A Surprise Plane Ride

During one of my last weeks at the park, my supervisor threw a little going-away party for one of our seasonal law-enforcement rangers. It was great; cold drinks, good food, and better company. As the night went on, I was chatting with a buddy of mine about life and goals and such, and out of nowhere he mentions that he has an airplane. I won’t lie, I kinda freaked out; “What!? Are you serious!?....” Before I could even ask he said, “yeah, I’ll have to take you up one day.” Little did I know, that day would come sooner than I thought.

The very next day, he poked his head into my office and said “Hey, wanna go up today?” “HELL YES I WANNA GO UP TODAY!!!” I replied. hahaha Unfortunately though, it was only 1pm and now I had turned into a total clock-watcher. It seemed like the slowest 4 hours of my life. Hahah

Well, the end of the day finally came and that afternoon, myself and 2 buddies were treated to a private airplane ride over Bryce Canyon. What more could I ask for after seeing this park from EVERY possible angle??? This was like the cherry on top of my summer. Enjoy the pictures ☺


Above: The Bridge Fire's massive affect on the environment


Above: From bottom to top (or near to far), Boat Mesa, Sunken Ship, and the Sagittarius PlateauAbove: The 1964 Cessna


Above: The Amphitheater from above

The Last 3-day Weekend

Once I realized that I only had 2 weeks left of my stay in southern Utah, I knew I had to make the best of it.

I was motivated to make my last 3-day weekend the most adventurous yet.

Luckily, I had a coworker to accompany me on my adventures.

On Friday, we headed out to Lower Calf Creek Falls; a wonderful 6-mile, sandy hike that led to an incredible 120-foot-tall waterfall. It was amazing to see how this waterfall fed the entire canyon its water. Trees, animals, shrubs, all flourished in the canyon in which it fed. It was almost oasis-like.








The water was absolutely FREEZING. We jumped in on the count of 3 and I could barely stay in the water for more than 3 seconds. You know that feeling of pins and needles? Well, multiply that pain by about 100 and put it all over your body. That’s how cold it was.









What was great was this little area about 50 yards away from the water that still had a bit of sun shining on it. We ran to this area and soaked in the sun to bring our bodies back to life. I’d never been happier to feel the sun’s amazing heat. We had a nice lunch in the sunshine, then hiked back.
During the drive back we decided to hit the town of Escalante for a bit of rural exploration. We ended up meeting a gentleman by the name of Kevin, who has a PhD in chemical engineering, but you wouldn’t know it by his looks. A modest man, with a long, ungroomed gray beard, soft brown eyes, and torn clothing, he was extremely friendly, and welcomed us into his incredibly unique shop. “I build waterwheels and drums,” he said, as my coworker and I stared in awe at his work. “This piece has taken me about a year and a half, and I’m still not done yet,” he softly mentioned. “I’m selling it to a hotel in Park City for 35 grand.”

His work was like nothing I’d ever seen before and his passion for it was truly apparent. Check out his websites if you get a chance:
Tribalsounds.com
Hydrowheel.com



He suggested we go to Georgie’s for dinner. We took his advice and later thanked him for it. We had a wonderful Mexican dinner followed by fresh cookies, which we took to the local frosty shop to have mixed in with a milkshake ☺.
















Best Friday so far, now it’s time to make Saturday REALLY worthwhile.

Saturday started out AMAZING. I decided to bring my longboard along for some of the awesome hills we came across on Friday. I had my coworker follow me in the car and take pictures. The early morning adrenaline rush was a great way to start the day off ☺



So, if you haven’t heard of Peek-a-boo and Spooky slot canyons before, take a minute now to google and read some literature on them. They’re truly some of the greatest gems in this country. They’re located about 30 miles south on an un-maintained dirt road called Hole-in-the-Rock in Grand Staircase Escalante Nat’l Monument. The drive turned out to be the scariest part of the entire trip. With obstacles like sand pits, 10-foot slides, and areas with 100 2-foot-bumps gathered together, I was scared for my 1998 Toyota Camry. Ever time we bottomed out, I dreaded that it would be the last bottom-out the Camry would see, but at the same time, I was determined to hike Peek-a-boo and Spooky. They had been on my to-do list since the beginning of the summer and there was no way I was leaving Bryce without hiking’em.

