Week 8: Success and Goodbyes

This was yet another busy week for the SCA crew. It was a long eight day stretch full of watering, construction, goodbyes, volunteers, and trainings. We started the week with our normal watering schedule. We also spent time building fences around our plants and prepping for volunteers.

For some variety Cynthia, Jessica, and Molly helped other vegetation staff with a century milk vetch annual site survey. The century milk vetch is a rare, endemic plant that gets a lot of special attention from the park's staff. Our crew walked along the rim and counted how many milk vetches were present. We all also got trained to look through high-powered microscopes and search for tiny milk vetch seeds that are as small as soil particles.

On Friday we sadly had to say goodbye to Cynthia. She was hired on to the Fire Monitoring staff in Grand Tetons National Park. She was vital to the success of our crew during her time in the canyon. She became not only a great person to work with but also a dear friend that will remain in our lives.

Over the weekend we had a group of volunteers arrive. This meant spending some time planting. Once again they were a huge help in getting over a hundred plants in the ground.

We spent our last day of work getting recertified in CPR. After a lot of hard work we spent the next seven days having adventures. Jess and Christine headed to Zion National Park to play. There they had a final hoo-rah with Cynthia who was road-tripping north. Molly spent some quality time hiking in the Grand Canyon. It was a great way celebrate a successful week.