LAST DAY OF WORK- Team Swamp Dog!

As sad as it is, today was our last day of work before the rec trip! We began our day with stretch circle and then went to Point Mountain to go hiking. It was pretty awesome to see some work that was done by alumni SCA members, and even some members on our crew from previous years! I personally know I was very impressed by the rock staircases with HUGE rocks! As Lauren always says.. Go big or go home! It was very foggy on the hike though and humid from the rain yesterday night. After reaching the top, we all sat up on the big rock and had tunnel vision when looking out. Everything looked like it was spiraling in after hiking for about an hour and a half with minimal breaks. It was pretty cool though! Then after the hike we had a quick snack by the river and then went in to do a stream study! Working in small groups we used nets to catch things off the bottom of the river that indicate the health of the river. After lots of catching we determined the river seemed pretty healthy based on the organisms in the river such as dragonfly larva, snails etc. We all seemed pretty sad though that no one caught a cray-fish :( Then to end our day we stopped by the Clinton Library to pick up some music Cd's for the car ride up to Watkins Glen tomorrow(such as the Pirates of the Caribbean Soundtrack and Disney Princess Soundtrack..) and the book The Lorax by Dr. Seuss. A very awesome last day overall!
Cant wait for tomorrow morning when we begin our rec trip!!!! See all of you a tad later than normal tomorrow at 8, which is nice:)
-Jelly Jane

KELLIE'S BLOG!!!!!!!!!!‏

Today was our last day of work on our trail, and we thought it would be just like any other day of work until Doug whipped out his guitar in the parking lot/stretch circle area and started serenading the crew before stretch circle. Surprise #1. After Doug's interesting rendition of a Bright Eyes song, which only Casey may have fully enjoyed, complete with guitar AND vocals, we did our stretch circle. A game on ninja followed that, along with Rex suddenly blasting the Pina Colada song from Rose's van and some interesting old man dancing from Bryan and Doug. Being sufficiently woken up by all the surprise music and dancing, we headed to our trail. Once there, Doug shared Surprise #2 with us during snack time. It was his old decrepit book of 101 elephant jokes. I'd say about 99% of them didn't even make sense, but they provided some nice entertainment for the crew. (Such as: How do you carve an elephant? You get a rock and you chisel away all the pieces that don't look like an elephant.) We got right to work after snack debarking, putting in checksteps, and working on drainage dips. Amazingly, Casey finished debarking her "baby" (a log she'd been working on debarking for almost a day) and Bryan and I had the honor of setting it after Casey had a nice photoshoot with it. Pretty soon, all the checksteps were set; 17 in total, which is 17 more than were originally there. The checksteps look awesome and make walking on the trail so much easier. The drainage dips we did also look great. Before the day ended, we hiked through our first trail and got to survey our old work. Near the end we tag team polaskied a fallen tree/step that was an obstacle in the trail and got through it in record time. It was awesome. When we got to the bottom of our hike, Rose had to shuttle half of us to the parking lot and then come back because we didn't have both vans, so when she left with half the kids, the other half of us hid in the grasses and had Doug convince her that we were all missing when she came back. It would have been great, except then Doug also convinced her that she should just drive off without us, so we had to come out of hiding once we saw the van pulling away. All in all, it was an exceptional last day of work, and now we can look forward to our ice cream treat tomorrow!!!

NJ Greenteam in 36 hours

I'll start by saying that I'm not much of a morning person and it's a rare thing for me to get up before 6 unless i'm getting on a flight for an exotic vacation. On Tuesday morning I woke up at 4:30 to drive the 4 hours to NJ so I could work with the crews before the end of the program and it was well worth it.

By 7am I had gotten a panicky text asking me to come to Musconetcong to see the damage that the storm the night before had done to the trail. I arrived just before 10 and found the crew working on putting in checksteps to try to slow down the massive surge of water that runs off of the parking lot. When I say massive, I mean the pictures looked like what may be confused for a cascading waterfall or a small kayakable creek. The good news is that Patrick arrived at the same time to take photos for the county to try to get them to fix the road. Despite the crazy amount of water the structures put in by the crew were doing their job and the trail was looking great. We added some drainage aprons and an additional check step and I think it'll hold up nicely. After working all morning and stopping at the river for lunch we hiked the entire loop and I was blown away but the amount of quality work the crew had accomplished in 5 weeks. Of course the stepping stones were well set, and the crew did a great job at cutting benched tread, a first for a NJ crew, and building 2 switchbacks. I was also shocked to hear that instead of pulling out the crosscut saw the crew had cut timber for 20 check steps using a pulaski, all that crushing rock in past years has created some solid tool swinging skills with this crew.

