Monday we continued our ‘door painting’ at the shop. We rode our bikes the one mile there and back, an easy ride after the daily trips on the prairie! Finished the outside and overhang, and now with what little paint is left, Kathleen wants us to do the one side that you can see. It is different and weather beaten. The equipment shed at the park manager’s will be next, but it is not nearly ready. She did agree that it made sense to let us paint before the trim is put on. So John Mason (volunteer doing the work) is going to cut and tack on the trim pieces and then mark them and take them off so we can paint them separate - lot less cutting in to do.
Spring beaks have started and there are several campsites full of college kids. We met two girls from Wittenberg who drove down for the week. Looks like a good week weather-wise as it has gotten much warmer.
This is the tractor barn we painted. Oh yes, the inside of the doors are all painted too – as well as the overhang.
As we finished this task and the equipment shed won’t be ready for paint until maybe the middle or end of next week, Kathleen has linked us with Eric, the Park Service Specialist. We will be working with him for the next several days doing a “UTAP” on that trail we trimmed. UTAP stands for Universal Trail Assessment Program and was developed to grade and mark trails all across the country. The goal is to have a trail in Summit County’s Metro Parks, “graded” the same as a trail in Tucson, Arizona or Okeechobee, Florida.
Here are Judy, Eric and Mike working on UTAP.
Judy is recording the data that the rest of us are giving her. Mike and I used devices called clinometers to gauge the degree of grade change from one point to another (could be 20 to 100 feet down the trail) and then fancy compasses to get the direction. I then GPS each point. The first day we did less than ½ mile but on the second we covered over ½ a mile……another mile plus to go and then we have to do the beach and boardwalk portions.
We finished our UTAP of the beach trail a little before 2 on Friday. We had started as usual at 8:30 and as we neared the beach wanted to finish the work. It was interesting working with Mike and Eric as they are both into plants, animals and the environment. At one point Judy was standing by the side of the trail ready to make notes when suddenly a small lizard dropped out of an overhead tree. It scurried a way very quickly. We learned how to tell the difference between a young palmetto and a young cabbage or sabal palm. The weather was cool and damp and when we reached the beach, to the east was a solid fog bank. You could not see the ocean, only the waves as the tide reached high up on the beach
Saturday we went to the Volunteer Appreciation Day at Dudley Farm SP – a two hour drive with Cliff and RuthAnn. We have been with them at KPPSP the past three years and now here at LTI. We toured this old farm/homestead and had a great BBQ chicken lunch. They served 400 people in less that a half hour. Here is Judy waiting through all the speeches before lunch.
Spring beaks have started and there are several campsites full of college kids. We met two girls from Wittenberg who drove down for the week. Looks like a good week weather-wise as it has gotten much warmer.
This is the tractor barn we painted. Oh yes, the inside of the doors are all painted too – as well as the overhang.
As we finished this task and the equipment shed won’t be ready for paint until maybe the middle or end of next week, Kathleen has linked us with Eric, the Park Service Specialist. We will be working with him for the next several days doing a “UTAP” on that trail we trimmed. UTAP stands for Universal Trail Assessment Program and was developed to grade and mark trails all across the country. The goal is to have a trail in Summit County’s Metro Parks, “graded” the same as a trail in Tucson, Arizona or Okeechobee, Florida.
Here are Judy, Eric and Mike working on UTAP.
Judy is recording the data that the rest of us are giving her. Mike and I used devices called clinometers to gauge the degree of grade change from one point to another (could be 20 to 100 feet down the trail) and then fancy compasses to get the direction. I then GPS each point. The first day we did less than ½ mile but on the second we covered over ½ a mile……another mile plus to go and then we have to do the beach and boardwalk portions.We finished our UTAP of the beach trail a little before 2 on Friday. We had started as usual at 8:30 and as we neared the beach wanted to finish the work. It was interesting working with Mike and Eric as they are both into plants, animals and the environment. At one point Judy was standing by the side of the trail ready to make notes when suddenly a small lizard dropped out of an overhead tree. It scurried a way very quickly. We learned how to tell the difference between a young palmetto and a young cabbage or sabal palm. The weather was cool and damp and when we reached the beach, to the east was a solid fog bank. You could not see the ocean, only the waves as the tide reached high up on the beach
Saturday we went to the Volunteer Appreciation Day at Dudley Farm SP – a two hour drive with Cliff and RuthAnn. We have been with them at KPPSP the past three years and now here at LTI. We toured this old farm/homestead and had a great BBQ chicken lunch. They served 400 people in less that a half hour. Here is Judy waiting through all the speeches before lunch.
At the luncheon they had one of the ‘fire trucks’ that is used by the parks. Each park has at least one of these units to combat wild fires and most of all to be used when they do a prescribed burn of an area. This is what their fire trucks look like. It not only carries water, but also liquids they use to start the burns and back fires. Most all of the staff enjoy the fire fighting/prescribed burning they do at all the parks.
No they aren't red - all white alike all the park trucks, but they do have lights and sirens.
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