Another Marathon Monday

Today was a busy day and I think there will be many of these busy days in the next couple of weeks as I switch jobs.  There are a lot of things that I need to do to prepare the park to be ranger-less for a little while during the transition.  Another person will be hired to take my place, but the process takes a little while.  I hoped to spend some time writing down the things that are only in my head.  I also had to do the normal, Monday end-of-the week paperwork as well as the end-of-the month paperwork and had volunteers moving out of Adams Tract and into Troy and another into Adams Tract that I had to check in with.  I was on the go most of the day and I didn't get to everything I wanted to do, but I did get a lot done.
When I got to the park this morning, I saw that I was the first one there so I headed out for a walk before I got stuck in the office for the rest of the morning.  I was really happy to see that the water had obviously gone down quite a bit.  You can now see land on the other side of the spring unlike the last time I showed this view.  What a relief!


When I walked as far as I could down the river path to admire the fog, I saw that the river dock had returned.  I expected to just see the top of the railing poking out of the water but I was really happy to see that much more was showing.  It has receded about two feet since it crested on February 18.  I don't think that I will see the spring clear again before I move to my new park.  At least I have a lot of photos.


The sunrise was beautiful, as always.  I love to see the sun filter through the trees on the east side of the park.  It seems so different wherever you are standing.


My coworkers joined me as my walk continued and I saw all of the things that they worked on while I was away this weekend.  I know that the park will be in good hands after I leave.  I headed back to the office and got down to the paperwork.  I plugged right along and got through the weekly and the monthly paperwork.  I made it through the vehicle logs and all the while, I was thinking about my replacement and trying to set things up well for them.  I even picked up extra office supplies while I was at Ichetucknee to make sure that we didn't run out too soon.
When the paperwork was done and it was starting to get close to noon, I headed out to Ichetucknee.  I told one of the friendly bank ladies that I see every Monday that I was leaving.  She was happy for me but also sad to hear that I was leaving.  I will miss some aspects of the small town life.  Its nice to be greeted by name in several stores in town.  I have been hearing the same sentiments from my coworkers at Ichetucknee too.  I made photocopies and chatted with the Ichetucknee crowd a little before heading back to Troy.  I also stopped to fill our gas cans on the way back.  When I was almost to Troy, I heard from the volunteer arriving at Adams Tract.  He was almost there.  I checked in at Troy and handled some of the time sensitive matters still on my list.  I quickly checked my e-mail and regretted it... more things to do.  I quickly updated the volunteer notebook for the Adams Tract volunteer and grabbed the keys and headed out.  When I arrived at Adams Tract, the volunteer was already getting settled.  He has volunteered at Adams Tract before.  It was so nice to not have to train him or even tell him much.  We talked about the few changes that had happened while he was gone, made sure that he had everything he needed, and that was that.  It was the easiest volunteer transition that I have experienced since I began supervising Adams Tract.  Now was the perfect time for it to be easy!  While we walked around the Tract, I noticed that a lovely Redbud Tree had come into full bloom.  It was in much more sun that the ones at Troy (which still have not popped).



I got back to Troy much later than I would have liked to and wondered what happened to my day.  I checked in with the volunteers who had just moved from Adams Tract to Troy.  They were getting settled as well and doing just fine.  I will work on adding them to the schedule tomorrow.  I went back to my office and finished all the things that only took a few minutes and headed home.  It was well after 4:00 and I already have a big head start on the creation of tomorrow's To Do List.