Lazy Summer Days

It's July already. July is like the Wednesday of the calendar; we're halfway through the year, we're halfway through the summer break. Unlike Wednesday, it just means that summer break is that much closer to being over. 

Mulch and a little butterfly milkweed plant

It's been super muggy outside the past two days, with the associated thunderstorms. There were even some small EF0-1 tornadoes close by in Bowie. I did some garden work yesterday and today, trying to get rid of more of the invasive English ivy that runs rampant in our yard. Once I get that under semi-control, then maybe I can tackle the poison ivy that is springing up everywhere and making it difficult to mow anywhere beside the very front lawn.  

Yard waste bags filled with English ivy and other invasive junk

In the meantime, the Capitals released their schedule for 2022-23, and I am surprisingly not champing at the bit to go to any of the weekend games. In fact, the schedule pretty much sucks. I will likely try to go to the New Year's Eve gave versus Montreal, and my birthday game. There's talk in the #404family group text about trying to do a trip to Carolina for the Stadium Series game in February. But beyond that.... there aren't really any good weekend out-of-town games either, except maybe an Islanders game. 

I think we ditched our season tickets at the right time.

Beauty in the Rot

Pat wanted to go fishing yesterday, so I tagged along. I didn't bring my rods this time; I just wanted to wander. His destination was Dam #4 along the C&O Canal, and I figured it was high time that I traversed the section of towpath between there and Taylors Landing, if not all the way down to Snyders Landing. 

This great blue heron thought Dam #4 fishing was a good idea, too.

Dam 4 is approximately mile 84.6 along the C&O Canal, and Taylors Landing is at 80.9. Snyders Landing is 76.8. Pat usually fishes for 3-4 hours at a spot, but as I started moving along the towpath, I saw several other people fishing around Dam 4. I wasn't sure if that would affect Pat's decision to fish there, though I have had good luck fishing at Taylors Landing and thought maybe he'd shift downriver if needed.

It was forecast to be in the mid-to-upper 80s, and "low humidity," though I thought it was pretty muggy outside even at 8AM. The temperature never seemed oppressive, but the moisture in the air and the reminders of the damage from a storm the previous evening made me wonder if more storms were on the way. 

Of course, all of the rain and humidity meant there were a lot of fungi, slugs and other decomposers to be seen amidst the fallen limbs and five foot jewelweed.

Moisture drips from a yellow jewelweed flower

A small helicoid snail

A wood ear fungi grows on a fallen log

I saw a lot of wood ear (jelly ear) fungi and the ubiquitous shelf fungi, and not a whole lot of the stereotypical club or mushroom fungi. I suppose the mushrooms would take another few hours after the storms to pop up. 

The remains of a tree, showing the internal structure of a trunk and wood ear and shelf fungi

A reddish orange jelly fungus on a fallen tree at Lock 40

Split gill fungi on a limb

It's July, and so flowering plants were in the minority. I did see some small, unripe pawpaw fruits, and lots of jewelweed, but that was about it. There were tons of mosquitoes, and I was pretty happy to have bug wipes with me to keep them at bay. 

Pawpaw fruits knocked down by the storm

A few months ago, I hiked up from Ferry Hill to Snyders Landing and saw Lock 39. This time, I saw Lock 40, between Taylors and Snyders Landings. The stone is in really good condition, though it's far enough from anything else that the vegetation around it is completely overgrown. 

Upstream side of Lock 40

Looking through the lock channel from the upstream side

Looking at Lock 40 from the downstream side

Probably the strangest thing I saw on the trip was the interaction between two black-and-yellow flat millipedes. When I first saw them, they were about an inch apart, crawling in opposite directions. They quickly turned towards each other and started..... I don't know what. Mating? Fighting? It wasn't clear. I took a few photos and left them to do their Mutual of Omaha thing. 

This was right after they "noticed" each other

I can't tell if this is fighting or mating

Anyway, I had little-to-no cell service most of this hike, so while I was trying to keep Pat updated on where I was, I wasn't getting any response from him. When I arrived at Snyders Landing, I send a text and a photo, then wandered over to the parking area where I saw the Crosstrek. He said he hadn't caught anything and so finally just gave up. I had texted him that there was no one at Taylors Landing, but he hadn't stopped there to try. His loss; last time I was skunked at Dam 4 and drove to Taylors Landing instead, I ended up with a 17 inch walleye. 

It was a good hike, with lots of little things to see if you know what to look for. I need to do this more often. 

A small brownish-orange slug crawls on the cut edge of a fallen tree

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Lesson Planning

With lots of thoughts from STEAM in the Park swirling in my mind about field trip upon field trip, I'm trying to get some actual lesson plans outlined. Here are my current thoughts (with a Twitter thread posted below), and I'll flesh out how they fit into instruction in the coming days.