The next day I met both crews at Hoffman Park (which I'll add to my list of places that make NJ a beautiful state and would surprise those people that hear NJ and think NJ Turnpike) and after some hasty picnic planning with the leaders headed out to Cushetunk. Wow do these crews do a lot of hiking. It was nice hiking over the project that the crew did in 2009 to the current site. Again, I was impressed by how these crew members that usually move large rocks have embraced timber and have set some perfect check steps. I hiked the chainsaw out which proved to be more of an ego builder then a help with the project. I was nicknamed "lumberjack" but only made 2 small cuts so not sure I can take credit for that. My plan to fell a tree was foiled by a finicky saw and a lack of time. Instead I got to dig one drainage dip and lay out the placement for about 5 more (more fun then sawing believe it or not). The only bummer was having to leave early and not getting to see the ridge trail and all of the great work I've heard about there. Hey, the way I see it is it's an excuse to come back and hike without a saw.

It was great working with everyone and I sure wish I could do it more often (but don't think that getting up at 4 on a daily basis would be good for me). I'm excited to hear about your rec trips and look forward to seeing you all again next week for the picnic. You should all be proud of your trail skills, you accomplished a lot and the county trails are proof that will last for years! Nicely done. (pics of musconetcong crew here: https://picasaweb.google.com/117334271898732252242/MusconetcongGorgeNJGreenteam2011?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCM2N6ZGPodrJcQ&feat=directlink cushetunk are coming...)

Rachel

I think I'm supposed to post tonight...

Well this will be a short post 'cause I'm uber tired and I don't even know if it's my turn but TODAY ON TEAM SWAMP DOG...

•  Awesome alumni AJR aka Little Bear came to work with us today! except he's not so little anymore and he's taller than me and now I feel old and short
• Played Bear, Fish, Mosquito and both crews ended the game with magic...as in with absolutely no planning one team said UNICORN! and the other said WIZARD! Game ended in a draw because I can't be sure Wizards are oh so much more powerful than unicorns
• Dug more drainage dips and finished a section of tread that yellow jacket attacks prevented earlier
• Discovered that Taylmeleon/Tay looks like a tricerotops aka a TAY-cerotops!
• Did some major bench cutting on the ridge trail because it was so narrow and dangerous originally. Some hikers came through and expressed their gratitude for the work we did on the switchbacks, the parking lot trail, and the swamp so that was really nice to hear!
• I got to see Little Bear's/puppy I wish was mine at the end of the day! and Ali is FREAKING HUGE NOW! I used to be able to hold her in my arms =(

Signing off...
Voldemort, Voldemort, oooh Voldy Voldy Voldy... VOLDEMORT!

26th (yesterday) - Team Swamp Dog

I have one word for the three of you who read this: Dunkin Donuts. Thats two words but I'm a triceratops derp so... Anyway, this is actually relevant because yesterday morning Ben Wheat and I went dumpster diving and brought the crew a very large amount of free doughnuts (for those of you who don't know, dumpster diving is a national activity in which you wait for a dunkin donuts to close and throw out their fresh donuts that didn't sell. You then take and eat said doughnuts. It is completely sanitary, the donuts have their own fresh bag and they are actually wrapped in the pink paper they sit on in the shop). Moving on Rachel came and visited us today! She helped so much because our trail had major water damage we had to solve. Overall good day, we did a ton of drainage work.

July 28

we got a good number of check steps set and they're looking pretty good. the debarking is a pain so i'm glad we have so many barkless logs. i did other general trail maintenance with with doug, like lopping and moving blowdowns, but on our way back, he was stung by some kind of wasp. he stung again on our hike down but kelly is still master of the bee stings with a total of three.

-Marcus

Rain, rain, rain...

So I'm in charge of blogging for Monday, July 25. I'll keep it short considering I'm about to fall asleep. I'm pretty sure the entire crew had a bad case of "The Mondays", myself included. However, there was work to be done. So after stretching and playing a quick game of lumberjack ninja (which I won after making the best "suspicious squash"), we made our way to our trail. We were greeted by Mason and Bobby (two of the SCA interns we met on our EE Trip to Sandy Hook). They took a brief hike of our trail to see the work we had accomplished up to the swamp. After our guests departed, it was time to super tread the bottom loop of our trail, as it was too thin and needed benching. After completing the tread on the entire initial loop, we broke for lunch. We then discussed our food plans for the rec trip and began a game of Mafia, which was brought to an abrupt halt by the incoming thunderstorms. We proceeded to make a dash for the vans to beat the rain and continued to Lauren's house. There we finished our game of Mafia (in which there happened to be no Mafia!!!) and proceeded to do some EE curriculum games. The first activity was to split into groups of three and design a park with a certain theme and to use natural resources and energy efficiency as often as possible. Themes were penguins, unicorns/pegasus', and pandas. We all had a lot of time thinking of silly and creative ways to design our park. After presenting our park proposals, we discussed renewable and non-renewable resources. By the time we finished all of that, it was time to head back to Mountain Farm. Well, that's about it. So much for keeping this one short...

Trey Songz out

July 25

It finally rained today after several weeks of dry weather. It was only 
at the end of the day but it was my rose. Today we did check steps and 
which was fun beacuse we haven't done them this year. Swinging the 
Polaski also felt good because its always a great feeling to chop a 
tree in half. I hope we get to finish the check steps we started today. 
I am really excited to see how many we can get in before the rec trip.

