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Day 11

July 17 th – Tuesday Agenda for today: o    Drove to kaulipel o    Met with Ray at the Wellness Center o    Toured   the fishery o    Visited the caves o    Had lunch at the powwow grounds o    Saw the bison o    Indian creek community forest tour and talk o    Spoke to Jr the language teacher o    Roamed the wellness center o    Dinner at powwow grounds o    Drove back to camp The drive over was about two hours in the van. Everyone slept and visited in the car. I personal slept and snored a lot on the way over. Ray is the Director of Natural Resources for Kaulispel tribe. He wanted to be a vet for a long portion of his life but he didn’t want the bills that came along with the vet degree. Thus he changed his major. He manages all the natural resources.   We visited the fishery where we met with ___. They recently got a new technology that the techs really enjoyed. They had triple rainbow trout and bull trout, it was super cool. T
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Day 10

July 16 th – Monday Agenda for today: o    Talked to B.J. the Director of Natural Resources o    Got a presentation from the Fuel Management, Vernon o    Headed to look at forestry recovery with Henry o    Went shock fishing with Brain and Kacey o    Visited the Trading Post to get snacks and groceries o    Shared in the Pit House The talk with B.J. was very educational. He shared his educational pathway, job description, and shared some advice. B.J. had plans in mind but the tribe pushed him to go into Natural Resources so they can build their Natural Resources programs. He directs, fisheries, forestry, fire, fuel management and more.   He’s an extremely important and busy person, it was a privilege to talk to him at the extent we did. I asked what the biggest problem he wanted to fix and one of the problems was fish restoration. This is a common factor that I want to look at deeper to help the tribes. Fish recovery is huge and for the river people f
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Day 9

July 15 th – Sunday We had an awesome breakfast; pancakes, bacon, hash browns, and eggs. We woke up around 8 a.m. because our tents were already hot. Ate breakfast around 10 a.m. It was a lazy morning. At about noon Spokane tribal elders came by to drum with us. Francis, Warren, Jim and ** opened us the drumming circle and made sure everyone got to try it. The experience was amazing. Being able to be a part of the drum circle, sing, and listen to the songs was incredible. People travel far and wide to see and hear things like that. I felt very special and honored to be a part of that. After around 3 p.m. Warren took us up to their fire lookout. It was on top of this huge hill and the lookout tower itself had 4 flights of metal stairs. It was on top of this huge hill and the lookout tower itself had 4 flights of metal stairs. I didn’t know I was afraid of heights until today. Once I reached the top my hands were shaking and I felt like I needed to vomit. It was very beauti
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Day 8

July 14 th – Saturday I was awoken at 5:30 a.m. Ate breakfast and cleaned up camp. We drove about 13 hours to get to our new location. We stopped in Tricities to do laundry. Thank goodness because we were all getting a little smelly. Today we drove and drove and drove. I realized I like country music. Once we got to our new location we got to shower and eat. It was worth it. I am cleaned and rested. -        Destiny
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Day 7

July 13 th – 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
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Day 6

July 12 th – Thursday Service project day!! I loved today. Our big group split up into two service projects; trail brushing and vegetation surveying. I picked trail brushing because that seemed to be the best and I could see the progress as we go. We drove about 3 miles up the road to lava lake trail. Our guide was Jesse, she was amazing and super smart about her field. She is a trail technician. She guided us to the tools wed be using. There were: loppers, Mc Cloud, hand saws, and a chain saw. I utilized the loppers and it was a great choice on my part. There was a bit of a rule; put your arms out and if you can touch anything, cut it out. I could prune, cut out whole trees and pick up debris with my loppers. We cleaned our trail and had lunch at Lava Lake overlooking the water. After we got to shower. Thank goodness because this was day three and we were smelling pretty bad. We came back to camp and chilled. It was a good bonding day we sat in the river and chilled o
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Day 5

July 11 th – Wednesday This morning was freezing. After everyone finally got over the bear scare we woke up at around 6ish. Early day, caffeine is definitely needed. Today we went to ____. The showed us a lot of different things such as; fire trainer, smoke jumper, airplane hangar, supply cache, aviation section, and dispatch. All of it was extremely educating and fun. With the trainer they really pushed options for wildlife fires services and BIA. They were very informational and it opened my eyes to the option of firefighting. I am not exactly sure what I want to do with my life at this point and I feel like I need time and experience to figure it out. I will definitely be utilizing them. Then, the group took a tour with the smoke jumpers. AWESOME, I was so surprised that such a thing existed. The jumpers loved their work and worked very hard to get there. They jump out of planes and try to control a fire and prevent it from becoming a big fire. Dougie and Sam were rookies
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