this was the halfway hitch. 4 hitches down, 4 more to go! for this project, we headed to york lake in sandisfield, ma. if you want to know where it is, take your finger and point it to the southwest corner of MA and that's where we were working.
for me, this was a hitch of firsts. it was the first time i was camping at the work site. it was the first time i was in a tent by myself. it was the first time we didn't have access to a refrigerator. and it was the first time i didn't have a shower.
luckily...the campsite rocked (it's so great not to commute!), having a tent to myself was awesome, we went to town enough that the fridge situation was fine, and there was a lake that we swam in every day!
our project was huge. we were doing maintenance on muddy spots of a pond loop trail (the trail goes aaround a lake, is it a pond or a lake, who knows??). the work involved setting stepping stones and building rustic timber bog bridges. hooray!
when we arrived at the site, we met the park employees and set to work getting camp set up. before we even had the tents unloaded from the van, though, 3 people hopped out of a land rover that miraculously appeared right next to our van. one of them said (in a british accent), "hello, my name is simon winchester. who is your leader?". we all pointed to zach, the crew leader, who introduced himself. simon continued to say, "those blokes by the car will be writing a story about your project. that one with the camera is (i didn't catch her name, but we found out later it was simon's wife) and the other chap is nick who will be writing the story". we proceeded to awkwardly introduce ourselves and figure out what these people wanted from us.
i think they wanted some great action shots of us using tools and being bad asses, but our tools were still at the bottom of the trunk in the van, and we hadn't even looked at the trail yet. so...simon left the camera person and the reporter with us and we set out to walk around the lake. it was quite the adventure. one of those where you just might have had to be there.
once they left, we ate lunch, set up camp and hiked out some tools. then we jumped into the lake! man did that feel good.
our days mostly consisted of setting lots of rocks, doing bridging work and swimming the lake after the work day. the only notable day was my birthday!! (june 24!). we all decided to drive into great barrington to going out to dinner. we ended up at a restaurant called baba louie's where we ate some fabulous pasta and pizza. the server even put a candle in my pasta! then i got some ice cream. great barrington is a really cool progressive town full of what appear to be former new yorkers and other rich people. cool to visit...perhaps not very fun to live in. either way, we went back another night later in the hitch to get ice cream again and more groceries.
in the end, we set 32 stepping stones and built 14 and 16 foot rustic timber bog bridges. it was awesome! love, love, loved it.
now i'm enjoying a relaxing 4th of july weekend in western mass!
until next time...
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