-Rex

Ps put in this youtube video its the one called beautiful trail.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12TmI5_RIIo

RE: Thursday July 21st

Hello all,

This here post is regarding this past Thursday, a half, but rewarding, day. With projected highs of 110 degrees, it seemed like a pretty daunting task to de-bark, carry, set and fill our remaining 7 (someone correct that number if I'm wrong) check-steps - but we overcame the heat and found the light at the end of the tunnel. We had completed our third and final project! What a relief that was, seeing as working into the afternoon would have been straight up dangerous. At any rate, we finished our trail and headed down the road to Lauren's house, where we immediately cooled down by the pool - taking hose showers and dipping our heads and feet into the refreshing water, ahhhh, rejoice. We spent the rest of our day writing letters to Exxon and participating in an Environmental Ed. activity in which the Mud Puppies assumed the roles of various individuals affected positively and negatively by climate change and conversed with each other, sharing stories of greedy oil tycoons, worrisome snow-leopard conservationists and apple farmers from Oregon. This activity allowed all of us to understand just how serious climate change is and how each and every one of us is affected by it. Continuing on the subject of climate change, we then lightened the mood a little and finished off our day by watching the wonderful movie, Ice Age. All in all, a very rewarding day for Team Swamp Dog.

Stay cool, all.

Zach

Canoeing the Delaware!

On Friday both crews took an 8 mile journey down the Delaware River! The day started off meeting at Hoffman Park fifteen minutes earlier! And everyone managed to make good timing! As soon as we got everything together, we headed to the arboretum to meet with the canoe leaders and get our canoes, life jackets, and paddles. We all piled into the vans and left for Easton to start our journey! We arrived at the river and were taught different canoe strokes and signals.
Soon after, we were off! The weather was incredibly hot, so we stopped to swim as many times as possible which was very refreshing. Along the way, Bryan found '90s looking sandals that were two different sizes on the shore, I have a feeling he'll be rocking those for awhile now. As we paddled up to the end point, we were all thankful to be getting in vans with air conditioning and out of the sun. It felt good to have accomplished 8 miles of canoeing in a timely fashion, good work, guys!

One last thing, RIP Liz and Casey's sunglasses. Both pairs of sunglasses were loved by everyone and will be missed, no matter how inexpensive they were.

'Til next time,
Brittany

Canoe Trip!

Today was a wonderful environmental ed day! It started off with a trip to the arboretum and meeting up with people Mountain Farm that were nice enough to take us canoeing down the Delaware. The weather was sweltering, but the river certainly cooled us off and made it bearable. We threw bailers of water at each other all down the river. We all had fun and it was definitely the perfect activity to get through such hot weather.

July 21, 2011

Today we went to Mountain Farm and did some team-work building activities and enjoyed a nice snack under a shady tree. After some more activities we headed down to the ravine and had lunch on top of a bridge. We then headed down into the deep depths of Doug's dungeon and wrote letters to our sponsors. Once we finished that, it was time to go and we had a minute car ride back to Hoffman Park. It was a nice break from crushing and carrying fill up and down the trail. Tomorrow we will be flowing down the Delaware River in canoes for a nice EE day.

--Scott Potter

Pictures!

Digging fill!
What, where does this next bucket go?!
Rex throwing some excellent pulaski swings.
Myself digging out a water bar!
Doug rocking the pick, digging a fill hole.
Marissa carrying buckets of fill. Like a BOSS.
Rock Removal Squad!
Concentrating on the water bar.
Anthony giving the trail a manicure.
Our friend we met during a game of Camouflage.
Crew leaders crew leadin'.
The apprentice apprenticing.
Andy has the morning derps.
So does Marcus.

Rex's artistic photo of Doug and the treeline.
Lauren also has morning derps. =P
Karah, Doug, and Trey on the way home from an exciting day of working with NJ Conservation Fund and El Paso.

**Disclaimer** These pictures are courtesy of Rex Cummings and Marcus Wehof, just because I am posting them does not mean I take claim of them. This is just one of my many responsibilities as a crew leader.

P.S. Can't wait for canoeing tomorrow!!

Pictures from Team Swamp Dog

Derping in the Rain

Human Pretzel in the Rain

Casey holding onto his log

 

 

Fetal position... We Can't Go On!

Taylor and Jane trying to solve the Handcuff game

This log is One Jane and a Water bottle length

So this hole needs to be one Jane and a water bottle length!

A picture is worth a thousand words... what do you think?

Tuesday, July 19

Today was very much a typical day at the trail (save for the excessive humidity and the abundance of flies). After two weeks of non stop crush-work from the crew, all the major holes in the trail are filled and set. The tread-work is complete all the way to the end of our trail, leaving us with the final duty of putting the finishing touches on it. Due to the inclined nature of a mountain trail, ours needs a significant amount of drainage and water bars. Filling in the remaining diviets and crevices with fill is the last step in making the trail as comfortable as possible for the hikers.

