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Okay, back from my first excursion into the mojave desert. Er... interesting sort of describes it... kind of weird, kind of uncomfortable... I think if I had to describe it in one word that word would be: dirty. I've never been dirty like I was dirty in that desert. Stephanie calls what we do "dry-camping" because there are no showers. By the end of the 4th day I was covered so much in my own scum that I couldn't even recognize myself! On the other hand, I can pitch a tent in less that 5 minutes, I can walk along the edge of cliffs for miles, I can poop in the desert, and (thanks to Stephanie's constant lectures) recognize and name most flowers in the mojave desert. Let me start at the beginning...
Well, the work I do is very simple. Stephanie and I have a list of coordinates for various abandoned mines throughout the desert, given to us by the Bureau of Land Management. We find these mines using our handheld GPS units (stupid Garmin crap, accuracy somewhere within 18 feet, wtf??). Once we're there, Stephanie takes pictures while I record different dimensions of the mine with my GPS unit. Ahhhh different dimensions! What a wonderful idea... anyway back on topic...
That's it. That's all we do. I take a few points with the GPS and we move on to the next mine, the whole process takes about 10-15 minutes. Most of our time is spent actually trying to get to the mines, so we cover about 12 a day on average. Most of the time, we just have to climb a hill to get to the mines. Sometimes, the mines are located on a cliff face or at the top of a dried up stream channel. Naturally, Stephanie makes me go get the pictures of the mines on the cliffs. But I have some rock climbing experience so it's actually pretty fun! Still, I don't know why we have to camp... all the mines are pretty much within a mile of civilization, we could just use our $29 per diem to get a room at Motel 6 for the night, but Stephanie likes to go out of her way to poop in the woods, I think she enjoys it actually.
Going to the bathroom in the wilderness is not bad, especially since I have my portable potty with me! This little three-legged tripod has a toilet seat and cover, perfect for the stingy camper like me who refuses to poop straddling a cactus. I cringe at the thought of trying to poop without this thing, how does Stephanie do it? In fact... when does she do it!?!? I've never seen her go when we're out in the field!! This crazy lady has a bladder the size of a watermelon and apparently she doesn't have to pee like a normal person. I'm very picky about where I pee, and when picking a camping spot, I always tell Stephanie to stop near a hill, so that I can walk over said hill and pee in peace.
Sleeping in a tent is pretty cozy, but an air conditioning unit would be nice. I was fine sleeping in the wilderness, until one of my friends told me a story about a camper who was mauled and eaten by a pack of coyotes. Thanks a lot by the way. Especially since it wasn't two nights until a pack of coyotes showed up at our campsite. Stephanie was dead asleep by then, of course! It was dark, and I was just getting comfortable when I heard the pad of paws outside my tent. I sat as still as I could while I listened to the pack of coyotes check out our campsite. I could hear them poking around a bit, but they didn't cause any trouble. It wouldn't have been a problem if I hadn't just heard a story about a girl being eaten by coyotes. I kept thinking that if those coyotes wanted me, it wouldn't take much to rip through the thin layer of cloth standing between me and their teeth... Anyway, they were actually pretty cute and the way they talked back and forth was equally so.
The absolute worse part of the trip, even worse than the absence of showering, was an incident that occurred while Stephanie and I were driving to one of our campsites. Stephanie pulled our truck onto the freeway and I was just beginning to relax after a hard days work. I felt something tickle my leg, like a hair under my jeans, but I ignored it at first... until it started moving up my pants!
"Stephanie, er... I think there's something in my pants..." I told her.
"Do you think I should pull over?" she asked. I still wasn't sure if it was anything to worry about, but then whatever it was was suddenly wriggling its way further up my leg. I quickly slammed my hand down and grabbed whatever it was through my pants and held on to it firmly with a section of my jeans.