The 30-mile drive took us a little over an hour, but we finally got there. As we were hiking out, I looked back at my Camry, “I hope she can get us out of here.”

The hikes were a real treat after the hour-long white-knuckle drive. I didn’t realize how tense I was until I finally got out of the car and took a deep breath. The drive took a lot out of me.

We decided to link Peek-a-boo and spooky together as a loop. We started with Spooky, which was….indescribable. As we were squeezing and shuffling through the slots that were sometimes not much wider than the distance from my nose to the back of my head, I couldn’t stop giggling. I was so happy to have finally been right in the middle of the world-famous slot canyons. The rest of the hike was incredible. I’ll let the pictures do the rest of the talking for me.






Well, the camry made it out (thank the heavens) and I'd never been happier. In the words of my old roommate Ryan, "The Camry runs on good times."

We hit a little café in Escalante for an amazing green-chile cheeseburger and we also stopped in at the frosty shop again.

Sunday was supposed to be a relaxed day since I had work at 4:30, but my neighbor woke me up early, “Let’s go hike the cottonwood narrows.” I couldn’t refuse hahah. It was a wonderful day-hike, but after doing peek-a-boo and spooky, no slot canyon can compare. Grovesnor arch was sweet, though! It almost looks like a castle or a fort or something.

I slept that night feeling very accomplished and satisfied.

A Great Finale….

The 22nd year of my life was a special one, filled with more life lessons, good times, and memories than any year before and it ended with one crazy week, and a wonderful weekend with my two favorite girls in the entire world.

My mom & sister not only brought a ton of food and drink for my birthday party, but also some amazing weather. They got to see the best of Bryce in just 3 days. 3 of the most beautiful days I had seen in 2 weeks.

It started with a decent sunset, and then we hiked with moonlight as our only guide on Queens Garden trail, stopped, laid back, and gazed at the incomparable night sky of southern Utah.

Woke up the next morning for the best sunrise I had ever seen here. What a perfect start to the 23rd year of my life. We hiked Navajo loop later that day, then started partying. This party was great. A nice fire, hot dogs, s’mores, roasted starburst (if you’ve never tried it, go for it, it’s delicious), beer pong, and good friends and family. Nothing could’ve made me happier on my birthday.

Sunday was great, too. We went on the tower bridge hike on Fairyland Loop and had a nice snack at the bottom.

We would even be treated to a show put on by my favorite bird in the park! The Stellar Jay! Another great birthday gift!

Thanks, Mom and Andrea for a great birthday weekend!

Love you both!

An Interesting week at work

Monday was, well, Monday.

I wasn’t exactly excited to be back to work after, what turned out to be, a great 3-day weekend, but I was given a treat by being sent out with the fire affects crew. It was a crew of about 9 people, half from Grand Canyon, half from Zion. Their assignment was to collect post-fire vegetation data from about 30 different sites around the park. It was a great day; totally stress-free and I was able to work with some new people for a change. We did get caught in a pretty nasty little hail storm, though. With one incredibly close call with lightning. It was kinda funny, we all decided to head back to our gear when the lightning seemed to be getting closer then once we had our gear, a bolt of lightning seemed to have struck within 100 yards of us. We all froze, looked at eachother, then started to run as fast as we possibly could. Hahah, we all couldn’t stop laughing once we got back to the cars. It hailed and rained on us for about an hour, and then we started back up with our data collection.

Tuesday was lame. Just a meeting and some office work.

