I'm a Volunteer!

All winter I was hoping that I'd be able to start volunteering at a Wisconsin State Park this year. A few weeks ago I offered my services at Big Foot Beach State Park when I was there hiking, and Ranger Matt welcomed me on board. They need some help with their flower gardens, so that's where I'm starting. I'm willing to do any outside work, so we'll see what else I end up being assigned to as the season goes on. I should get lots of sun and lots of exercise, and I'm excited to be helping out instead of just sitting at home trying to come up with things to do.

beautiful Lake Geneva is just across the street

The top picture shows the bed I started in on Monday after about three hours of weeding. You can see the areas that I stripped with my bare hands to get all the roots. The bottom picture shows a section I hadn't weeded yet. In five hours I got about 80% of the bed done. Quite a few cars stopped and asked me questions about the park and about the area because there is only one ranger on duty during the week and he was out making his rounds in his truck and not at the gate house. But the best part of my day was when the families walked down from the campground and I got to talk to the kids about their plans to go fishing or swimming. While weeding, I made friends, too.

I spent half an hour on the internet trying to identify... help!

After voting this morning I went back for another quick hour of weeding, and I'll finish off that bed tomorrow morning before I go to work in the afternoon. Today a school group was there, and when a few of the kids who looked to be around 11 or 12 years old walked by with their chaperone the adult said, "This is a boardwalk. They call it that because it's made of boards and you can walk on it." I sure hope that wasn't the teacher because I would expect middle school kids to be able to figure that out by themselves, wouldn't you? To their credit they didn't comment and kept right on with their enthusiasm for being outside.

We realized yesterday that we both have Thursday and Friday off so we're hitching up and heading out to Kohler-Andrae State Park on Lake Michigan for 2 nights. It's a new park for us and only about 2 hours from home. As the recall election is winding down tonight, what comes next for Wisconsin is on my mind, and I'm hoping the DNR doesn't take any further hits to their budget. I know in other states around the country the parks systems have suffered, and I hope that Wisconsin's public lands aren't going to be on the chopping block. I received a card in the mail this week about the possibility of the government selling public lands and I hope that doesn't happen. Once our public lands are owned privately there's no going back. With that in mind, everybody open your wallet willingly when you buy those state and national park passes so we can continue to have those places to enjoy!