Summer time and job update!

It's definitely summer time on Cape Cod! The weather is getting hot and the tourists are flocking here in huge numbers. Driving has gotten harder because of all the cars on the roads, but luckily I haven't gotten caught in any really bad traffic yet (although I'm sure that will change soon, especially since this weekend is 4th of July weekend). My time here is winding down (there's a little less than a month left), which is sad because I don't want to leave everyone, but I'm trying to take advantage of the rest of my time here as much as I can. Here are some of the cool things I've done and places I've gone in the past few weeks:

Pilgrim Monument

A few weekends ago, one of my roommates and I went to Pilgrim Monument in Provincetown and climbed to the top. The climb wasn't as hard as I was expecting, and the view from the top was awesome! You can see really far from the top, and on really clear days supposedly you can see Boston. But it was pretty hazy that day so we only saw as far as Plymouth, which is still pretty good.

The monument!

View of downtown from the top

View from the top

View from the top

Fishing for crabs

One of my roommates brought a crab trap back with her a few weeks ago, so she and I and another of our roommates went out to the pier in Wellfleet to set it up and see what we could catch. We only caught 3 crabs (and threw them back in afterwards) but it was a fun time since I had never done anything like that before. Here is a picture of our first catch:

Highlands Fest

Highlands Fest is an event that I helped plan at my IP which celebrates arts, sciences and education at the Highlands Center in Truro, which is the old air force station that the National Seashore acquired in the 90s. The activities this year included live music, mural painting, loading of the wood-fired kiln, informational videos about science at the seashore (including one about the climate research facility that has been at the Highlands Center for the past year), and a demonstration of a weather balloon launch at the climate research facility. The weather was pretty rainy most of the day, and the part of the mural that we got painted in the morning got washed away once the rain started, but all things considered we got a pretty good number of people to come. The music was a big draw I think, and people were really interested in the climate research aspect of the day. 

Painting the mural

Watching the climate research video

View of the climate research facility

The balloonist getting ready to release the weather balloon

View of the Highlands Center from the climate research site

Long Point

Last weekend, 3 members of the Bourne house came to visit us and I went with them to hike Long Point in Provincetown, which is the very tip of Cape Cod. It involves walking across a jetty, which you have to time right because it is submerged at high tide, and then walking along the beach to the end. It took about 3 hours to do the whole hike, and it was tiring because walking on sand gets really hard after a while, but it was lots of fun. And it feels like an accomplishment to say I walked to the farthest point on the Cape. 

Walking across the jetty

View back towards Provincetown from the jetty

Me at the tip!

Long Point Lighthouse

And last but certainly not least, my job update! Last week I was offered a position with the Nevada Conservation Corps and I accepted it. So I'm moving to Nevada at the end of the summer! The program is based out of Las Vegas but I'll be working on conservation projects outside the city throughout the southern part of the state. It will be sort of similar to what I'm doing now except it is focused specifically on the outdoor land management work, whereas my program now has the outreach and IP components, and most of the time we'll be camping for several days at a time while we are completing projects. So in many ways it will be a big change for me, but I'm excited for the challenge, and since I'll most likely drive there, I'm going to make it into a road trip to go to some places I really want to see, like New Orleans and the Grand Canyon. So even though I'm sad about my year on Cape Cod coming to an end, at least I have something new and exciting to look forward to afterwards!