Week 9

October 29th, 2007

Red Rock Canyon/Brownstone Canyon is probably one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen in my life. Ever. Lake Tahoe was pretty, but I'd almost say that this place was better. The picture to the left is the first campsite we were at. Unfortunately for us, they only put us down for 4 days, but we needed 7, so our last 3 nights were actually spent where we were working.



This is where we were working, Brownstone Canyon. I kind of got sidetracked most of the week as far as pictures go, and most of them are actually of the scenery because I just couldn't get over how poignantly beautiful it all was.









Because of where Las Vegas is (we were about 4 miles outside of Northwest Vegas) and what time of year we were there, the moon was out until almost 10 am everyday, and it went away for a few hours every night as well. Very odd.









Our job this week was actually to build a fence. A very long and metal fence. To show how deep and wide our holes had to be, we took a picture of just how much like a mini-jacuzzi these holes were. The fence was to be 860 feet long with over 300 poles, 1600 pounds of concrete, and over 1700 feet of 3/4" wire cable. Yeah, intense.







One of the first days while digging (which is how we started this little project) one of the girls got jumped at by a TARANTULA! Seriously though, I think we all had little heart attacks for and with her. He was about 4" long and ridiculously furry.









This is just a portion of the fence. The whole point of it was to section of a wilderness area outside of a newcoming subdivision. The project was subsidized by a corporation started by Howard Hughes and they own a lot of land in and around Vegas. The HH corp. was doing this to garner local interest in the wilderness area, stop ATV's from going into the area, and to get a lot of PR.





Just to show my sidetrack-iness, this is one of many pictures of flora and fauna. This is my first cactus I've ever seen in person not in a zoo or somewhere else not meant to be.
























Mixing the concrete are two of our internationals for the week, Kitae and Blair (from Korea and Scotland respectively). And the picture below that is them with an auger. Though it's just the two of them, some holes actually required 3 people, two holding on and one pushing on the top for some extra 'umph'.





















This picture is actually me coming back from taking my first crap in the "woods". We actually have to dig a hole several inches deep and keep the paper on us, etc. It's a rather intense experience. But I have to say that while looking out over Las Vegas you can actually give yourself the feeling that you are taking a crap on the city (which I am not really a fan of if you couldn't tell).



















Our last night staying at the campsite we decided to go somewhere else to cook dinner, so we went on a little drive to Red Rock Canyon park and made spaghetti and took pictures. We have far too much fun for our own good.









The first section of our fence finished! This was such a relief and made us feel much better about whether it was going to get finished entirely or not.










Another group shot before we went on a learning expedition to see some Indian pictographs and petroglyphs.

























These pictographs were literally less then a mile from where we were working. They are apparently some of the most pristine pictographs left in the Southwest.










The Bureau of Land Management Archaeologist took us through all of these pictures and he explained some of what we were seeing, but apparently most of it he is unwilling to "translate" because he feels as though he is incapable of that. But as you can see, this is obviously a devil. Obviously.







In this picture you can see a "man" in the middle of the picture, and he said it was either a woman wearing a loincloth, or a shaman with *ahem* an engorged genital region.










Now... because of the colouring, apparently this is NOT a fake drawing. I am inclined to disagree, what real Indian would draw this???? Not a one.



































































This is after the majority of the fence was done, and we took a climbing a break because we were gonna finish early so they gave us a break for working so hard. And those people down there, well, they are ATV'ers and we totally enjoyed watching them get frustrated about the fence being there. Below is a video of our commentary while watching them come in...







That evening we were very cold, and decided to snuggle for warmth.












And now for how I totally lose, I didn't take any more pictures of the completely finished fence. But, to make up for it, we took jumping pictures and the Can-Can!










Beautiful sunset after a job well done!

Next week, back to Vegas a little further south in Lovell Canyon!