--Andy

Starting a new section

Today we have "completed" the new trail that we have been working on for the past weeks. It looks quite stupendous and I think it will complement Cushetunk Mountain's vast repertoire of Multi-use trails. We moved our tool cache today to the next area that we will work on.The area we will start some maintenance on is an old section of Cushetunk that a hybrid crew worked on awhile back. Its going to be nice to have a different path in the morning, except the weather tomorrow is supposed to be pretty bad so we will see what happens. The crew has made some serious strides over the past week on Cushetunk, I cant wait to see the final product.

Wicked Hot Wednesday...

Well it's definitely that time of summer again when New Jersey enters the rain forest like climate of high humidity and temperature, but Team Swamp Dog is resiliently holding up well! Today, like other days, began with a stretch circle at Hoffman Park and then a group game that consists of everyone kneeling in a circle and arranging your hands in a confusing manner and slapping the group. Trey Songz and I were the last two and we went to a Vegetable off... I think we were supposed to be "Cantankerous Cucumbers" or something and I won! Woo! Next we drove to our site and decided we needed another round of waking up so Arielle and I introduced the crew to Ninja Lumberjack ... or we should have called it Chicken Lumberjack because our crew's ninja noises sound suspiciously chickeny! Zachariah won this game over Taylor by being a more convincing "Suspicious Celery"! Next, Zachariah, Ben, Taylor, and myself started off the morning with a log lugging warm up while the others continued tread work (some benching to make the trail wider) and a few people chopped more trees for more check steps! Tread work got especially hard today in the New Jersey rain forest so after lunch, we switched from tread to check steps... we completed three after lunch alone, not including the two check steps Zach and Brittany finished before lunch! GO SWAMP DOGS!

Tomorrow we have another wicked hot day coming so we're planning on blasting through our remaining eight check steps and doing some serious environmental education, sponsor letter writing, and picnic planning!

That's all for now....

Lauren

P.S. I totally have/had pictures from my phone to upload but they are currently lost on my sister's computer somewhere so I have to search and find them soon! You won't be disappointed!


P.S.S. Let's play a game... what rhymes with FINE!?

The Game For Life

Hey Greenteam,

I'm blogging about Tuesday the 19th for Team Swamp Dog.

We started off the morning by playing a couple different variations of tag to wake up for the day of work ahead of us. The first one was called Hunters I think. There were 6 different positions (forgive me if I get the names wrong); hunters (the taggers), crazy elk (had to run backwards), old elk (had to run hunched over), papa elk (could run normal), baby elk (had to stay with mama elk), and mama elk (had to stay with baby elk). That was a really silly game that we had a lot of fun with. Afterwards we had an "environmental education" discussion about which type of elk survived better. We learned that elk that run backwards don't fare very well! After that we played a round a toilet tag; a variation of freeze tag which requires you to be "flushed" by someone to get back in after be tagged into a toilet. After that we were all energized for work as we packed into the vans.

When we got to the work site, one thing was perfectly clear--we would be setting a lot of check steps. After we had spent the past couple days chopping and carrying up a bunch of logs, it was now time to set them in the section of our trail that is steep and has a lot of erosion. All groups were hard at work digging holes, finding rocks, and setting logs. By the end of the day we had set about 9 check steps. I was really impressed with the great work we got done. We already need more logs to set for tomorrow!

Just before lunch, Lauren's brother, Russ, came to visit us. He ended up staying for lunch and even brought some Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream which he generously shared among the crewmembers. We then had some discussion about the canoe trip and our "lax bro" theme. We discussed potential ideas for clothing choice and Lauren even had the idea to have SCA Lax Pinnies custom made if everyone was willing to pay which would be really cool! But after that Jane and Taylor spent a while trying to find the solution to Lauren's "handcuff" game. There is still no solution in sight after countless tries among the crew. After that it was back to setting check steps until it was time to head back to Hoffman Park.

So for those of you who aren't on Team Swamp Dog, you may be wondering what exactly the title means. Well this is the game that has been going for a few days now but took off today at work. If you are reading this it means you have already agreed to play the game. I'm going to tell you the rules; the game continues for the rest of your life (hence the name). The catch is that anytime you say the word m*** (I can't type it otherwise I'll have to do 20 pushups). I'll give you a hint as to what the word is though. it rhymes with fine, but starts with an "m". Anytime you say that word the consequence is doing 20 pushups, 20 "I'm A Star" leaps, or a recital of the "I'm A Little Teapot" Dance. And it continues under these rules for the rest of your life. So good luck to you all now that you're playing! All day we were thinking of clever ways to get people to slip up and say the dreaded word. The only person on the crew who didn't say it all day was Ben. We had a lot of fun with it though because it got ridiculous with how blatant the attempts at coaxing another into saying the word were. The goal for tomorrow is to have Ben do pushups at least once.

Well that pretty thoroughly summed up the day. This was my first blog of the summer. Hope ya'll enjoyed it!

Trey Songz out.....