Wednesday was ACTION PACKED! I finally got my hands on my own project. I was given the task of revisiting photopoint markers that were last documented in 1996. It’s called a photopoint survey and it’s used to track vegetation changes throughout the years. This was an awesome project. I finally got some real responsibility and some good fieldwork experience! It was like a treasure hunt. There were 9 total photopoints where I needed to find a marker (sometimes a piece of painted re-bar or a slab of concrete) and take various photos facing different directions. The people who originally documented the sites in 96 never GPS’d the points, so we were following written instructions on how to get to each photopoint. This was sometimes fun and sometimes very, VERY frustrating. In the end, I was able to track down 6 of the 8 photopoints. Not a bad hit percentage! The fun part of this day was when we came across, what would end up to be, one of the craziest storms either myself or my colleague had ever witnessed. Hail, flash floods, lightning…you name it, we got it. Check out the pics and videos below.










On Thursday I was able to help out the interpretation department in administering a Visitor Survey. This was a pretty cool experience. I was the stereotypical guy with a clipboard asking for a few minutes of your time, but this survey was different because the visitors didn’t have to stand around to take the survey. The survey was a booklet with a stamp on it that they could take with them, fill out on their own time, then throw it in a mailbox and send it back. Most people were surprisingly excited to participate in the survey. I guess it’s because I’m not standing in a mall trying to sell them something, plus they’re all on vacation having a good time.

Friday was exciting because my Mom and sister arrived at Bryce to spend my birthday with me!

My First Taste of the Grand Staircase

The weekend of July 24-26 was, well, better than I thought it would be.

We had a 2-day backpacking trip through Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument (GSENM) planned. My friend and I headed to the nearest “city,” called Cedar City, to do a bit of shopping for the trip. On our way there, our other friend called us saying that there was a 60% chance of rain all over Utah for the entire weekend. We’d never come across precipitation chances that high the entire summer and since our trip was planned around hiking through slot canyons, we knew we had to start working on a backup plan.

We were immediately bummed. We couldn’t think of anything to do that didn’t depend on the weather being at least decent. “Well, we might as well stay in Cedar City and just party,” I suggested. There were no objections.

We traveled up and down Cedar City’s main drag, doing anything even remotely fun, which ended up being shopping at the local thrift stores. What bummed us out even more, was that half of the city was closed because of Utah’s state-wide holiday, Pioneer Day. We were disappointed to say the least. How could a weekend go so wrong so quickly?

We ended up grabbing a cheap motel room for the night and roaming around Cedar City on foot, hitting all 3 of their incredibly boring bars. We had fun nonetheless.

On Saturday morning, we headed back to Bryce real early. My friend had gotten a call saying that he needed to report back so that he could work on a fire. Once we got back, my buddy went to work and I passed out again. Later that day, we decided to hit the local rodeo. It was fairly entertaining and made for some fun photos. Afterwards we stayed for the fireworks, which was actually a pretty good show.

Sunday was, surprisingly enough, a beautiful day. We decided to head out early and try our hand at a slot canyon hike in GSENM. It would come to be the best decision we’d made the entire weekend. The weather was perfect and the slot canyon was amazing. Willis Creek was the name of the hike. Slot canyon hikes are incredible experiences and I would suggest them to anyone who enjoys the outdoors.

The Bridge Hollow Fire

It began last Wednesday, when I was out with the veg crew.

All of our radios squawked…"Fire call center to Bryce Canyon Fire Chief…we have reports that, if the current conditions remain constant, a fire is headed in your direction and should reach the main park road in approximately 2 hours."

From that point on, for the next 5 days, the radio never went quiet. Not for more than a second.

The fire that began with one, single strike of lightning in Bridge Hollow, would burn continuously for over 5 days, scorching over 3000 acres of land in Bryce Canyon National Park and Dixie National Forest. With over 200 wildland firefighters on call, teams of resource and safety specialists from all over southern Utah, and, of course, the amazing team of people at Bryce Canyon National Park, this “incident” would require everyone’s best efforts to, not only manage the fire, but also keep the public’s (locals and visitors) safety and ease of mind as top priorities.

Just to give you a little bit more perspective, this smoke is about 14 miles away.

