Big Bend of the Colorado State Park

Last week I went to our Parks Academy in Laughlin, NV. It was kind of like a giant staff meeting...with field trips! We drove down on Tuesday, and came back on Friday. Wednesday morning I had to give a 1/2 hour talk about interpretation along with other people talking about etiquette, social media, solar panels (cool), budget, more interpretation and getting grants. Our field trip that day was Oatman, AZ. It's a historic mining town like Virginia City but smaller.

Thursday, we had presentations about planning and development and timesheet. Our field trip was Big Bend of the Colorado State Park.

I had to at least dunk my feet in the Colorado River!

They have a really nice park: lots of sand, nice tables and shade shelters, good restrooms and a campground. They are crazy in August when the River Regatta comes through--lots of dehydrated, drunk people rafting down into Arizona!

Bullhead City, AZ is across the river from Big Bend. I heard the "cheapest" house across the way is in the $2.1 million range. The most expensive is around $6 million.

Anyway, it's a very nice park if anyone is ever around Laughlin, NV!

New Adventures...

I haven't posted any real "adventures" for a while, mostly because we haven't been feeling that adventurous lately. Hopefully that will change once I have Saturdays off, starting in October and the weather cools off enough for us to get out and do more! Dave and I have opposite days off, which kinda limits our time out away from home unless one or both of us takes time off work!

We have gotten into the mountains a little this summer, but unfortunately, most of my hiking has been done at work and at night! We started doing night hikes in addition to full moon hikes at the park so for the summer we've been doing about two night hikes a month.

One thing I've noticed about where we live now is that to go hiking, we have to actually GO somewhere, either the 2 1/2 hours up to Lake Tahoe or into other areas because we are pretty much surrounded by farm land. There are some cool areas nearby, like Wilson Canyon, we need to explore...so hopefully soon there will be more real adventures to post!

 

Full moon along the park's nature trail

 

 

Two hikes in a row we got to see/hear rattlesnakes!

 

 

It seems to want to thunderstorm right before the full moon hikes, which I think is great, but it kind of keeps the people away! Last one we only had 4 because of the storm, but we got some great pictures (like these horses with the clouds) and some good sunsets!

 

 

Looking west at sunset.

 

 



Caterpillar

We found this little guy (or girl?) in the parking lot at work:

After a little bit of online searching, we found out it is a two-tailed swallowtail butterfly! This thing was a couple inches long and really strange-looking so it stood out really well. I learned that they start out green. When they turn brown, it's time for them to go looking for somewhere to build their cocoon so they can turn into one of those huge yellow and black butterflies!

Moonrise Over Mason Valley

I managed to get a shot of the super moon last night before it got too dark!

Night Heron

I was lucky enough to see this Night Heron this morning on the way to work! It looked kind of funny: a big bird sitting on a little tree, and it stayed still while I took its picture and drove away.