"YES! WE NEED TO PULL OVER NOW IT'S IN MY PANTS!" I screamed like a lunatic, I had no idea what it was but the thing I was grasping definitely had some substance to it! Stephanie swerved the truck onto the side of the freeway. As soon as the truck had stopped I kicked open the door and leapt into the desert, still holding the thing through my pants. As I'm running frantically out of the truck, Stephanie calls back:
"Don't hurt the poor thing!" DON'T HURT IT!?!?!? Really, Stephanie!? Like I'm going to worry about whether or not I'm hurting whatever it is inside my pants! I'm trying with all my might to squish it without letting it touch my skin, I'm squeezing it as hard as I can while trying to hold it as far away from me as possible, which isn't very far considering it's inside my pants!!! Anyway, I continue to quickly strip on the side of the freeway. It wasn't a crowded freeway, but there was steady traffic. I really didn't care at the moment. I unzipped my jeans, kicked off my boots, and whipped my pants off on the side of the road. I flipped my pants inside out to find them absolutely covered in bug guts. And in the center of this scene of slaughter was the carcass of a recently dead 2-inch centipede:
Ooooookay! Finally made it to Reno! Unfortunately the drive was relatively uneventful... got pulled over once, stayed in one crappy hotel, hit one animal, saw one crazy man, saw one herd of wild horses and a porcupine! Okay, let's start at getting pulled over...
I wasn't even speeding! And I get pulled over a LOT for speeding haha. I was just minding my own business when this cop pulls me over across 5 lanes of traffic, over what!? Apparently my license plate cover is illegally covering up the state name. Okay, that would have been fine if that was all, I do have every intention of following the law. But then he asked me where I was going. "Nevada." "What's in Nevada?" "I have an archaeology job there." "What will you be doing?" "Camping out in the wilderness." He then makes me get out of my car and meet him behind the vehicle. He runs some sort of background check on me, then asks me to open my trunk. Ooooookay... I get pulled over a lot, Mr. Suspicious Cop, and I've never been searched before! He asks to see my tent and open my suitcase! Why??? I'm a little girl traveling by myself to Nevada, am I really a threat to anyone? Go waste your time on someone else! Well, he let me off with a warning at least, sheesh! On to the crappy hotel...
My mum made a road trip guide for me, with which places to stop at and goals to reach for each day. I used this guide to determine where I would stay for the night so I didn't end up staying in some podunk town in the middle of nowhere. Well... on the second night I reached my goal and felt good about driving for a few more hours... unfortunately even a few hours later I was still in the middle of nowhere. Still, Little America sounded cute, and the hotel looked friendly so I pulled over in Little America, Population: 64. (Not bad, I also stopped at one point in Buford, Population: 1 haha!) Anyway, I get to my room and discover it's outside... you know... like the Bates Motel. To make matters worse, the shower curtains were white and slightly translucent so I could see shadows on the other side. Nuh uh! I am NOT getting murdered in the middle of nowhere behind a slightly translucent shower curtain in a bathroom in which some guy may or may not be staring at me through a hole in the wall! Needless to say, I took a shower with the curtain open. On to hitting one animal...
I love animals! A guy I know told me a story once about a raccoon who ran out in front of him when he was driving over a bridge. He swerved off the bridge and into the water to avoid hitting the raccoon. I loved that story! I always thought I would do the same thing for any animal. Well, there was nothing I could do to avoid this. I was going 80 down the freeway (don't worry mum the speed limit is 75 down here) and this bird flies out in front of me. I didn't even know I'd hit it, it didn't make a sound, it flew right under my car, I would have thought it just flew right on by.... would have.... except I looked out my rearview mirror to see a giant cloud of feathers spout out behind my car...... morbid... On to the crazy man...
