01 Aug Animals, Leaders, and History

I was on the mainland for most of the week but that does not mean that it was a boring week. I got to participate in the Park Service Operational Leadership course. On top of that I went out to Santa Rosa Island. The first day back to work for the week saw me at the Robert J. Lagomarsino Visitor Center. It was an office day and I was on the computer all day. I was working on transferring pictures around and labeling them. The pictures were various projects that the preservation team had completed over the past few years. It was a bit of a mundane job but seeing how green Anacapa Island was in one of the past springs was awesome. The next two days I took the Operational Leadership course which is given, or will be given, to all park employees. The idea is to have a unified reference for all parks throughout the US. It was interesting and I learned a lot. The items covered can be applied to other things besides the park service such as the safety items covered. The first day was over at the headquarters for the Santa Monica Mountains park. The second day was at Channel Island headquarters. Finally, on Friday we headed out to Santa Cruz Island. On the way out to the island, we saw common dolphins, bottlenose dolphins, sea lions, a fin whale and we were lucky enough to see a blue whale (a distant picture of the tail is above). It was a great trip. When we arrived I was given a tour of the historic structures. The coolest building was the barn built in the 1880’s. Inside it was graffiti from 1896. Seeing things like this is the best part of the job.