Back to Arkansas

          And this time to Hobbs State Park - Conservation Area! Three years ago the northwestern region of Arkansas experienced a devastating ice storm, killing many trees in Hobbs State Parks forest. Now these dead trees are starting to fall, everywhere, including popular trails and roads throughout the park. SUN 5s mission: chainsaw over 2000 dead trees in 5 weeks. A daunting task you say? Not for an AmeriCorps NCCC team! Our team knew the project would be purely chainsawing and that's exactly what we did. Nine team members and three park staff hiked up to six miles each day toting chainsaws, gas and oil, tools, and lunch; felling an average of 100 trees each day. Now this was fabulous, for the first 5 days, then the work really started to take a toll on, no not the strong Sun 5 team!, but the chainsaws. Unfortunately chainsaws aren't meant to be used six hours a day everyday for five weeks. So some of use were taken off chainsaw duty while the saws were brought to the shop. One of the large projects that need to be done around the park was brand new signs for the entire park. Well, the moment park staff found out I was creative, the task of painting every sign in the entire park was given to me. Don't worry though, i would much rather be sitting in a workshop painting then chainsawing in the woods. And it proved to be a wonderful final couple of weeks of AmeriCorps. Working in the workshop all day allowed me to become close to the park staff, an absolutely amazing group of people.



Chainsawing bad-asses



berries! not blood...



completed sign number one... 1000 more!





Sun 5 plus Seth, Al, and Anita, the main park staff whom we worked with



          So what about life other than work? Well, our first weekend the whole team was invited to a catfish fry on the lake where we met several park staff and their families. A couple weekends later a teammate and I spent the weekend hiking and camping in Devils Den State Park with some non-AmeriCorps friends of ours. Oh ya, and our home, a three story log cabin in the middle of the woods, totally rocked!

spelunking

Devils Den hiking



scrapbook page from fish fry