AH this is my first time I'm blogging this year because my computer broke but its fixed so HEY EVERYONEEE! So I'm gonna be blogging for last Thursday, which was awesomeee by the way. Our crew is speeding through our projects. The trail looks amazing and we have been working super hard. Last Thursday was great because we had Coco come visit! (For those of you who dont know who Coco is, he also goes by the name Colin Kenney) :] Colin helped us chop some trees up to make some awesome check steps which are coming along very well. We did some awesome tread work through the begining of the trail which is making it so much easier to walk on. Thursday was also our Harry Potter day because many of the crew members were pumped to see the premiere to the last Harry Potter movie that night. We celebrated by playing some Harry Potter themed mafia and using our hand made wands to motivate us through the hard working day. Well thats about all I can remember from last Thursday....which was AWESOMEE :]

Apshawa Preserve

Monday, July 18. Today we went to the Apshawa Preserve, a trail part of the NJ conservation foundation. We met the SCA from Essex there as well as Rachel, some botanists, and sponsors of sca. After driving through traffic we finally arrived there and were introduced to the other crew and the adults. Then we started hiking the trail, where we mapped plants in designated areas and learned how to identify plant species to show how to deer are eating almost everything and destroying native species. The botanists taught us that there are about 10x more deer per square mile in the environment than it can sustain, so it is important to keep fences up to keep deer out. When we finished our project, we were given a delicious lunch AND sca water bottle and we ate be the reservoir. We then hiked out and got some more SCA swag before we packed up and left.

Friday July 15th - Sandy Hook

I had been looking forward to this Friday all week and it did not disappoint. We started the day at Hoffman park and saddled up fast as we were all eager to get to Sandy Hook. Upon arrival we met with the SCA members working at the park there. Before beginning our hike, we played a round of ninja and one of Chalupa. We then met with the Essex County crew and split into smaller groups to be lead through the forest. We learned about how plants survive on the beaches as well as the scientific names for many plants found there. For example, we identified bayberry and cedar. The crew members there also told us how the military engineered poison ivy trees to deter spies. We had a quiz on what we learned and had a chance to ask questions about what working at Sandy Hook is like. Finally, we took our long awaited trip to the shore itself. We got in plenty of refreshing swim time before we reluctantly headed back to vans for our return trip. Another excellent environmental education day under our belts.

A Day in the Life... Of Botanists!

Today we joined up with the SCA crew in Essex County for the day. Basically, there was a large fenced in area (about 1/2 of a square mile I believe) in order to keep the deer out. Native species had been dying out in this park due to the large deer population eating them. So our job was to take data about sections of the park in the fence and out, so that hopefully in a few years, data can be recollected and we can know whether or not the fence was working. We worked with the New Jersey Conservation Foundation, and a few representatives from El Paso, a company that builds natural gas pipelines, that I think are funding some money for SCA next year. (If I'm getting these details completely wrong, I'm sorry)

We learned about several different kinds of plants that lived in the park and how to identify them with some helpful botanists. Today was very fun, and so very different from our regular days of trail building that we've grown accustomed to. We also had a great lunch and water bottles thanks to the NJ Conservation Foundation!! If anyone from there reads this, we all thank you very much! We really had a great day and I think everyone learned a lot.

Sandy Hook

Today shore was a great day! In fact, I'd go as far as to say if was off the hook. It started off at Hoffman like usual loading up into vans. From what I could gather, half of the vans were exhausted from Harry Potter midnight viewing and slept the car ride away, while the other half (myself included) sang our hearts out and engaged in stimulating and worthwhile conversation. Eventually we all arrived at Sandy hook. We were greeted by the wonderful John Crowe, Mason Fox Floyd, Bobby, and Susan. Some quite fantastic individuals. We played an intense game of ninja as well as another one involving an energy ball that was summoned from the depth of Taylor's insides. We were also pleasantly surprised to see that the lovely Newark crews would be joining us for the day.

At this point we bug sprayed up and headed out on a hike. The Native Plant Conservation Corp (named above) broke us into groups and led us on an interesting guided hike. We learned all about maritime plant life including tree of heaven, prickly pear cactus, bay berry, red cedar, holly, and POISON IVY! It was interesting to learn that Sandy Hook hosts the largest maritime forest on the east coast. Additionally, the first light house in America was built on Sandy Hook. Neato! Next we played some fantastic Big Booty with Newark. We were then quizzed and ninja off-ed. Eventually we had one ultimate winner who was awarded a t-shirt...me.

At this point we broke for lunch. Two very cool things happened. First, we coined the term homigo. The perfect blend of homie and amigo. Secondly, and probably more important, we heard from various SCA folk about what they do on the peninsula. There were four interns that briefly spoke about their internship working with mostly shore birds but also other wildlife. Then the Native Plant men informed us about what sort of work they do, as well as other Corp opportunities withing SCA. I think it's very easy to get caught up in the 908 and forget how we are really a part of a massive conservation movement. It's exciting to see the diversity of positions available within SCA.