1. Pollinator Lawns and Gardens

2. Soil Compaction Effects on Plants (Cherry Blossoms)

3. Water Quality/Stream Study (Tidal Basin, Constitution Gardens, C&O Canal)

4. Forensics of Lincoln and Garfield Assassinations

Some thoughts I am having after #STEAMinthePark @NationalMallNPS - Cherry blossoms. Ranger Jen mentioned soil compaction as a problem caused by the volume of people visiting and walking on the grass/soil around the trees. pic.twitter.com/yYGbJPdHFS

— Ms. Kraus (@MsKrausWheaton) July 1, 2022

Learning in My Own Backyard

I just spent a few days learning more about the National Mall (including Ford's Theater) and how I could use the various aspects of that particular National Park Service site in my classroom. This was all part of Expeditions in Education and their STEAM in the Park program; I applied to be a participant back in January, and learned I was accepted to the National Mall program in March.

I never noticed this small stone monument in the shadow of the Washington Monument before.

I'll post more later, but I had a lot of fun and learned a lot more about sites I already thought I knew about. I also got to go up the Washington Monument for the first time ever, plus got to visit the Department of the Interior building. I also got to network with a great group of teachers and rangers, as well as program directors with the National Park Foundation and the Department of the Interior. 

There are a lot of Native American inspired motifs in the Interior Department building

I came home with a ton of ideas, and I hope that at least some of them can come to fruition in this coming school year. 

Pollinator gardens and lawns are just one of the ideas I came home thinking about

Road Trips in the time of COVID

Pat and I just got back from our 2021 road trip, where I started out on July 28, and he joined me in Missoula, MT. 

It was a bit less stressful than last year, and I can't help but think that a lot of the reason was because we decided to tent camp as much as possible, unlike last year, where we spent probably too many nights at hotels. 

To me, the tent camping took a few elements of the COVID transmission off the table; we weren't at the mercy of others for cleaning our sleeping quarters, and even encountering others, we were in the open air. 

A typical camp site with the Crosstrek and our tents. 

We usually drove 2-3 hours between places we stopped to visit, and so there was plenty of time to talk about things, such as "should we have bought Mom's RV?" or "maybe we should stay at a hotel?" In the end, for the two of us, tent camping made much more financial sense. 

Having done three years of road trips with my mom and her Pleasure-Way RV, I have some experience on that front, and the multiple trips to and from Packwood for the ProSolos there had me very acquainted with staying at hotels on the road. 

Here's a breakdown for 2021 :

• Tent sites at KOA campgrounds cost $30-50. A site with water and/or electric will cost more, so if you have charger banks for electronics, use them and charge them in the car during the driving to avoid needing an outlet. A $33 KOA Rewards membership gets you 10% off, and then you accrue "points" that can get you more money off a night. I recouped the $33 membership cost with the savings in the first week of the trip, and accrued enough points to get $20 off a stay by the end of the trip. 
• Hotel costs on the trip in 2021 were ridiculous. I got a hotel in Missoula because Pat's flight came in at 11PM, and I made that reservation two months prior to the trip. It was still $140 ($126+tax), and then the room didn't even include a fridge! (the front desk clerk said, "Oh, most of our rooms have them; I guess you got one without."). When we looked at hotels for the next night in the Bozeman/Livingston/Butte area, they started at $225+tax. Needless to say, we went with the Three Forks KOA, which was one of the best decisions of the trip. Definitely go to the Iron Horse Cafe for pie if you go through Three Forks.
• For tent camping, make sure you have a vehicle that you can "hide out" in if necessary. The first three nights of the trip, I dealt with nasty thunderstorms, so after I set up the tent (which is waterproof), I "hid" in the Crosstrek until the worst of it had passed.  

The gluten-free Key Lime pie from Iron Horse was incredibly decadent. Pat couldn't eat all of it as dessert, and finished it for breakfast the next morning. 

• Gas is a big cost, and probably the biggest cost difference between a tent camping road trip and an RV road trip. While both the Crosstrek and the Pleasure-Way RV take "regular" unleaded gas, the Crosstrek averages ~36 MPG (35.2MPG last year and 36.5MPG this year, both years ~7500 miles traveled, including both Rocky and Appalachian mountain crossings). The Pleasure-Way, a modified E350 chassis and engine, was 14-15MPG. At an average of $3/gal for regular gas (I did splurge one day and gave the Crosstrek mid-grade, because I wanted to reward it for its hard work in the desert heat), that adds up, fast. 
• 7500 miles at 36MPG is about 208 gallons of gas. At $3/gal, that's $624 in gas alone (and I'm being nice with my averages; it was probably more than $3/gal). 
• 7500 miles at 15MPG is about 500 gallons of gas. At the same $3/gal, that's $1500 in gas. A larger RV (my mom's Pleasure-Way was a class C and only fit two people) is probably not going to do as well mileage-wise. And a diesel motor might not help, as diesel costs were close to $4/gal, even if the MPG might be better. 
• I went through a lot of ice in the coolers, which an RV doesn't need to worry about. I wasn't using top-of-the-line plastiformed coolers, but they are lightweight, don't take up huge space and do what I need them to do. Still, I was buying 20lb of ice each day, at about $6 per day for ice. For a 19 day trip, that comes out to about $115 in ice. 
• RVs allow for a huge discount on food, since you don't have to eat out when you have a kitchen and a fridge with you. Tent camping means bringing things in coolers and/or using MREs or other freeze-dried options. I have a great campstove for cooking on, though I have to admit, cooking on it when there is an impending thunderstorm is a little daunting. 

