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Day 2 - Monument Creek tamarisk control work project, day hike to Granite Rapid

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Saturday, March 27, 2004

Today was a work day and a highly productive work day. By noon we had already taken out close to 400 tamarisk plants, I don't know what the final total for the day was yet. We worked at it for about 6 hours and took about an hour break for lunch. By 3 pm we had eliminated all of the growing tamarisk around the Monument Creek camping area.

Around 4 pm or so we headed down to the river to take a tally of the plants in the lower part of the creek. Kim did not expect to find many there because the river trip was supposed to take care of them. She was wrong and there were still lots of plants left and that would be our job for tomorrow.

Visiting Granite Rapid was very nice and brought back some nice memories of my first trip here. The river was running about 20,000 CFS (cubic feet per second) and the rapid was awesome. We hung out at the river for about a half hour before starting back to camp. Kim took us back to camp following the creek itself instead of the trail and that was very cool. It required a little work in some places to pass the pools in the creek bed but I managed to stay dry.

For dinner tonight Kim made us a cheddar and potato soup and we had vanilla pudding for dessert. It was all very good. Nobody except Kim had a spoon on this trip though so eating was a bit of a challenge. Luckily the soup was pretty thick as was the pudding.


Sagebrush Checkerspot (Chlosyne Acastus) butterfly at Monument Creek

A tamarisk that needs to go

Steve working on a dismantling a tamarisk

Steve and Ryan attacking a tamarisk

Granite Rapid on the Colorado River

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