Finally we went to the beach. Always a good time. The sand was very hot, but I suppose that's what you get for going to the beach. We swam, and tossed a Frisbee, and frolicked in the surf and got our tan on. Good times were had by all. Then we saddled up and headed back to Hoffman. It's a shame this week had to come to an end. But we've got some very exciting stuff in store for next week and I'm eager to progress in our project. I hope everyone has a safe and fun weekend!

Doug

Yaaa trailwork

Soooo! today we had another day of awesome weather, crush, and tread work up on the ridge at Cushetunk. We played Alaskan Baseball at Hoffman Park in the am, had a serious discussion about anti-zombie weaponry during stretch circle, and played another competitive game of Camouflage after lunch. Roots were chopped, tread was cut, rocks were crushed, weeds were wacked, and we generally destroyed all that lay before us (including potentially dangerous insect life) in an effort to preserve it (ahhh the paradox that is conservation!). One brave rock attempted to strike back against us, but was foiled by a sturdy pair of safety glasses and an exceptionally resilient nose. Music in Casey's van was intellectually and sonically stimulating as always, and once again provided by music-master and crew leader apprentice, Douglas Klein. Our beloved pulaski had to retire earlier than we would have liked, but a new member of the pulaski family will join us shortly. Berry-eating reached a new high (although berm removing may have been hindered by the consumption of said delectable fruit). Once again, an excellent day, and tomorrow we head to the beach! Yaaa for trail work!

day of july 12th

Sorry for writting so late. I had trouble getting to this site. Thats ok cuz every one seems a little behind on schedule. Well since im writting 2 days late my memory is a little fuzzy. What i remember is that our crew began digging in our first 3 check steps. The bad news was that there were no logs near by to where we were working. Some one thought it would be cool if we could drag the four logs we cut on the opposite side of the trail to where we were working -_-/(about a 20minute walk carrying logs). At the same time, the day wasnt that bad because we started a game called assassin. Who won again, idk but i was angry that i didnt get to kill anyone. yea and thats pretty much all i remember that had any importance.

Tuesday 7-12

Tuesday was pretty average for our workers on the trail at Cushetunk. If I remember correctly, I think Doug introduced the van to some British hip-hop, Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip, along with some classic Sweatshop Union (Canadian). I'd say to surely check out both. Our hike in changes perception everyday, as we continue building the trail. We have a nice rest-point at the top of the mountain...and then we'll hike up to the tool cache on the TREAD WE'VE BUILT OURSELVES:) we've gotten a lot of work done and the trail looks real good. Specifically, on Tuesday, our focus was on sledging rock for crush and continuing tread work. There are lot of spots that need rock crush to help make the trail even & easier to hike. It's impressive the production of crush we make throughout the day. All the rock work looks nice. Our tread itself is slightly rocky, but there are also a lot of awesome spots that are nice and flat, right on the ridge of the mountain. Most times, there's a breeze the entire day..so working conditions aren't too brutal..:)We can see the reservoir through the trees,(barely) so I'm interested in hiking back there in the fall sometime to check out the views and reminisce our trail.

see everyone tomorrowwwwww -karah

July 13!

Today started out like every other, meet at Hoffman Park, drive to Cushetunk, hike straight up the mountain for about 25 minutes. Then we had stretch circle, which is always where the day gets a lot more interesting. We fantasized about what our perfect days would be like. We discovered that a lot of us want similar perfect days, in which we hang out with friends/family, enjoy a delicious feast, and do some sort of exciting activity like skiing, rock climbing, going to the beach, or travelling abroad. We tried out a new routine today and had snack at 9:30 when we finally got to our tool cache. After snack we broke into two groups- team tread and team crush. Both groups got a ton of work done... YAY! I oversaw the tread team and we were able to get a lot done with six people. After lunch we got back to tread and by then we were cutting tread in the middle of the raspberry (or wineberry? there was also a debate about the proper terminology of the delicious berries) field. Bryan, Rex, Marcus, Scott, and Anthony decided that it would be a good idea to have BT (BerryTime) instead of doing work, but I had to put on my boss lady hat and tell them to save BT for later. We also had a debate over whether or not a root should be pulled out and I said no, because I didn't want the beautiful tree to die, and they called me a dictator and tried to over throw me, but alas, I am not a dictator, but a crew leader, so their efforts were futile. The root stayed put. At the end of the day, we moved our tool cache further into the trail, furthering our hike in every morning, but it means time carrying tools, so it's for the better. Trail wise, we are getting close to the end, I am thinking we'll finish cutting tread tomorrow, then spend the rest of next week working on crush and drainage!

On another note, I'm psyched for Harry Potter 7 pt 2 tomorrow night and Sandy Hook on Friday!!

