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