Weekend Fun

Today was peaceful and relaxing.  We went to visit some friends of ours who live outside of Gainesville.  We didn't think about spring break traffic before we left though.  The northbound roads were bumper to bumper with people heading to Michigan, Indiana, New Jersey, Georgia and Ohio.  We left the main roads as soon as we could and took the back roads to avoid the traffic.  It took a little longer, but it was much calmer.
We enjoyed a beautiful day outside with our friends.  Their little girl picked wildflowers for us and showed us how she could catch her baby chickens.  The wildflowers were beautiful in their fields and I was happy to see one of my favorites, Spiderwort still blooming.  There is nothing like seeing this bold blue in nature.


Another gorgeous color that I saw was on an unusual beauty.  These Bottle Flies have an absolutely beautiful color, but they spend their time on very yucky things.  The feed and lay their eggs on animal waste, decaying animals, and generally smelly things.  They have even been known to enjoy the Stinkhorn fungii that I have blogged about before.  Have you ever stopped to appreciate a fly?  They are impressive creatures in their own icky way.


We had a good day with our friends and headed back home to attend to our dog.  The ride home went much faster, there weren't many other people headed back towards Orlando.  I wonder if the traffic flow will be a clue to the week ahead.  If spring break is over, things might slow down a little at the park.  It is warm and beautiful almost every day though... the busy season may be here to stay.  We will see what happens.

Thought of the Day #75
When I worked at Troy, we had a fixed schedule.  I always worked the same days, the same shifts, and I always had the same days off.  I worked weekends, but I always had Thursday and Friday that I could plan on having free.  There were times when we moved the schedule around, but it stayed pretty constant.  Here at Wekiwa, we do things a little differently.  We have rotating schedules.  The rangers rotate through different job functions and different schedules throughout the month.  Each week, they work early or late and they will either work the weekend or be off.  The jobs that they do are field duty (roving through the park, cleaning as needed, helping park visitors), gate duty (working in the ranger station), clean-up (morning restroom cleaning, garbage pick-up, general park tidying), resource management (which could include mowing, tree trimming, trail clearing, prescribed fire, etc), or Rock Springs (going to do whatever needs to be done at the more distant park properties).  The other Assistant Manager and I rotate our weekends as well.  We take Tuesday and Wednesday off when we work the weekend.  The rotating schedules keep things fresh and interesting.  They also create a long week and a short week.  There are ups and downs for both methods, and there are other rotating arrangements that I have heard of in other parks.  There are lots of ways to spread out the responsibility and its interesting to see how it works.