Thursday July, 13th

Hi everyone!
It has been a few days since blog has been on time... but luckily i remembered!:)
Today we continued working on the upper part of our trail with our main focus on check steps. We started out the day though with stretching at the park with the question of "What is the most interesting place you have ever traveled to?" We had some pretty cool places such as Amsterdam, Germany, France and Bermuda! After stretching we arrived at site and began a long day of work. Four check steps were put in along with the hunting of new logs for more! We all seemed a little bit tired, but we did a good job. The lack of heat seemed to help, though some of us were a bit lazy this morning. To keep up with the day, and to fit the premier of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part Two, wizardly actions seemed to occur all day... Magic wands were carved and attempts to levitate rocks may have occurred. Harry Potter mafia during lunch also occurred with death eaters as Mafia, Dumbledore as the medic and Harry as detective! We ended the day with log lifting one more log up to site which Trey ended up "power cutting" and with a good round of roses and thorns.

See all of you tommorowss!(In Harry Potter attire, wands and all!) Hope everyone is finding Hawaiian shirts.. or embarrassing ones for Sandy Hook on Friday! Also.. here is the weather for tomorrow as it was asked to be posted by a few people, courtesy of weather.com
High of 83 degrees, no chance of rain and 46% humidity! And for those who want to know some history.. the record high for July 14th was 91 degrees!

Peace out,
Jane(Or Tarzan)

OVERVIEW: TEAM SWAMPDOG

Besides the fact that we are AWESOME, I figured I'd give all you avid blog readers an overview of Team Swampdog since last I blogged.

1. VISITORS!!!!: past SCA members (and good friends) like Rich L., Allen M., and Greg B. have come back to our wonderful program to help out on the trails and bring us news of their lives since having to leave SCA :( They all brought a ton of laughs and trail experience to bust out some stepping stones.

2. Work: So far we have completed 2 projects at the park. We put approximately 40 stepping stones in the swamp area. Plus we also did a ton of corridor work and re-vegging in that area. The second project we finished are the switchbacks! Far far away from the swamp area the trail goes pretty much straight up the mountain, so being the great trail-builders we are, we put not one but two switchbacks in from nothing. We made our own, more hiker-friendly and safe trail, covered up the old unsafe one and we did it all in three days! We worked our buts off hiking in, so we worked even harder to bench the trail, remove rocks (and boulders), lopp, put in drainage features, and a rock staircase. Now we're working on general trail maintenance at priority areas.

Thats pretty much everything we've done to date, everything tangible that is, so for now Taylormander is over and out.

Team Swamp Dog's Toads

Toads have basically taken over our trail. Big or small, we name them all. The big toads are always named Chester, the small ones, Chet. The one to the left is Che because he is the smallest(and cutest) toad we have seen so far.

Friday, July 8th, a few days late

Hey there everybody!

I regrettably forgot to post the exciting events of this past Friday with Team Swamp Dog, my sincerest apologies to those of you who look forward to reading our posts day after day. I hope you can forgive me :) Anywho, this past Friday was not your typical Friday with the NJ Greenteam. It began with the long-awaited return of one the Greenteam's favorite songs - the (in)famous Vlad. I was super pumped to work with Vlad again after a few years. As he does so perfectly, Vlad made his presence immediately known, firstly by quickly snagging shotgun in the van from me... Oh well. With Vlad's appearance capping off the week of visits of some alumni "ringers," we decided to have a full work day and continue our second project at Musconetcong Gorge. With foreshadowings of rain in the forecast, we tried not to be flustered by the 40-minute hike in, knowing we had to try to beat the rain all day. We continued to work on our long stretch of tread, bench-cutting, and constructing switchbacks and a few rock-steps. With the skies getting darker as the day went on, we worked straight to lunch, played a few nostalgic rounds of mafia with Vlad, or "The Don," and finished up the day with only one more day left to go on that section of the trail, and the looong hike in! Whew, at least we're all gonna be awesome shape by the end of the summer... As we made the trek back to Hoffman Park the skies finally opened up. When we returned to the parking lot we were greeted by Dan Klein, as well as a monstrous thunderstorm. We decided to try our luck by performing a rather unconventional rain dance. While aimlessly dancing to no music, an incredible new move was introduced by Lauren - THE DUBSTEP MOOSE!! It's kind of hard to describe a dance move in writing, so I'll let the following pictures speak the unspeakable.

All in all, a pretty solid Friday.

Take it easy,

Zach

TRAIL PIX!

Karah was our photographer today and I actually had my camera! So Karah took a bunch of pictures of our trail progress. Doesn't it look rather excellent??

Last week we did a rock staircase in a steep/rocky section of trail. The team was absolutely stellar and finished it in 3 days.

View from the top of the stairs.
This is the beginning of an awful rocky section of trail, but we're slowly moving forward with using crush and setting rocks to make it easily walkable.


Here's a section we are yet to decide how to make it walkable. Stay tuned for updates!

July 6, 2011 Sw@Mp D0gZ

So today was my second day working on the trails and needless to say it was awesome.

Today I learned to do tread work and did drainage with Lauren. She taught me well. ;) Teardrop shapes work best in draining water off the trail and into the sides.

We broke for lunch and played Mafia. It was my first time playing and it's just about the coolest game ever, an epic and cunning game in which you must be a good liar. I'm not going to explain it so Google it if you have no idea.

