{"id":129,"date":"2019-05-26T12:16:00","date_gmt":"2019-05-26T16:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/prorangerblog\/2019\/05\/26\/first-week-in-the-books\/"},"modified":"2019-05-26T12:16:00","modified_gmt":"2019-05-26T16:16:00","slug":"first-week-in-the-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/prorangerblog\/2019\/05\/26\/first-week-in-the-books\/","title":{"rendered":"First Week in the Books!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hello everyone!<\/p>\n

My first week at the Santa Monica Mountains is officially wrapped up.  To sum up my experience so far in one word: INCREDIBLE! I’ll give everyone a little play by play to give an idea of what my week was like.<\/p>\n

First, I flew in on Monday at around 4pm and was picked up by my supervisor Ranger Brandon Brown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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Brandon took care of me and introduced me to my first In-N-Out when I was hungry after the flight!<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

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He was extremely nice and drove me to get everything I needed to be able to sleep and eat that night. Brandon then gave me the next day off to recover and get situated which I am thankful for because the jet lag got the best of me. However, I eventually felt more rested later on Tuesday and I had a chance to get my living arrangement situated and then explore the area.  The first thing that I did to explore was go for a hike outside my house and it was gorgeous!<\/div>\n
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After 5 minutes of hiking this is the view that I am fortunate to be able to have <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

After the hike I was able to go bike riding on the trails because Brandon was nice enough to go out of his way to supply me with one. I was in awe looking at the beauty around me while I was riding.<\/p>\n

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I enjoyed the views so much I ended up biking all the way to the beach!<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

The next few days is when things really started to kick into high gear. On Wednesday, Brandon took me around meeting people for almost 10 hours. I met such a variety of people. I met people who were involved in law enforcement, land encroachment, administration, maintenance, interpretation, education, contracting, agreements, fire fighting, supervising, and even chief Trooper Snow. It was a hectic day to say the least and I can’t wait to get to know everyone better during my time here!<\/p>\n

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On Thursday, I specifically shadowed people in the administrative division. I shadowed Iliana (who I actually room with), Zandra, and Kristina. The amount of work that they do is astounding and I have so much respect for these three people. I would say their titles but it would honestly be a dis-service because they do so much more than their title states. The people in the administrative division keep the park running and are the backbone of the entire operation.<\/div>\n
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On Friday, Brandon trained me and got me ROV (off-highway vehicle) certified. If you are unfamiliar with an ROV picture a golf cart on steroids that can go extreme off-roading. The rangers at Santa Monica use these vehicles to patrol areas that a normal vehicle would not be able to such as canyons. This was great because one of my goals for the internship is to get as many certifications as possible and I already have one down!<\/div>\n
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On Saturday, I essentially did maintenance work and helped clear out junk from a big closet at the fire station. I also helped organize a supply closet which ended up taking the entire day.<\/div>\n
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This was one of the items in the closet (WHERE IT BELONGS!)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

This week was action packed and a lot of fun. The area is beautiful, the people that work here are kind and helpful, and I am enjoying learning about what everyone does to contribute to making the Santa Monica Mountains a great place to visit. I only scratched the surface of knowledge about the park and the people and I cannot wait to dig deeper!<\/p>\n

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Hello everyone! My first week at the Santa Monica Mountains is officially wrapped up.  To sum up my experience so far in one word: INCREDIBLE!…<\/p>\n

Continue readingFirst Week in the Books!<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,35,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-36","category-santa-monica-mtns-nra","category-thomas-kidd","entry"],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Paul Paire","author_link":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/prorangerblog\/author\/paire\/"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/prorangerblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/prorangerblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/prorangerblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/prorangerblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/prorangerblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/prorangerblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/prorangerblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/prorangerblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/prorangerblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}