It’s been an exciting couple weeks for the ACE Texas/Massachusetts team! We enjoyed a wonderful week at SCA training at YI outside of Nashville, TN. Members from both sides of the team had the chance to do some team bonding before parting ways and heading back to our sites. We had a blast meeting all the members of the ACE VUS summer teams around the country, competing in a weeklong competition for Sophie’s fantastic crown, and learning a lot! All members participated in Army Corps training and were put through the wringer in survey practice with local Nashville rangers, as well as SCA, and Wilderness First Aid training. Some highlights included lake swimming, survey Olympics, and Tennessee nights full of great music.
Back in Texas the team was happy to welcome our 4th Texas member Tina! We immediately got to exploring Waco visiting survey sites, meeting ACE staff, and planning conservation projects. It was a jam packed week before surveys started and the team put in a lot of hours prepping for a great survey season. All the hard work paid off as Waco completed the first week of surveys, met some interesting characters, and will have stories to tell the rest of the summer. We also had our first conservation project and spent a great day at Lake Waco Wetlands. The team enjoyed a wetlands tour from Nora Schell, did some wildlife watching, met some great volunteers, and helped maintain boardwalks. It was a great day of team bonding and we’re all looking forward to the rest of the conservation projects this season has in store!
Greetings from New England! It’s been an eventful adventure since we left Nashville for Massachusetts and as surveys get underway we’re ready for anything! We began our summer with a visit from Meredith of the ACE who went with us on a tour through Connecticut and Massachusetts to see our survey sites. They were all incredibly beautiful and filled with a lot of promise of fun things to do, amazing wildlife to observe and LOTS of surveys to give. One of them even has a fleet of five mesmerizing Baltimore Orioles living nearby who visit often while they flit and frolic about. The two of us went and visited Tim’s folks in Stafford and organized our first conservation day at the high schools where his parents work and got a milkshake from the local hangout in downtown Stafford, CT. We presented SCA swag and did a pretty sweet tag team of information delivery to three classes during the course of the school day and interacted with somewhere in the vicinity of 85 students from freshmen all the way to seniors. The experience was inspiring. We worked well together, playing off each other’s strengths until we had students filling out SCA applications during our presentation and laughing at our jokes. There’ll be a whole new fleet next summer! We’ve both done a bit of exploring on our own and together in places like Providence, RI and Purgatory Chasm, where Adam sat with a friend and watched two baby foxes wrestling next to a waterfall for the better part of an hour. A trip to the Cape and a dip in the Atlantic were a refreshing treat for both of us since Tim came from landlocked Idaho and Adam came from Hawaii and has been missing the steady ebb and flow of the ocean. We both feel very fortunate to have such a good teammate to work with. Stacy has been fabulous from a distance helping us to ensure this season goes smoothly. Until next time!
