Zion Day 5

Friday, March 25-Saturday, March 26, 2011

Last day and it was another chilly night. Definitely mention to the next year’s group to bring plenty of layers and good night time sleeping gear. Jessica was worried about bad weather coming in and wanted to get us on the road as early as possible. She said we had done such a fantastic job this week that she only had one small job left for us to do moving the pamphlets in storage to a more accessible and safe location. Christopher said the summer periodicals come in several languages which I find very cool. I think it’s great that as a country we recognize the number of international visitors we get to our national parks and plan according for this. I would hope that reflects well on us when they return home and relay their experience. We knocked that job out very quickly and Jessica released us to head home.

In our typical fashion, this Zion crew jumped in and split up the tasks to make things go quickly. Some were unloading the vehicles and sorting through leftovers, while the rest packed up tents; we had camp broke and the cars packed up in less than an hour. The day was clear and we were able to take in some more of the great view heading North and then East. Thinking about what a great body of water once covered this land makes me wonder if the bottom of the oceans have similar “landscapes”. Traveling back was fairly uneventful and since we were ahead of schedule we took time out to watch the Jayhawks beat the Spiders at a restaurant in Colorado. Rock Chalk Jayhawks! It wasn’t until the sun went down that the weather started making trouble and telling us we had done the right thing leaving a tad early. We hit rain, freezing rain, snow and fog through the night and everyone did a fantastic job driving and keeping us safe throughout it.

I arrived in Lawrence tired but content and ready to hit the shower and a soft bed. I learned a lot about the various jobs done for the park services for it's guests and some great information about invasive and native species that I want to look into a bit more. It felt great to meet this devoted set of rangers with such diverse educational backgrounds. I left Zion knowing we had made a difference for them as well and it feels great to have been a part of that. The marvels of the area we were in combined with such a great crew of people made this the best week of work I’ve ever had and I’m looking forward to more great Alternative Break experiences in the future.