Summertime in Colorado

With only a month and few weeks left in my internship, I am making the most of my time here in Colorado. This past month has been a rainy one, which has made scheduling a bit hard. We got a late start on spraying along the river this year because of the high flows. This put us behind schedule already and the rain has made it hard to get down the river. However we have had five or six good days on floating the river so far, including a two day camp out. Luckily our section of the river is looking pretty good compared to other sections of the river in other BLM districts. We mainly have to worry about Musk, Bull, Canada, and Russian Thistle along the river. We don’t have any Tamarisk in our section, which is something to be thankful for.

Along with river spraying, we have been doing some line transects monitoring for rangeland utilizations and post fire monitoring. It is good to get away from spraying for a bit and get back to more science based work. Next week it looks like we will be meeting up with State Botonist, Carol Dawson, and her CLM interns to do some more rare plant monitoring. It looks like we will be gathering data on Phacelia spp. Working with Carol is a great opportunity to learn my western plants, as well as gain some valuable field research experience.

Work is great, but the weekends here in Colorado are amazing. There is so much to do here and it seems as though wilderness is everywhere you look. Not only that, but the music scene is unmatched (great free concerts). I love it so much that I have decided to stay here over the winter to work at Keystone resort as a ski instructor. If you haven’t been to Colorado, start planning a trip.