House in Missoula

My house

Stairs down to our living area
our hallway
The Kitchen
The Living room

Rafting in Jackson Hole, WY

I had a 3-day weekend and Anthony was getting antsy sitting around Salt Lake, so we decided to float the Snake River in Wyoming this weekend. Anthony rented a raft from his school and I headed down Friday morning. We camped out a few miles south of the town of Jackson. It rained all night.

Saturday morning, we got up and headed to the river. We looked like this at the put-in spot:The high temperature was 53 degrees Fahrenheit, and the sun never came out. The water of course came from melting snow. The river was flooded and fast. We had an average speed 6.5 mph, and a max speed of 12.4 mph in some rapids. It rained all day.

After dinner, we went to bed around 9 because it was still raining and we didn't want to sit around outside. It rained all night.

Just an Update

Since North Dakota we have done several prescribed burns around Eastern MT. The weekend we got back we got sent to the very north eastern part of the state on the Canada border to burn some fields. We were supposed to be there only through Monday but monday morning came and we were waiting in the trucks waiting for the ok to head out. All of a sudden the burn boss came out and told us we were staying for another night and heading out for another full day of burning. We had to head out at 4:30am the next morning to be back at our refuge to burn all day there. So it was definitely some very long late days but i love being so mobile and not knowing exactly what is going to happen that day. We were originally supposed to be burning all week through sunday but thursday we dound out the weekends weather was going to horrible for burning and i decided to call Katie from my AmeriCorps team and decided to visit her in Denver for my three day weekend. Its been a nice break from MT and the crew. Ive just been drinking lots of tea and coffee while just enjoying the "big city" life. Well thats all for now. I hope everyone is doing well, later.

North Dakota Part 2

I got back from North Dakota today and am absolutely tired and sore. So here are some pictures from the trip and some links to News clips that myself and my team were in.


The First news video that made the city of Minot,ND feel guilty for not helping out. (I am in the background with the light colored bandanna on.)

The Second news video showing us working in Burlington, ND filling sandbags.

We were all still pretty happy campers after filling up these sandbags for the refuge.

Our last day at the refuge we un-buried 4 culverts from 15 ft. of snow.

Backing dump trucks all day to build their dike.

Our sandbagging operation at the refuge.

The Crew

Sandbagging in Jamestown, ND

Just a couple of the sandbags we made

Building a Sandbag dike around private residencies

All of the Volunteers building the dike

Our last day in Minot, ND and we took a picture with a Large Swedish horse at the Scandinavian heritage center

North Dakota

The Bay Bridge-Tunnel



Hey everyone!

Its been awhile but just so you know i had a great time at the Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia we were there for three weeks and burned six times. I had a great time even though we didn't burn tons of times. We did lots of fire prep work and met some great people along with learning tons of new information about fire.
Right now i am in North Dakota with the crew helping the refuges with all of the flooding that is going on right now. We were told thursday night that we were driving out friday morning to head over here, so we have been on overtime this entire weekend. Heres some pictures from Virginia.

Lots of smoke

Waiting for the heat to die down so we can get close.

Just puting out some fire and laying a wet line

Phragmities are very invasive and burn like hell

we got the marsh master stuck

I bought hotdogs for everyone to roast on the fire

Burning on the super cold VA beach

We used a helicopter for our first burn

"Wild Ponies"

House Pictures

Roy HS Districts basketball game (65 miles away)
My room

The Kitchen

The Great Montana Adventure

My car tops out at 111 mph, it still has acceleration but the computer just shuts the engine down. The fact that I can do that and not worry about cops, cars, or basically anything makes MT a great state. I got to my Bunkhouse and the Sand Creek office (4 miles south of the Missouri river) today around 3:00pm and its in the middle of BF nowhere. All I have been doing today is arranging my stuff and just talking with my two other teammates; AmberBeth and Derrick, they are from Minnesota/Iowa and North Dakota respectively. I just found out that I (we) are on an engine crew and not a handcrew. I was kind of looking forward to being on a handcrew but engine is going to be just as cool if not better and more interesting. This week has been lots of sitting in offices waiting for paperwork to be ready and then filling out the paperwork. But it hasn’t been horrible because the people are awesome and are fun to work/talk with. During our first week here we earned 6 hours of comp time. While we are not on a detail/fire instead of earning over time we earn comp time which means they give us the hours we work over time and can use it as vacation anytime we want. Now if we save up our hours until the end we will get a check filled out for those hours…but the boss doesn’t like people saving up more than 80 hours and will force us to take two weeks vacation so they don’t have to pay us. Today I only worked two hours because my crew boss was taking the day off and said It would just be better if we used our 6 hours of comp time to make the day easier. Jim (my crew boss) said that we will be racking up plenty more than 80 hours of comp time so we should just use it whenever we want. Tonight we are going to the Roy, MT high school basketball districts, which is the excitement that I have for this three day weekend. I may also head into Lewistown for a couple of hours to check out the internet cafes in town. Oh and I have a roommate, his name is Nick and he is the fourth person on our crew. AND I found out that my first detail will be at THE GREAT DISMAL SWAMP in Suffolk, VA. If you don’t remember my past experience with wildfire it was at the same place. I did not have the best experience last time but this round should be much better since I like everyone I am going with and we will be burning the place seeing lots of fire. The other great part of this is that we will be staying in the Hilton again. Here are a couple of pictures from my trip and of the bunkhouse:

The Living Room

Our house from the front

In the middle of hwy 191

My sexy car