After 3 days of traveling alone in a car, by myself--and the only human contact I have is when I'm saying "checking in" or "checking out--" I thought I was the one going crazy. When I tried talking to Reshanne after 2 days of driving, she said I sounded like a person who had had no human contact for a while because I was saying things out loud that normal people don't. I also wasn't "making proper conversation" or something like that... and I thought, if this is how I am after just 2 days, I don't even want to know how weird I'm going to be after a week of camping out in the wilderness with just Stephanie for company... let alone after a whole summer of this!! Just as I'm pondering this possible future of mine, I see a man walking down the road with a dog. He looked like he hadn't shaved in months. He was so filthy and disgusting, showering was a no. He had on a dusty backpack and so many layers of dirt-caked clothing, the only explanation was that he must have been traveling out in the wilderness for some time. I had my window rolled down, and as I passed the man, I could tell that he was talking to his dog, his only companion on his long journey. He was talking to him like he was a human, saying things like: "Rover, did you hear that woman back there!?! I'm telling you, Rover, people these days don't know what they're talking about!" Oh God please, pleeeaaase don't let me end up like Crazy Dog Man. Although... Extended Stay does allow pets, so I was thinking about maybe getting a companion of my own out here. It would be nice, especially a German Shepherd, which would be a loyal friend and offer me some protection so I wouldn't feel so alone or vulnerable to desert-wackos.
Well, Im meeting my boss and camping-partner Stephanie for the first time tomorrow morning, maybe a day of paperwork, then it's off to the field for a week! I will update again when I return. Adios!
I worked at the theater for three years. It was actually a psychic in New Orleans who said I wouldn't be working at Cinemark much longer when I had no intention of quitting. I have two degrees in archaeology... but I was happy working as an assistant manager of a level-one movie theater in Ohio. Hey, it isn't all bad! Free movies and popcorn, Christmas parties, poster auctions, award shows, special screenings before the movie release, and of course many interesting and fun people to work with!
After I graduated from college, I wondered why I still worked at the theater. There was nothing keeping me from traveling the world looking for adventure now that school was over. Sometimes, I thought about buying a plane ticket to anywhere and just leaving for a while to spice up my life.
Well, the psychic said that I was just sitting around waiting for something to happen without really trying to do anything myself... which is true... I kept waiting for something amazing to happen! I thought maybe one day an opportunity would just fall into my lap, and well, it kind of did...
All I had to do was sign up to have archaeology jobs sent to my email via ShovelBums. I got tons of emails every couple days about available jobs, but none really seemed that interesting, until I got this email:
1 Archaeological Technician, AmeriCorps, Great Basin Institute, Nevada.
Recruiting an archaeological technician to work as part of a two-person team surveying historic and pre-historic cultural resources that will be impacted by the closing of historic mines. Extensive travel is required. Project work is conducted in 15 of Nevada's 17 counties.
Roam around Nevada looking for cultural resources in abandoned mines? If that's not chock-full of adventure, I don't know what is! Plus, I'll get to experience so many things that many people know are out there but never get a chance to see for themselves! Mountain sheep, desert tortoise, Joshua trees...
Of course... there are a couple of... um... interesting details... such as I will be camping in the field for about six days at a time, and I've never been camping! And I will be pooping in the middle of the desert, how do you even begin to deal with that!?!? Did I mention sleeping among rattlesnakes and scorpions!?!? Yikes! But every adventure starts with a trek, I mean, Frodo didn't exactly take a limo to Mordor. I suppose it would have made things pretty dull...
Still, driving to Nevada is going to be the hard part. Three days in my car with over 128,000 miles that may or may not survive the journey, with a radio that doesn't work, by myself... I shouldn't have read that magazine article in Cosmo! A girl was traveling across the country for a new job when she stopped for the night at a hotel... AND NEVER CHECKED OUT! Her mangled body was found in the woods days later. As if I didn't have enough to worry about! Sheesh! My dad thinks I should buy a gun. He thinks I could use it in the field to shoot rattlesnakes that crawl into my tent, or crazy miners who are hiding in the abandoned mines?? I think I will do more harm to myself probably...
Well, the job is one week on then one week off from May 10th to September 17th. I will be living in an Extended Stay Hotel in Reno on my weeks off... maybe take some mini-vacations to Las Vegas, to California, maybe visit my family once or twice... I will miss Reshanne the most of course, she's my twin sister and my other half of an egg. There's no internet connection in the field, but I will add new posts when I get back from my latest adventure in the Nevada wilderness.
