My forth hitch was back at Pinnacle Peak and McDowell Park to finish up our projects there. It ended up being only a week long because of a combination of President's Day, the rest of the crew's upcoming vacation (I do not get a vacation), and generally low moral. Why low moral you ask? Weather. When camping in tents every night, bad weather can be a real bummer. Monday night a storm blew in. We set up camp in the rain, made dinner in the rain, ate in the van, and went to bed as the storm worsened. A couple hours later we woke up to winds collapsing our tent and blowing in the rain. Everything got soaked. We grabbed what we could and ran to sleep in the van. There, the three of us girls found two of the boys who had run into the same problem. Soaked to the bone and the temperature in the mid thirties I fell asleep in the driver's seat with my head on the steering wheel. The morning sun revealed that our tent suffered a terrible defeat to the storm. The clips that hold the tent to the poles had torn off and the poles were broken into pieces. We would be sleeping in the van for the rest of the hitch.
With no way to dry our clothes we went to work wet. It was a cold windy day. But as the sun emerged further from behind the clouds the surrounding snowcapped mountains were revealed and it was by far the most beautiful day I've witnessed in Arizona.
In hopes of finding a laundromat after work, we had piled our wet things into the back of the van. Bad news, the well to do area of Scottsdale, Arizona didn't have laundromats. The closest one was almost an hour away. Good news, our project partner, John, is in good with the fire chief. While we worked, the firefighters of Scottsdale not only dried, but washed our wet clothes and sleeping bags. A huge thank you goes out to them.
The rest of the chilly week was spent hauling more rock and building more rock retaining walls. I am proud to say that I am the up and coming perhaps best rock worker on our crew. Perhaps someday I will pursue becoming a Master of English Dry Masonry.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Monday, February 9, 2009
Hitch #2 - Pinnacle Peak
I spent the last two weeks camping at McDowell Regional Park and working on Pinnacle Peak Trail located near Scottsdale, AZ. It was a front country hitch, meaning we “car camped” rather than hiking into our site. McDowell Park was beautiful, had a porta potty at our site, and had hot showers a mere three miles away! Every night we fell asleep to the sound of howling coyotes and wind rustling our tent.
Pinnacle Peak is a city park located on a decaying granite mountain in the middle of a community consisting of multi million dollar homes. Our job was to repair a one and a half mile trail that is hiked by over one thousand people everyday. The people who hike Pinnacle Peak range from trophy wives to retired couples who winter in Arizona and everyone in between. On Pinnacle Peak one sees more fake boobies in one day than many people see in a lifetime. Many people went out of their way to ignore us, others went out of their way to make rude comments toward us, and a few were genuinely nice and interested in what we were doing. Despite or maybe because the number of people, lizards and birds were plentiful near the trail.
Because Pinnacle Peak is made of decaying granite, we had to bring in material to repair the structures that keep the trail from eroding off the side of the mountain. This meant we spent most of our time carrying hundreds of thousands of pounds of rock up the trail by using buckets, rock hauling backpacks, canvas bags, rock nets, dollies, and our gloved hands. Individual rocks weighed upwards of 400lbs. Once we had a decent amount of material, we started building the rock walls ad erosion control structures that were needed and soon we were out of rock and hauling once again.
It was a hard and amusing two weeks. I am sun burnt, have some sort of allergic reaction on my face, and decided to shave my head on a whim (sorry Vonnie the beautiful haircut you gave me had just grown out too much). I definitely look the part of a homeless person, which is okay because I am homeless. Life is good.
Don't forget to click on the picture of me on the right to see more pictures of what I'm up to.
Pinnacle Peak is a city park located on a decaying granite mountain in the middle of a community consisting of multi million dollar homes. Our job was to repair a one and a half mile trail that is hiked by over one thousand people everyday. The people who hike Pinnacle Peak range from trophy wives to retired couples who winter in Arizona and everyone in between. On Pinnacle Peak one sees more fake boobies in one day than many people see in a lifetime. Many people went out of their way to ignore us, others went out of their way to make rude comments toward us, and a few were genuinely nice and interested in what we were doing. Despite or maybe because the number of people, lizards and birds were plentiful near the trail.
Because Pinnacle Peak is made of decaying granite, we had to bring in material to repair the structures that keep the trail from eroding off the side of the mountain. This meant we spent most of our time carrying hundreds of thousands of pounds of rock up the trail by using buckets, rock hauling backpacks, canvas bags, rock nets, dollies, and our gloved hands. Individual rocks weighed upwards of 400lbs. Once we had a decent amount of material, we started building the rock walls ad erosion control structures that were needed and soon we were out of rock and hauling once again.
It was a hard and amusing two weeks. I am sun burnt, have some sort of allergic reaction on my face, and decided to shave my head on a whim (sorry Vonnie the beautiful haircut you gave me had just grown out too much). I definitely look the part of a homeless person, which is okay because I am homeless. Life is good.
Don't forget to click on the picture of me on the right to see more pictures of what I'm up to.
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