I attended the first fire briefing on Thursday morning. The fire had already burned 1500 acres. A plan had to be put into action, and quickly. The fire crew-chiefs would have a full plate of contradicting objectives; the national forest wanted to sustain and utilize the fire for resource benefit, but the national park wanted to go on full suppression, and they had a whole set of rules of what the firefighters could and couldn't do in the park due to impact levels on the park’s resources (falcon nests, archaeological sites, etc.). Thankfully we all reached a consensus and, although I didn’t experience the fire first hand, I believe the fire was managed fairly easily.

After the meeting, I was approached by our Chief of Interpretation and the Chief of Resources. They wanted to promote me to Public Information Officer (PIO) for the next few days. I was ecstatic. Not only would I be getting paid for a change, but I’d also be gaining some new experience (“It’s all about exposure to experience, and experiencing exposure,” that was my late grandfather Pops’s saying and my inspiration for the title of this blog and my own ambitious lifestyle).

I would be in charge of editing daily press releases and hand-delivering them to select people and businesses within a 50-mile radius. Now THIS was my style. I really enjoyed this job. Driving around, meeting new people and talking with them about the fire (or whatever else they wanted to chat about) was really fun.

The southern end of Bryce Canyon’s main road would be closed, restricting visitors from seeing 75% of the park. Fortunately our main attraction, the Bryce Amphitheater, would remain open to the park. The biggest challenge for our interpreters and administrators were the visitors that would constantly demand that their park entrance fee be refunded because they couldn’t see the whole park (even though about 60% of our visitors never spend more than 2 hours in the park, nonetheless get to see the whole thing).

When I wasn’t out working as the PIO, I was around the park looking for the best vantage points for pictures of the fire and smoke. At Fairyland Point, I would take the best panorama shot of the summer so far. I hope you like it!


The Bridge fire went down in history as the biggest fire Bryce Canyon National Park has ever seen. Teams of specialists are still coming in and out of the park for weeks at a time to analyze the affects the fire had on the local ecosystems.

I feel privileged to have witnessed and been a part of managing it.

What an amazing experience.

Another day at the office…

My office has no walls, no cubicles, no clocks to stare at, no stuffy, annoying aromas of day-old coffee and hot paper from copy machines.

My office is 36,000 acres of some of the most unique, pristine wilderness in the entire world. My office is 64 miles of trails. My office has the 2nd best air and precipitation quality in the United States. My office has views that no 75th floor corporate office could ever provide. My office is Bryce Canyon National Park.

Some days are better than others, just like anything else…but when I get down, all I have to do is take a step back and realize where I am. Then, all of a sudden, everything is good again.

It’s been 6 weeks since I began my internship here, and the morals and perspectives that I’ve pulled from this experience have already shaped my own in ways that I probably won’t even understand until I leave.

The one thing I have realized, though, is that there isn’t enough balance for me here. There’s too much isolation, and too little of what I’ve grown to love in places like Gainesville and Fort Lauderdale. It’s fair to say that I still haven’t found a place with the perfect balance, but Park City is damn close to it. I’ve decided to move there once my internship is finished. I’m determined to make it big there. I will make it big there. My social and professional network has grown exponentially in just 5 total days there and still shows signs of incredible growth. The culture and sense of community is right on point with what I’m looking for; a huge street farmer and vendor market every Sunday, a park with every type of sport field or court, all types of restaurants from gourmet to cheap pizza, a monster ski resort, one of the biggest film festivals in the world (Sundance), and, to top it all off, it’s within 6 driving hours to over 15 national park and forest lands.

The only thing it’s missing…is my family. Not just my bloodline and the people that have known me my entire life, but the family that I’ve made over the past 5 years. To my friends and family all over the world…GET YOUR @$$E$ OUT HERE! Hahahaha

Just in case you don’t though, expect me to come back to Florida for at least a winter season (possibly 2010-2011) to work at Biscayne or Dry Tortugas National Park.

And to all of my friends and family in Florida, expect me to be HEAVILY campaigning for all of you to come out to Park City for a ski vacation of your own. So start looking at dates!

