Lots of Work

March 6, 2020

I usually arrive and get myself moved in for a few days.  But Suzanne was waiting with a list of things to be done. The recycling was due to be hauled in from both refuges. Both MonteVista and Alamosa needed to have their hunt areas shut down.

A view along a back road from the hunting area 

I found seventeen eagles along the route - one tree had six in it

A view of the Canada geese and mallards enjoying the Rio Grande River

The view with a few eagles way off in the distance

As part of the hunt areas shutdown, I documented repairs - here a section of fence is down

 I needed to make signs, then haul sign holders and barriers from the BLM office and distribute them on the refuge as needed for the bus and auto tours of Monte Vista.

Our roads are narrow and we try to get visitors to park in the parking lots near the grain fields

This is our main viewing area by one of our barley fields - it is closed to most vehicles for the Festival

While adding barriers and building a rope fence, I took time to enjoy some visitors enjoying the cranes

And I too zoomed in on some of the feeding cranes

And enjoyed them leaving to go loaf a few hours

 And I had to make some sign holders for the Friend's of San Luis Valley Refuges to use at the Festival. This  consisted of retrieving two buckets, two PVC pipes, a bag of Quickcrete, all miles apart, and then mixing the Quickcrete and putting in the PVC pipes. I made it worse by trying to move the 80 lb bags of Quickcrete to the truck and catching the bag on the corner of the truck.  I ended up having to sweep it up and move each half of it to a bucket to haul back to my work site.

The sign bases all ready to haul to the festival - I did that also

 We spent the morning and early afternoon of last Thursday setting up the festival. We hauled in our own tables and chairs as well as tall background sections.  And we set up tables and chairs owned by the festival building. I set up a LOT of tables and chairs. The tables were dirty, and I had my cleaning stuff with me, so I got the job of scrubbing them down.  Then Suzanne called us all for lunch on her.  I had just filled my bucket with rinse water and just set it and my rags down. When I got back from a delicious taco lunch, I went back to discover somebody had turned my nice clean water into mud - and rinsed ALL the food tables. I only had to do all the tables used by the various government agencies and the Friends of the Refuges.  I went home exhausted and went to sleep early so I could be back at 6:00 A.M. to set up for the tours and then help finish setting up the displays inside.

Stay tuned for the tours.