Oysterfest, Mt. Washington, and other autumn events

Well, it's a cozy evening in the Le Hac house, as I'm sitting under a warm blanket with a nice cup of tea. This weekend was Oysterfest in Wellfleet, which is a huge two-day festival downtown. Saturday was a lovely day and it was fun to walk around and sample different seafood dishes and other Cape delights. At one point, some of the musicians in my house decided to hop down on a curb and bust out some jams. Quite a crowd gathered and people enjoyed listening to the crazy banjo, washboard, and spoons/harmonica player. :) On sunday a bunch of us signed up to volunteer with the event but it
was sparsely attended due to the nor'easter that rolled through and brought cold, wind, and rain. Luckily we got to sport our super cool "foulies" aka foul weather outfits aka bright orange rain suits. It must have been quite a sight to see us at the end of the day dancing around with the locals.

The past few weeks were the beginning of our individual placements at local organizations/government departments. My IP is at the Town of Chatham with the conservation division. I have been learning a lot about conservation and land management and will be working on trail maps for different town conservation areas. Many of the properties are wooded with nice trails but lack maintenance or proper trail markers so those issues need to be addressed before the areas can be used more by the public. Another area of my IP is working with the Chatham Recycles group, which is made up of various town employees. We are putting on an event in November called Drop & Swap, where residents will come to the transfer station (where recycling and trash is collected), drop off items they don't want, and take home other people's gently used items. The event is to celebrate America Recycles Day, so we will have a pledge that people can sign to take steps to be sustainable. I think it should be pretty enjoyable.

A big highlight of the past few weeks was on Columbus Day weekend when about 10 of us went up to New Hampshire to go hiking. It was my first time in NH and the fall colors were absolutely gorgeous. The combination of mountains, huge trees, and bright reds, oranges, and yellows was phenomenal. Instead of describing it further I'll just show some pictures. :)

We stayed with a friend of my housemate Dan, who lives at a government research facility and works on a trail crew in the White Mountains. During the weekend we hiked two mountains, one of which was Mount Washington which is the highest mountain in the northeast! I havent hiked many mountains, much less such a huge one so this expedition was incredibly intimidating. Luckily I had many people to motivate me, and in four hours we hiked through crazy conditions (ice, snow, etc) to the summit. The top of the mountain felt like a different planet (perhaps Hoth), and I was glad to be wearing four layers. :) The whole trip was 8 miles and took about 9 hours. It was completely exhausting but totally worth it because I felt really proud afterward. Plus the views were incredible.

Unfortunately a sad part of the month occurred when one of my housemates had to leave the program permanently. It turned out that she had done two previous AmeriCorps programs and was therefore not allowed to get a third education award and be in the Cape Cod program. Due to miscommuncation, the program didn't know she had been in two programs and she didn't know there was a limit. She had to leave right away and all of us were shocked and saddened to lose her. We will be getting a replacement member in a few weeks, but I don't know many details yet. That will be a huge adjustment for sure.

Well, those have been the major events of the past few weeks. Time to go sit by a roaring (well sort of roaring) fire, watch some tv and probably fall asleep. :) I'll leave you with an exciting group picture of my program! Woo!