky dirt. To help the vegetation return to its previous state we gave it a little jump start today. Part of our group moved out the big rocks and made the dirt a little softer that was upstream. Downstream the dirt was already soft and ready for sludge transplanting. My job was to dig holes that could fit the sludge transplant to help start the spreading of the vegetation. On our break Tom talked to us about the project and gave us some facts: about 400 Thousand dollars was paid just to the contractors, Goose Creek and Sparks Lake has never supported fish previous to 100 years, and non-native fish are inhabiting the creek. The big question was, “creek restoration, was it worth it?” I said no due to non-native fish benefiting from this but Tom later explained any fish is non-native because the Creek never had them. This gave me new insight, it wasn’t worth the price tag but it helped more than fish in the area and that is important. I still don’t know how I feel about it, it’s beautiful that’s for sure.

Lunch was at Soda creek. I snuck away from our big group and found this bench looked out at the meadow and mountains behind it. The view made my sandwich taste better. It was a great chance to get a little alone time, we’re approaching the end of the week and alone time is definitely needed. Just to let everything sink in and to get a chance to just breathe.

After lunch we had a long day ahead, we headed to Lava Lands. First we went Lava Butte and met Jim, Tony, and Joey. Jim was the head ranger and he knew everything and was a super cool person. At the butte we met with tony and he gave us the lesson of the butte and all the lava we could see from the butte. Then we headed up to the fire lookout to talk to Joey. Joey was a cool person too. He was extremely fired up (no pun intended) being a fire finder it takes extreme precision, patience, and detail. All the ranger we met have retired and just loved doing what they were doing. Joey got personal and expressed that they don’t make a lot of money but he didn’t need much money and he’s had a life time of happiness with his job, that was cool to hear.

We headed over to Benham Falls. It was a great little walk and the falls were beautiful. (at this point I was ready to jump in the water I wanted to swim so bad) It was about a mile round trip not too bad. The flowers, trees, and vegetation was beautiful.

Gail bought supplies for dinner. Rick and Mike grilled up some hot dogs for us. Dinner was amazing and being able to listen to the Rangers stories was better. I felt special because who else gets Lava Land hot dogs? No one. Its exclusive and they did it with a smile on their face it was amazing.

Finally, we went to the lava tube. The CAVE. Gosh it was fun but it made me 10x more tired than I already was. David and Evan were our cave tour guides. The cave was two miles round trip and 42 degrees year round. It’s crazy because as soon as you get into the sink hole it was already 10 degrees cooler than the top ground. Going in and starting was a blast it was just finishing and getting out of the cave was the problem. The cave itself is pitch black with no lights and kind of rugged at times but very cool to look at because nature is great. On the way back out it was getting about 60 thousand degrees hotter and my body weight increased a lot. It was weird we experienced both extremes within 5 minutes. Amazing experience to not only walk with nature but inside of it literally.

Today was a cool day packed with a lot of fun stuff. I would say our service project was the highlight. We saw our progress and I knew I was really helping. The rest of it was exciting and great to experience. I loved today. I was expecting something bad to happen in line with Friday the 13th but we just climbed into a lava tube. J

We’ll see if I love tomorrow.

-       Destiny


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