For the first time since Martin Luther King, Jr. Day became a Federal holiday (1983), I decided it was time to honor the full intent of the holiday. One of my favorite places in the Las Vegas area is Spring Mountain Ranch State Park, and they were hosting a Day of Service opportunity. I decided that was a great place for me to spend my morning.
MLK Day is not a holiday my employer recognizes as a paid holiday, so I took 4 hours of PTO and headed out Monday morning at 8:00.
I purchased these Merrell MOAB (Mother Of All Boots) FST hiking boots about a year ago, soon after Cam moved here. He and I were doing enough hiking that it seemed like a good idea. Then we stopped hiking. This was the first opportunity I had to actually wear them. *SQUEEEEE*
This is the view of the park as you walk in. Who wouldn't want to spend time here? They split up the volunteers into two groups. One group was working on some trail rehabilitation, the other group was doing trash recon. About 2/3's of the volunteers wanted to work on the trail rehabilitation, and since that group included roughly 20 cub scouts under the age of 8, I opted for trash recon.
When it's 60 degrees in January, and you have views like this ...
And this ...
And this ... picking up trash feels like a privilege.
Spring Mountain Ranch State Park is just 6 miles south of the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. Although there isn't as much "red rock", it is certainly there.
The area we were focusing on was in the Group Use Area. That's not an area that can be accessed by general visitors to the state park, so it was fun to see a part of the park I haven't seen before.
One of the trails I worked on took me through the Ash Grove. The Ash Grove smelled like a mixture of pepper and eucalyptus. It was an intense and yummy smell.
We had some heavy rain recently in Las Vegas. There were still signs of that rain a week later. The ranger we were working with told us this ravine was full to capacity and sounded like a freight train just a week ago. Flash floods are a huge issue here.
The ash grove had several lightning strike tree stumps and carcasses. This area has a high incidence of lightning strikes.
This is Penelope. Spring Mountain Ranch State Park was a working cattle ranch until the late 1940's (before it was a state park). There are still 3 cattle on the property, Penelope being the most famous of the three. The state park provides apples and carrots for visitors to feed Penelope, and she loves every minute of the attention.
It really was an amazing morning, and has resulted in me contacting the state park to see if there are permanent volunteering opportunities available. I'll let you know how that goes!
2 comments:
Sounds like it was a fun time.
That's pretty!
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