I'm currently serving in Minot, North Dakota doing disaster clean-up for houses that were flooded about 2 months ago. We are going through a process called "mucking-and-gutting." Sounds clean, doesn't it? I'll explain all about it later. For now, I want to catch up on my blogposts and give ya'll some stuff about my last project in Isle Royale National Park. I wasn't able to let you all know what I was doing for about a month--no internet connection. So over the next few days, I'll back track and do a reflection on my experience. Enjoy!
The Ranger III is the ferry of the National Park Service that transports park-goers from Houghton, Michigan. The ferry ride takes about 6 hours. This was the Ranger III on the morning my team and I were heading to Isle Royale.
It was a mix of relief and excitement and curiosity as I stood there looking at the ferry. Relief because, after almost 4 weeks of waiting, we were going to be on our way for our next project. The journey getting to Houghton had been long, almost 10 hours. But we made it safely and we had all of our stuff. One thing in Americorps NCCC that will cause you stress before each project is packing and trying to fit everything you need into the red firefighting bag we are all issued. So I felt relief knowing that I was pretty sure I had everything I needed. Excitement because I was going to be camping for the next 6 weeks. I had never gone camping in a tent before so I was wondering how I was going to react. I wanted to see if I could survive out in the wilderness. I was pretty confident going into the project that I would be able to survive, although some of my other teammates were also curious to see how I would respond because I tend to express my shock and awe about even the smallest things really well. Curiosity, because despite my confidence, who knows what could happen to me out on the island. What if I do get freaked out by snakes and going to the bathroom next to a tree stump.
Surprisingly, the whole ferry ride was foggy. And we couldn’t see the island until we were almost at our destination place. This picture was probably taken about 4.5 hours into the ferry ride. The fog added to the mysteriousness of the island that we would be spending a huge chunk of our time at. It reminded me of the scene in Pandora when they fly to the floating mountains. One minute we’re just floating along and then out of nowhere, as if appearing from the mist, the island started to appear.
Once we completed our 6 hour ferry ride, we had a half hour stop over at Mott Island, the Park headquarters, where we met our site supervisor and gathered all of the materials we would need for the upcoming 10-day workweek including canteens, day packs, back packs, water filter, camp stoves, etc. Then we began the next leg of our journey and spent an hour and a half on the Beaver, a mid-size National Park Service boat. Haha. I felt tough standing for most of the boat ride. I was cold and it started to drizzle a bit. But all I had was a bandana, long-sleeve shirt, and a life vest. I felt like I was going into battle. I could see the face of inexperience on me. I had no idea what I was getting into. I didn’t for-see craving certain foods, waking up at 5:45 in the morning everyday, or hiking 6-8 miles a day.
This is the tent that I ended up staying for the first 10-day workweek. It was a 1-person tent by Eureka! A funny thing is Alex and I thought that this was a 2-person tent and we were set to share this tent. It looked like it would be a little cramped. Thankfully, I got to have this tent to myself. Also, the first night we arrived the campsite we had wanted, campsite 1, was already taken and so we had to move to campsite 3. The campers left the next day and we were able to move in.
Those first few nights in my own tent were pretty sweet, although I always woke up in the morning feeling disoriented. But, it was pretty comfortable.
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