Today was our last day at our current location. Tomorrow we move our cache and begin derping, ermm, I mean hauling everything to the new location. I am not sad to be leaving this swampy area of the trail. We're moving to the switchbacks and I'm excited to see what's in store. So far I love working for the SCA and it's been a great experience.

Green Team 2

So today was another day back on Cushetunk Mountain (yes, it is spelled right, silly spell check :P). We hiked up as usual, stopping for our stretch circle along the way. The stretch circle question: What was the first CD that you ever bought? Needless to say, there were some interesting answers.

Anyway, we made our way to the cache and split up into groups. I was on fill crew with Scot, Brian, and Doug. The entire mountain is like one massive rock, so it was difficult to find a good fill hole, but we did what we could. After snack time, I was with Karah, Doug, and Brian working on the rock "gymboree" (I think that was what Brian dubbed it). Doug and Brian experimented a bit and were able to set 2 rocks in less than 10 minutes or something like that (magic). After lunch we had a discussion about drainage, water bars, rock bars, all that good stuff. We got back to Hoffman's Park a bit early, so we played Spread 'Em, a great game introduced to us by Doug from the great Idahoans (I didn't even know that was a word until today).

Random fact: 25 people have died in Round Valley Reservoir (Cushetunk Mountain overlooks this reservoir) since 1971 & 6 have never been found. It's been said that it's the Bermuda Triangle of New Jersey.

(photo from http://endangerednj.blogspot.com)

THE MARIANAS TRENCH

Today was the first day back after the long fourth of July weekend! Sadly our apprentice Zach was under the weather today but we had our first day with Zachariah which was awesome! We hiked in and continued on our last swampy area. I worked with Trey, Brittany and Dave we set set one stepping stone before break and successfully recreated the Marianas Trench while trying to dig a hole for a rock.

It's beautiful I know.
After snack we set three more rocks! And filled the trench!! VICTORY!!!! Lauren and her crew set two very nice stepping stones the one that went in after lunch was a bit of a battle but they prevailed!! We also seem to have started using the word Derp a lot :P I am a fan.

Lauren and I decided to have a short lunch and spend the rest of the day doing activities from the Environmental Education binder with the crew. So After lunch we made them think we were going back to work then reveled the surprise! We are so sneaky!!! We cached the tools at 1:30 and hiked out. We went to the park just down the road from our site.

We let them play on the swings for a few minutes before getting started.

We did the In My Life activity which is kind of like a choose your own adventure story. It went over really well! Then we played... a really strange game that I can't remember the name of... Everyone forms a circle and holds hands. There is one person in the middle who must grab their ankles, walk backwards, close their eyes and make a bird noise; poor Tay-Tay. The point of the game is for the person in the middle to find the gap in the circle and escape. We also played wind in the willows and Big Booty. Today was an excelent day and I'm looking forward to finishing up the swamp area in the next few days!!

Also this song was stuck in my head all day. Enjoy!
http://youtu.be/-Hpq6P3ySW8

~Derp Queen
~Arielle

So i'm a little late on posting about Friday...

Mohican was a pretty sweet place. I thoroughly enjoy hikes in the Del Water Gap because the views are spectacular and show off how scenic NJ really is. What I didn't like was the threat of wildlife... aka bears, rattlesnakes, and apparently a snapping turtle. But we didn't see any bears up close and personal (only from the vans while driving), didn't see any rattlers, and as for that snapping turtle... I'm just glad Tay has all ten toes. Sorry Doug that you couldn't swim... But heyyyyy Greenteam! no more surveys during work time lol I just heard from Rachel earlier yay!

Anywho... I'm still really disappointed our crews wouldn't get into the awesome game of Toki Toki/ Bunny Bunny. One day I'll force them to... after all I am Johnny Law mwahahaha...
Hope everyone enjoyed their Fourth of July weekends!!!

Signing off...
Johnny Law
Duke of Derp

Mohican Outdoor Center

After filling out some forms and completing a survey, both crews enjoyed their first environmental education day by going to the Mohican Outdoor Center. On our way there we saw a black bear just chilling on a golf course! It was pretty intense. Once we got there, we hiked up to an overlook with a beautiful view. After enjoying the view, we continued along the trail for a while until we reached a fire tower. Doug, of course, told us about fire towers and how they figure out where a fire is located, how many there are in NJ, etc. Some people climbed up the fire tower to enjoy the view, which I hear was fantastic. On our way back, we played an interesting game of Harry Potter Virtual Hide & Seek. After we got back, we went to the beach on Catfish Pond. Taylor, Rex, Casey, and a couple others swam for a while, but ended up getting out. Poor Doug, just before he was about to swim afterwards, he spotted a giant snapping turtle! That effectively ended all swimming that day. Though, we did all stare at this huge turtle for a good while. We returned to Hoffman's park at around 3 and played some assassin that was kind of a failure. After a giant Roses & Thorns, our great first environmental education day came to a close.