Heating up some water to rehydrate a freeze-dried meal for dinner in Rawlins, WY

Walleye cooked on the campstove grill. We caught the fish at Rainy Lake.

Brats (glorified hotdogs?) on the campstove. We have the grill attachment for our Biolite, which is great.

• Breakfast was usually a mini-bagel with cheese, and lunch was a piece of fruit, granola bar and a sandwich. You just have to make sure the cheese and any deli meat doesn't get wet in the cooler. Fruit was bananas, plums, nectarines, etc. This meal plan was true for the RV trips with mom, too. 
• If you opt to "eat out," plan on paying upwards of $15-20/person (gratuity included, more if you get beer/wine). That's a far cry from buying a $5/pk of five brats, and a $3 loaf of bread, or even a $9 "southwest skillet" rehydrated meal (which was actually really good). 
• Just looking at food, gas and lodging costs, a pure tent camping experience could be had for less than $2000 over 19 days/7500 miles, not counting any admission fees for parks. Mixing in a hotel night or a meal out here and there will increase that cost. Since we were fishing on Rainy Lake with a guide service as part of our trip, I'd opted to get rooms at a lodge on the lake as a bit of a splurge, but I have to admit, that walleye taco wrap at the Thunderbird Lodge is amazing. 
• An RV trip over the same amount of time/miles will be about a thousand more in gas, a hundred less in ice, and about $500 more in lodging costs (depending on the size of the RV, and whether you need water/electric/dump hookups). So, estimate for 19 days to be still less than $3500.
• A roadtrip that relies on eating out and hotels every night is going to cost at least $4200 for two people and a vehicle that can get upwards of 35MPG (regular grade gasoline). 

Some other ideas to reduce the costs :

• Get a National Parks Pass if you plan to visit multiple parks that have entrance fees. For $80, you have unlimited entrance to all NPS and associated (BLM, National Wildlife Refuge, etc.) sites for a year. 
• There are ways to get a free NPS pass, but you need to qualify. Students in the fourth grade qualify, as do military/veterans. If you're over 62, you can get a lifetime pass for $80, versus paying $80 annually. Certain disabilities also qualify for a free NPS pass. If you volunteer in a park and accrue more than 250 hours, you can also qualify for a free NPS pass. 
• Plan to visit smaller, less crowded sites and "bundle them." For instance, I visited Rock Creek Station and Fort Kearny on the same Nebraska State Parks day pass, since the pass I bought at Rock Creek didn't expire until noon the next day. 

The legend of Wild Bill Hickok was born at the Rock Creek Stage Station

• If you don't need water and electric hookups, and are willing to do the leave-no-trace principles of backcountry camping, then dispersed camping in National Forests and BLM sites is definitely an option. 
• Sign up for cash back apps like Get Upside for discounts on gasoline purchases (note that the link here is my referral link). Note that if you use an app like this, look carefully to see what you are paying; sometimes, only the most expensive stations are participating, and so you actually aren't saving money there after all. 
• Use a cash back app like iBotta for hotel reservations. iBotta will get you 3% cash back at Choice Hotels (Comfort Inn, Sleep Inn, Quality Inn, etc.), if you make the reservation through the iBotta extension on Chrome. Unlike something like Priceline, you can actually choose the hotel you want to stay at.
• iBotta will get you a discount on a ton of other things, too, so it's useful for more than just road trips. The link above is my referral link, but I wouldn't refer this (or the Get Upside app) if I didn't think they were worth the time/effort.

Above all, on a road trip, be flexible. Weather and other unforeseen circumstances may cause you to change your itinerary. Look at those billboards and if something seems interesting, do it. Wall Drug isn't for everyone (I've never been there), but others find it fascinating. On the flip side, in 2012, I saw a billboard for House on the Rock, and thought, "Wait, isn't that where Shadow and Wednesday went in American Gods?" and so decided to take a detour. 

"Take Highway Fourteen west to Spring Green. We'll be meeting everyone at a place called the House on the Rock. You been there?"

-- Wednesday to Shadow, American Gods

No matter what, enjoy your trip! 

Camping in Rawlins, WY during a thunderstorm