Gary-Summer: September 4, 2022

Sunday, September 4, 2022

September 4, 2022 - Delilah

Title: September 4, 2022 - Delilah
Hike Info : Description : Background :Extra Photo's : Animals

Hike Info:

Type:Lookout

Description:

Greeting the new morning

I had a good night's sleep even though I spent part of it watching the stars. When the sun came up, there was a richness of orange and red-while beautiful, it also indicates lots of particulate matter in the air, not as good. I saw that there was no lightning in our area, so none to report. But today looks like the probabilities are going up.

The road I walk

I go down and go for a short walk. Most of the greenery, except the trees have now turned brown. It really looks like this area has not had water in a very long time. The road is dusty, but not the deep dust when a road has been well used.

It is almost 0800 when I get back into the cab. So Delilah needs to go into service. When I do, I also tell Sierra that there is no visible smoke on either the Nutmeg nor Buck fires. The Nutmeg I will be hearing talk for the next several days. Evidently that thing will burn for a while. I then went into service with Porterville. After doing a scan, it is time for my granola breakfast.

The one thing which will drive me nuts today is the handheld radio. Whenever there is no transmission, I am getting static. I cannot figure that out as last night when I went out of service, the radio was operating well, as it should be. I even tried changing out batteries. No success. I call up Buck Rock to see if they have wisdom concerning this. Negative. So I turn off the hand held and put our base radio so it will also scan Sierra. This is a bit confusing as I am used to hearing about certain things from the hand held and other things from the base radio. It means I need to listen closer. Also there will be a few times I miss transmissions from Sierra. Usually that is not critical. It is only until late in the afternoon that I figure out what happened. There are two dials. One for volume-off/on. The other is marked SQ. SQ is for squelch. The idea is if there is a weak signal, the radio will ignore the signal. With the dial, I can determine how much noise I will let through. Evidently when turning on the radio I rotated the dial some, letting in all sorts of superfluous noise. Just by moving the dial slightly, I was able to use the handheld again. Relief.

Cloud watching

Today is Buck Rock Foundation’s open house, at Buck Rock. It feels good to be up here so that somebody else can enjoy the open house. It is a major fund raiser for the foundation as well as an educational and awareness experience for many. The Forest Service is supporting this event as well. I hear on the radio many units going in service to either Big Meadows or Buck Rock. It must be a carnival there. Later on I see pictures and saw it was a good turnout.

I am doing the usual scan, listening to the radio and logging them. Like a lot of holiday weekend radio traffic I hear of citations being written for illegal fires and illegal campsites.. Then there is the occasional stuck car on a Forest Service road. I am imagining a Prius on a Four-Wheel Drive road. But that is not always the case. a lot of times, it is just the road which is not in good condition. Maybe that is another way of saying, the vehicle should not have been on it.

Buck Rock is not the only happening place. Down at Hume Lake, people are out in full force. While I hear of no altercations on the radio. What I hear is Forest personnel scrambling to restrict the flow of cars into certain areas. Parking lots and beaches are full. But the people I hear are doing it professionally and closing off areas.

You cannot tell, but everything is soaked in water

It has been hot up here in the tower. The tower temperatures can do funny things. In the mornings, the sun beats in through the windows and the cab heats up. By mid-morning, I wonder how high will the temperatures go today. I have stripped off my shirt and soaked the cap and put on a cooling scarf. It helps. But once the sun gets overhead, the temperatures cool down a bit. The canyon winds pick up and the water on my skin cools me down. But by mid-afternoon, both the outside and inside temperatures had climbed up again. More water and this time I am soaking my shirt. It makes things tolerable until the sun starts to go down. I have survived this day.

Evening sun colors the area

As the day stretches into evening, I grab a bite to eat. Sherri has given me a leftover bacon cheese burger. Tastes good and I am happy. Sunday night is our family Zoom time. I get on Zoom with my phone, using my mobile data. A year ago we decided that saving a few dollars was not worth the anxiety, so I have a large amount of data, which I never have come close to approaching. So Zooming on my phone is not an issue.

I continue to do my scans during the meeting, stepping away every 15-20 minutes to look around. But the shadows are lengthening and growing darker. So there is less and less to see. The Zoom call ends before 2000. And I go out of service then.