weekly stats
- applications sent: 9
- interviews: 0
- rejections: 2
- github activities: 1
- leetcode problems: 0
- hiking miles: 100 miles
- exercise time: wasn't tracking
- words written: 3432 words
- books read: 5 (although I read the same one twice since I only had one audiobook for the drive to Wyoming and back)
- documentaries watched: 2
- items baked: chocolate chip cookies
- grizzly bear sightings: 0
- tech learning of the week: Nothing really, but I got to teach someone else about how the web works!
- non-tech learning of the week: So much, but the highlights were learning the basics of dry stone walling and a lot of geology in Yellowstone
A Whirlwind Three Weeks
This will be a little bit of an unconventional job search journal post. I have had an incredibly busy three weeks with no time to write. Mostly I was in Wyoming or trying to get ahead on homework for a chemistry class I'm taking.
It was all worth it though. I'd never been to northwestern Wyoming before and it is a beautiful part of the country. Being off grid, meeting new people, hiking everyday, and stepping back from daily life was refreshing.
There was only one source of disappointment for the whole trip: I did not see a single grizzly bear. Apparently they were all up at higher elevation eating moths.
Restoring the Anderson Lodge with HistoriCorps
My first adventure was restoration work on the historic Anderson Lodge outside of Meeteetsee, WY. I use "outside of" loosely. First I drove 45 minutes down a dirt road then hiked in 7.5 miles. We were so remote that there was no light pollution. At night, the stars were bright enough that we didn't need flashlights.
I did this project with HistoriCorps, a non-profit that partners with public land agencies to restore historic structures with the help of volunteers. I'd wanted to join a HistoriCorps project since 2018 and it did not disappoint.
There were only three of us on the project. The project supervisor was a really rad stonemason from Montana and the crew leader was an amazing jill-of-all-trades from Colorado. Then there was me, the only volunteer crazy enough to join the project.
The Lodge
The Lodge was built in 1890 by Abraham Archibald Anderson. He was an artist, rancher, and conservationist. Anderson studied art in Paris and maintained a residence in New York. In the summers, he was a rancher in Wyoming. In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed Anderson the first Special Superintendent of the Forest Reserves, putting Anderson in charge of the Yellowstone Forest Reserve. Later, Anderson also advocated for the Grand Tetons to become a national park as well.
Anderson Lodge, which he constructed what is now the Shoshone National Forest, was the administration building for Yellowstone for a time. It was also where Anderson would escape to paint, often with the company of ahem beautiful female models. I'm sure that made the cold mountain nights a little more bearable.
The lodge has a downstairs kitchen. The two upstairs rooms and screened porch served as living quarters and Anderson's painting room. They are connected by an outdoor staircase.
A group restored the lodge in the 1990s. During a wildfire that decimated the area the 2000, firefighters were dropped in to wrap the cabin so it wouldn't burn. In 2018, another HistoriCorps group restored the nearby hired hands cabin, a bunkhouse located nearby.
That brings us to this now. This trip up was somewhat of a feasibility study. If they decide to go through with the project, it will be a multi-year undertaking to stabilize the lodge, conduct repair work, and reclaim the space from the wildlife that has moved in.
The Experience
After camping at the trailhead, we hiked in the next day. My training paid off and it wasn't too bad!
The food throughout was amazing. I grew up backpacking on boxed mac and cheese and instant oatmeal. Not on this trip. We had taco Tuesday. We had fresh vegetables and cream for coffee. We had eggs, hashbrowns, sausage, and bacon for breakfast. Our crew leader cooked it all on this camp kitchen that was designed to be carried in by the mules. Also, props to here since she often had to cook in the wind and rain.
We worked during the day to build a French drain. Basically, the snow melt comes down the hill behind the lodge which is causing the lodge to slide down the hill towards the creek. The hope is that the drain will catch some snow and route the water to either side of the lodge.
Since no power tools or wheeled tools are allowed in national forest, including wheelbarrows, we carried all the rocks with buckets. All that time when I was training for hiking, I should have been doing fireman's carries apparently.
After work, we'd hike up to the various ridges around our campsite. We were in a bit of a valley, so we could hike up and get great views on all sides.
This was the longest I'd ever been in the backwoods, but it flew by. I wasn't even bothered that I couldn't take a real shower for six days (although my dog refused to come near me when I got back until I'd had my shower). My zero degree sleeping bag was nice and cozy since some of our nights got down into the low 30s. While it rained every afternoon, we only had one big storm that lasted all night.
On the last day, the packers arrived with a whole team of mules to carry our stuff. All I had to take out were my snacks. Definitely need to see about getting my own mule.
Also on the last day, I fell through the porch when we were locking things up. Guess I'm committed to going back next year so I can fix that board.
The Week in Between
It was a blur. I know I unpacked and repacked everything. I watched a documentary on the FastPass at the Disney Parks. I baked some chocolate chip cookies.
Because One Wyoming Trip Was Not Enough...Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons
I headed back up to Wyoming with a group of old and new friends for the last week of August. We camped at Yellowstone for four nights and checked out all of the park's greatest hits and saw hundreds of buffalo. It really sparked my interest in geology and park concessions.
We then traveled down to the Grand Tetons. There we did about eight miles of hiking a day and saw dozens of moose. A moose even walked through our campsite one morning.
We did not, at any point, see a grizzly bear.
I tried every huckleberry ice cream I could find in both parks. The Old Faithful Inn was my favorite. I also tried some berry foraging. The thimbleberry is amazing. Most others tasted terrible. My mother will be both unsurprised that I was sampling random berries and that I didn't die.
On the way back, we stopped at the National Museum of Military Vehicles in Dubois, WY. We only had time to make it through about half of the museum because we had a long drive, but I will definitely go back. It's a newer museum, having opened in 2020, and it is so well put together. The amount of time and level of design that went into this museum is incredible. It makes me want to go back into museum studies. It is worth mentioning, however, that their handling of American Indian history leaves something to be desired and any time they had sections for women or people of color in wartime, the section was always in a corner. After a while, we just had to laugh "one sign for women in the corner" consistency. I'll still go back to check out the rest of it.
What's Next?
That was all my traveling for a while. Now it's time to adjust into this job search in earnest. I'm giving myself a week to do my laundry, relax, and sort out my priorities.