Thursday, June 26, 2008

Car chases and wildfires

I am glad the week is finally over and I can have my much needed 6 days off.
Every session something incredibly exciting happends. Whether it is drama in the crew, flat tires or in our case a police allowed car chase.

On our way home along I-80 we noticed a car on an off ramp with some people fighting. At a closer look, it was 2 huge men beating a small woman.
We were concerned, so we made the 9-1-1 call, and backed down the ramp to get the lisence number and to basically let them know we were on the case.

They jumped in the car and drove off. We follow the car for 20 minutes while on the phone with dispatch, they give us the green light to go as fast as we can following the car. We ended up losing them because we were in a 4 Runner that was full of crap and wouldn't go much faster than 100 mph. The car ended up getting off at an exit and swung to go the opposite direction on I-80. Finally the cops appear, tons of them, going really fast and we tell them that they were headed in the opposite direction.

In the end, they were caught. But the best part was that the woman told the cops to thank us. I was so glad because we were afraid that she wouldn't prosecute or would take their side. She was beaten pretty badly though.

On to the wildfires...
So there are about 800 wildfires going on in the California Sierra's. Because Reno is in a valley, well much of NEvada is a basin/range, all the smoke has gathered there. It is horrible. You can't see a mile ahead, it is similar to fog in October, only you can't breathe. Needless to say, my camping plans were ruined and because I have asthma, I fled the area and decided to go to Darby's. The smoke was present from Reno to Aiden, CA.


View Larger Map

It was unfortunate, because the drive is really pretty, but because of the smoke...there were no mountains. We also saw the smoke in Battle Mountain. The valley that we have a view of has been gone for a couple of days now. I guess the smoke covers Northern Nevada to the Utah border and get this...more

Here are some pictures of my drive out of the city. In all of these pictures there are supposed to be huge 10,000 ft mountains.





Saturday, June 21, 2008

Update for project area google map pict

Google maps gave me the coordinates for the beginning of Buffalo Valley. We are actually much more south than that. Here is a new picture. Again we are between the mountain ranges. The other teams are at the salt flats to the north of us. As I said, this project area is huge. I wish I could remember the acreage.


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Happy Birthday

Hola,


Happy Birthday!





Have a good day. hope u don't mind me posting a doofer, but this is so funny and I wanted to wish u happy birthday!


Emma

x

Friday, June 20, 2008

Birthdays, work and stuff

I forgot how hot it is in Nevada...it is incredibly hot. 10 hours in the sun with no shade is really difficult when you come from 60 degree weather.

Though the past 4 days have been hard, we found some cool stuff. There are 3 crews and I really only know what has happened with my crew. I do know that one crew already finished 40 miles of surveying even with sites they recorded. My crew has not done so much in mileage as we have to recording. We now have recorded 13 sites. And many of them were no picnic. The majority of the sites were historic dating from the late 1900 to the 1950s. Lots of cans and glass, but the cooler part was that there were structures and car parts.

Man, we make a big deal about recycling, but the miners in the early 1900's could not be matched. They used everything. Old tin cans, car parts and bottles to make everything. And low and behold it is still there over 100 years later. Yes, all of it is dilapidated, but if someone had been there keeping it up, I bet it would look perfect.

The area is so pretty. I will put our project area below. It is huge!! Most of the area is on the picture but we are moving East/ West between the two mountain ranges.


View Larger Map

We are working on BLM land that allows the mine (the name escapes me) to drill for metals. I think this one is a silver mine.

I have included a bunch of pictures. A total of 6 really nice points have been found by our crew, the other teams had much more, but they had no historical sites.

Click on the picture to see the whole album.

Buffalo Valley 1


Oh yeah, and my 30th birthday is tomorrow.

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Weird Stuff

Ok, there are a few things I have found weird while I have been here and I realize that only a few people will get what I mean when they see these listed (namely Emma).

1. Panic at the Disco playing "Gin and Juice" with Snoop Dogg.



2. The Summer 2008 Commercial for "Bones."



3. A Kooks song being played in the background of a Michelob Wine Coolers commercial. I will explain...I swear these kids are 17 (but when I looked it up, they are actually 23, so they have been legal for a while.)

4. People wanting to see Rise Against videos on MTV.

5. The Pussy Cat Dolls performing on "So You Think You Can Dance."


6. Snoop Dogg doing country...with Willie Nelson.



Given, there are many other weird things, but these are the only ones I bothered to write down.

So Emma...are you laughing yet?

Some picts of the Casino downstairs

Here are some picts of the casino downstairs.

Grand Sierra Resort

Road Trip no 2- I-80 West to CA-49 N to Hwy 395 South

So I went on a little road trip yesterday, just a little loop through the Tahoe National Forest. You know, going over the California border is like going into another country. You have to go through "customs". They used to just ask if you had any fruit, now they ask where you are coming from and how long you are staying...just like going into Canada...it was so weird.

I went to this neat little cemetery that looked quite new, however, many of the headstones had dates that were old. I decided that this cemetery must have been moved. What I really liked about many of the headstones was the pictures that some of them had.

Tahoe and HWY 49