Squirrel Camp, Scotty's Cabin, and plaster casting

For the first time (but hopefully not the last), a guest post! This one is (mostly) written by Nick, who recently starred in the post about walking the rivers. (Fun upcoming note: Rylee and Cheryl have also indicated interest in writing guest posts. Now all I have to do is bat my eyes and/or cattle prod them until they actually do. LE Jim has so far refused, and I have yet to convince LE Mike, but I'm trying.) As a disclaimer, I did editorialize this a bit. Anything in blue is Nick, and anything in black is me, and square brackets [ ] mean I took something out that he wrote, for whatever reason. Here we go!

On one of my days off [ ], I wanted to go on an adventure. I really like Brooks Camp; it's a unique and interesting place that doesn’t seem like it would exist on planet Earth. It’s known to have one of the highest concentrations of very large brown bears in the world roaming closely alongside numerous visitors and staff each day. Bears and people coexist here and with surprisingly few problems, thanks to management by all rangers (bear management is probably 80% people management) (Editor's note: Nick is on Bear Management, so he might be a little biased here), but mostly a testament to the bears' incredible tolerance of people once they get used to them. The bears mostly ignore people, which makes people feel as if they are spectators at a sporting event allowed to be on the field with the players who just ignore and continue to play around them.

Anyway, so it was my day off and I wanted company. I knew my ranger neighbor Cara was home, so I asked her if anybody in her cabin wanted to go (Cheryl was working, but it was my day off), and she came along. After hearing about the much talked about “Tammy Led Adventure” (Go check out that post if you're unsure what he's talking about. That's literally what it's called.), I was feeling competitive and felt that Cara needed to experience a magnificent “Nick Led Adventure”. With the mindset that this would be the greatest adventure of all time, we set out walking with purpose on the Valley Road. The Valley Road is named appropriately because it is a 23 mile gravel road that takes you out to the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes. On my way to work, I occasionally pass visitors without water, food or a tent who proudly proclaim that they are walking out to the Valley. They always give me a look of disbelief when I tell them that they have 22 miles to go. The smart ones turn back to camp, while the mathematically challenged continue on and we sure hope to see them alive again at some point. The Valley Road was constructed in 1963 and was highly political. There were proposed plans for a much shorter road that didn’t connect to Brooks Camp. In the end, Brooks Camp got the road after somebody knew somebody who knew somebody who knew the territorial governor. History molds the future, so 57 years later here we are on this historic road [ ]. 

I didn’t tell Cara where we were going, because I figured the element of surprise would give me a clear advantage over the Tammy Led Adventure (Tammy didn't tell me where we were going either, so he was very wrong on this assumption). Our first stop was Squirrel Camp, a run down, hobo-like gem of a place. Years ago it apparently was the #1 hangout for staff. There are a few tent frame cabins with mattresses, a bathroom, a laundry room, a kitchen with refrigerators and freezers, and a big fire ring. All of this sounds nice, but now try to visualize ripped tent frames, wet moldy mattresses, bathroom falling apart, and an electric fence fallen down. It looks like a place you might see in a zombie apocalypse movie. Despite this, I enjoy singing at Squirrel Camp because it's private and I have never actually seen anyone else there. Perhaps some have shown up only to be scared off by my very loud and obnoxious singing. We will never know and nor do I care. So naturally, I sat down and sang a song while Cara was busy declaring war on the successful aerial assault from white sox and gnats. Cara seems to like all wildlife except for insects, because they bite her. She doesn’t understand that bugs gotta eat too! How did she survive in Guyana? (Editor's note: Barely. I'm not sure I have any blood or skin left unassaulted from either Guyana or Squirrel Camp.)

From there, we went to Brooks Lake and the beach looked very inviting so we walked it, walked until we felt like turning around. Cara likes to tell stories so she told me a lot of them, many that I could tell she has told many times before. (There's a reason I work in the Interpretive department.) It seems that Cara likes to hear stories too, but I fail miserably in this department. [ ] On the shoreline, we noticed tracks from bear, wolf and moose. (This was almost a taunt, as I haven't managed to actually SEE a wolf or moose here, but they're clearly right here. Not fair.)

So from here, my plan was to visit Scotty’s Cabin in the woods located by Brooks Lake, which is an abandoned trapper’s house from long ago. Scotty's continued presence and lifestyle was made illegal with a stroke of the pen by President Herbert Hoover in 1931 when the land was added to Katmai National Monument. We found the cabin, which appeared to be sinking into the ground. I found Cara’s wood-like rings made out of rice (I think?) (Nope. Awarro seeds, from Guyana) she got from Guyana more interesting. Would bears eat them? Would a bear eat the finger that the ring was on? These were thoughts I kept to myself. (I doubt bears would eat the rings, but they'd definitely eat the hand attached. I'm a little miffed that the whole time I was apparently telling stories, Nick was caught up thinking "I bet a bear would eat her." Rude.)

The Nick Led Adventure was apparently so lame that Cara didn’t even bother writing a post about it.

    Okay, I let him have his say, but now it's my side of the story. I DID fully intend to write a post about it, but I was already behind on other posts, so it had to wait its turn. Now here we are. 

    So yes, the walk down the road, the dilapidated Squirrel Camp (which even the squirrels were avoiding-- there were no signs of life aside from clouds of biting insects thick enough to pick you up), and the walk along the beach were mostly accurate. I've already put my two cents in, so I'll leave it at that, and pick up where he left off. 

    The walk along the beach had a purpose: we were looking for tracks. I'd been waiting ages to try to take plaster casts of tracks in the mud or sand. The hard part is getting not only good tracks, but in an infrequently traveled area where the plaster can sit long enough to dry without any inquisitive animals trying to eat it. Nick and I were scouting, because Cheryl and Rylee were supposed to meet me at the lake once they got off work in order to do the casting with me. We invited Nick to stick around and help (the more the merrier!) which was lucky, because watching plaster dry is about as exciting as watching paint do the same thing. We can't leave it unattended and just come back later, so we have to entertain ourselves while we wait. 

    We squished up the goo according to the directions on the plaster package and poured it into the best tracks we could find. Instantly we discovered three major problems with our plan: we didn't have any frames to keep the plaster from dripping out, the mud/sand was too wet and messed up our plaster ratio, and we all have the attention span of gnats. It was a valiant effort, but doomed to failure. 

Mixing up the plaster

We even tried making sand-frames, but to no avail.

    While we waited, we skipped rocks, and tossed pumice into the water (it floats, and that will never lose its novelty for me). 

Cheryl is the most enthusiastic rock-hucker

    Then it started to rain, because of course it did. The plaster wasn't dry, but with the rain, it never would. We were forced to call it quits, dig it out anyways, and were left with a bucket of cookies-and-cream looking mess for an entire afternoon's effort. 

Nick trying to salvage one of the casts by blowing on it to dry it. It didn't work. Even Nick isn't full of enough hot air to blow-dry plaster.

Cheryl showing off that we have nothing to show for all our efforts

    All in all, another excellent day.