Now for the real update…

The past two weeks have been awesome. I’ve covered almost all of the main trails here in the park, AT WORK! Like I said, my office rocks (no pun intended).

The week of July 4th, I worked with interpretation again. I was able to accompany a couple of great people on their guided hikes. The first, was on the “Under-the-rim” trail to the “Hat Shop.” This was, by far, the most difficult section of trail I’ve encountered here. It’s all down hill from Bryce point to the hat shop and man, is it steep. It was a great hike, though. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your perspective), nobody showed up for the guided hike, so it was just my friend and I chatting up a storm, enjoying every second of our hike while we learned things about and from each other. Once we reached the “Hat Shop,” I was, once again, astonished at Bryce Canyon’s beauty. Over 100 “hats” were strewn about the area. It was quite a sight to see.

The next day I went on another guided hike on the Fairyland Loop trail to “Tower Bridge.” This time, we had a nice couple from England that joined us on our hike. This trail quickly became my next favorite trail behind the route Ben and I took on that faithful day earlier this summer. With unique hoodoo formations like Cinderella’s castle, Marge (from Simpsons) watching TV, the Great Wall of China, along with hundreds of bristle cone pine trees scattered around the area, this trail was obviously unique to the rest. Also along this hike, I took, what may turn out to be, my favorite picture of the summer.

The rest of this week was spent in the visitor’s center, then I headed off to Park City for the 4th of July weekend. Unfortunately, I locked my camera in my car, so I wasn’t able to take any pictures of the parade or other festivities :(

It was still a fantastic weekend filled with partying, fireworks, a huge parade and great people. Park City proved to me that it definitely knows how to do the 4th of July right.

The next week started out slow, but ended with a bang. I began working with the veg-crew managing invasive exotics and restoring social trails (trails made by people that repeatedly take shortcuts rather than walk on the trails they’re supposed to). That was on Monday and Tuesday (as a side note, I began working as a busser at the Bryce Lodge restaurant this week for some cash on the side), but on Wednesday I got a real treat. I was assigned to working with our on-site biologists. Our assignment for the day was to set up a soundscape monitoring station in the backcountry near a peregrine falcon eyrie (spelling might be wrong, but it's the techincal term for a nest). The data collected at this station would provide valuable information on whether or not the sounds that would be recorded have any correlation with the falcon’s activity level and/or presence/absence in that area. The site we finally decided to set up shop at was about 3.75 miles (7.25 miles round-trip) out in the backcountry off of the Riggs Springs Trail (the southern most trail in the park). This hike was especially difficult because I was delegated the responsibility of carrying the batteries, which weighed a good 35 pounds, out to the site. The setting up of the equipment was an awesome learning experience. I learned about the various equipment, how to tie a trucker’s hitch knot (which is extremely useful), and all about falcons and other wildlife.

That evening, my Aunt Martha and Uncle Steve arrived at Bryce. They stayed for almost 2 days and we would end up eating at every decent restaurant within a 30-mile radius (which totals about 4 hahah). The night they arrived, though, we watched the moon rise. I had never seen a full moonrise before in my entire life and, I have to say, it was just as, if not more stunning, than a sunrise. The morning after the moonrise, we got up for sunrise. I was especially excited for this sunrise since I had found a new spot to watch it from (versus the tourist swarmed Bryce Point outlook). After sunrise, I had to report to work for just a half-day. I was with the veg-crew again, but this time, we were assigned some recon work on the Agua Canyon trail. It ended up just being a hike. I was exhausted afterwards.

I met up with my Aunt and Uncle after work and we had a wonderful afternoon. We did some light hiking, heavy eating, and just overall great times. Thanks, Uncle Steve and Aunt Martha, for a great time!

I just saw them off this afternoon (Friday) and now I’m ready to tackle the second half of my internship. I can’t wait to see what the next half has in store!

And I can’t wait to see Bruno! I’m gona try and go see it tomorrow! It’s quite a process to see a movie here. The nearest theater is 1.5 hours away lol