Trail troopers

 Today is Day 11 and our second to last day!! We still have a lot to do. We did a lot today after a full day of work. We went up at 8 oclcok with our tools that I talked a lot about in day 10. Our plan was too arrange the rocks and make the base and do the paneling tomorrow. It took us much longer than expected to align the rocks and pile them so that every one of the four boards was even and perfectly level from each other. We were able to achieve our daily goal after literally a full day.  We came down at 11:30 for our seminar and went back up at 12:30. We finished our base and brought down the boards for the top for tomorrow morning. Our hours were 8-11:30, 12:30-4

 This week was a little wonky because the original plan we had last Sunday went a little south. We had hoped to clear the trail all the way around Mud Pond with our original group but looking back today our plans have changed since then. Our goals before we started had a lot to do with the trails and the duck boxes and have shifted after going up and realizing what we were working with. We cleared the trails as best we could but was halted after running into a giant birch devising the path as well as a steam /marshy area cutting into the bath further on. We were worried we didn’t have the tools or time to reroute the path so after talking to our mentor we edit ted our goals.  We finished our first goal, being to clear the area by the cabin/lean2 and have shifted our other goals to focus on the tent platforms. We have three days left and we are going to spend them rebuilding the tent platform with the tools we obtained Friday. 

 After a lot of talking and planning we were excited to go up and start work. The bugs were especially bad today and we didn’t bring bug spray so that was a little bit of a downer. We started by taking a picture of all of our tools but couldn’t take anymore because sadly the phone we brought had died. We brought regular screws and extra long screws the extra long ones for screwing in one 4 x 4 to the other for the base. We brought the other regular screws to use for the planks to lay over them. We brought a level up to make sure that the platform was even and flat on both sides. We brought gloves to make sure we did not catch our hands and we had a touch on hands. And we brought one fully charge drill and a hammer! The rocks and woods we’re already up there so we didn’t have to do any of that hip lifting! Our hours that day were 8-10 then we got our vaccines and went back up at 11-2:30. 

 Today we did work from 8-11. And then 12-2. We checked in with Lynne in the morning and went to talk to Greg. He gave us the keys to the kabota and Lynne took a trip up there with us. Greg agreed that it would be awesome if we finished the other tent platform so we have made that our goal to finish by the end of the week. We mostly just moved the base wood into place, nothing fancy. But we did take a good look at the already made platform to get an idea of what we will be doing. We are excited to start work on this Friday Monday and Tuesday to finish up our project!

  Day 8 took a turn. Last night we met with Kelly and went over the day of on campus work. Bryson and I decided that we had more fun working at mud pond despite the bugs while Cooper and Sloane decided to stay on campus and keep working with Kelly and Development. We had a meeting with Lynne at 9 and we talked about what we wanted to do now that it’s only 2 instead of 4 of us. As well as possibly rearranging goals because of the blocked paths and the lax of 4 extra hands. after talking to Lynne we decided to finish cleaning the trail as best we could. We emailed       Greg and hopefully will be able to alter our goals. We are hoping to finish building the tent platforms but are still waiting to hear back from Greg.  

  Today was an interesting day because it was our first day of on campus community service. We spent the morning in Kelly’s office doing inventory. So for example we would count how many of the ace bandages she said and then sloane (our scribe) would mark it down. we worked in there for a couple hours and did inventory on almost all the materials. After that we headed to lunch and went and met with the development office . We didn’t do much work there but we did do a lot of talking and listening just learning about what they are trying to achieve and what we can help them with. The idea will be to do a lot of alumni work for them and possibly graduation prep. Today we worked from 9:30- 12 and then 1-2.