Scorching hot desert
Guess who’s back from another awesome project? Me!
We left monday the 30th quite early in the morning, to begin our 7-hour drive to southern Arizona, where we would be staying for the duration of the project. We passed Phoenix for a lunch break, and when we came up to Quartzsite, it was raining like hell, and the floodchannels were already filling themselves… We could only wait at each section for another vehcle to pass, so we could judge whether our van would be able to drive through it as well, without washing away.
Once we got there, we were in for the next surprise. We would be staying at a real home with A/C and a TV/DVD combo! Well, not that we would’ve gone there otherwise, with temperatures never dropping beneath 30°C at night! During the day, we would have 35-45 degrees, with barely any shade once the sun got high enough. Needless to say that in such a climate, your transpiration becomes the only opportunity to cool down, but it also extracts water from your body while doing so. As such, there were days that I drank more than 10 liters of water, and still had a dry mouth!
We spent the first two working days spraying herbicide in a big marsh-like environment, with a thick foliage and plants that reach over four meters high. This made for a very humid and uncomfortable working situation, and when you figure in the fact that we had to spray selectively with a dye-coloured herbicide to mark the plants that hadn’t been sprayed yet, it was not that great of a working environment. I did have a very nice crew of six people in total, so we kind of had to entertain ourselves to keep up the spirit.
Joe, our local project partner, did notice that we weren’t getting that much work done on our days, and that the marsh was way too big for us to finish. So, on the third evening he came in, and told us that we would get to do something else, at which point everybody cheered! The next day, we got to dig a den for a couple of desert tortoises, which got everyone very excited of course.
That’s me digging the nice new tortoise home! They’d better be appreciative of it!
We finished this in a day, and the day afterwards (the last day in Imperial) we got to repair a couple of sections of a desert trail that got washed away in a flood, and were also tasked with erasing off-road tire tracks, so that people don’t get enticed to drive off-road.
We spent our weekend in Yuma, watching some movies, and generally relaxing in the comfort of an airconditioned environment. Luckily we were all of age, so we got to go to a couple of bars during the weekend.
The second week, we were working at Cibola NWR, which is a two-and-a-half hour drive away from our housing. The reason that we weren’t staying at Cibola itself, is that they couldn’t provide adequate cooling in their accomodation (they only have RVs around there). Due to the long drive, we were only working for 3 hours a day on our second week, so that was a bit more laid-back. The work we got to do in Cibola was digging out arrowweed plants complete with their root system, so that the mesquite trees wouldn’t be overgrown by a very expansive arrowweed vegetation. The temperature in Cibola was even higher than in Imperial, but there was much less moisture in the air, which made it more bearable in the end.
Another thing which struck me, apart from the huge distances, is that you can drive 65mph (a little over 100kmh) on a single lane road! Crazy, only in America.
On Friday, while we were driving back to Flagstaff, we burst a tire. Nothing to worry about, we thought, because all vans have a real spare tire. But, after changing it out, the van wouldn’t start anymore. Apparently, we had broken the fuel pump in the process! Because ACE would rather have the van repaired in Flagstaff, they decided that instead of calling roadside assistance, they’d send someone over with a trailer to pick us and the van up. Luckily, we were only a mile and a bit from a gas station, where we spent 6 hours waiting for our transportation. In the end, we arrived at the office in Flagstaff by 00:30 instead of 13:00. The longest day, ever.
Next period, I’m going to the GRAND CANYON!! Very much looking forward to it, and we’re leaving on Tuesday!