last day on fire assignment

so it's been a long few days. 20 days to be exact. on august 7th we moved from Lowman Ranger District office to an area on the outskirts of Garden Valley. this is a full blown fire camp with catered food lines, a shower trailer, and plenty of porta-johns. i'll miss fire camp. before camp was here this area was an empty field. now there's yurts with office like settings inside complete with internet, copy and fax machines, and air conditioning.

of course seeing as making maps is an essential part of managing a wildfire these days i get to be in the trailer with the computer support folks. it's been a blast. the trailer is incredibly dusty from their last assignment which was in arizona. one can't complain though, b/c at least we have a/c.

there is a "camp crew" which consists of a bunch of teens who clean camp, make sure every yurt and trailer has a cooler full of water, gatorade and ice. they empty the recycling and trash daily as well and hand out the bag lunches.

i love doing the work that i've been doing. i had the opportunity twice to go up in a helicpoter and GPS the perimeter of the fires that our team is managing. the first flight i went on was an A-Star. a small helicopter with bucky as the pilot. he did a great job of keeping one skid in the black and one in the green though i swear we were only 100 feet off the ground in most cases. i'd fly with him again any day. the other flight was a much larger aircraft and the pilot was not as nice as bucky but he was very skilled. it was a windy day and still no one got sick.

as excited as i am to sleep in a bed again i'll miss this job. i already cant' wait to go out on another assignment.