A New Volunteer

Volunteers here at J. Strom Thurmond COE come in all shapes and sizes and we got a special little one.  Our grandson Owie (Owen) came to stay with us for a few days while his big brother Andrew is recuperating from a successful tonsillectomy.

We gave him the grand tour of the things we do here.  We went to a Christmas Party luncheon at the Thurmond Dam Power Plant.

Owie was fascinated by the big generators inside the Thurmond Dam.

He enjoyed the food, especially, his favorite, Black Olives.

On Wednesday nights, we get together with some of the other volunteers at the Rec Hall and play cards.  Owie learned a new card game called Golf,

and he smoked us all!

Today, we took Owie out in the field with us, we did some more property line inspections and pin hunting.  Owie was given the proper attire to wear.

He learned how to use the metal detector.

Some of the pins were buried so he had to dig them out.

The buried pins are usually very dirty and it is hard to read the serial number on it, so we use a brush to clean it off.

On some pins, they are so dirt encrusted we have to use a wet rag to wipe off the dirt.

Once the pin is cleaned off and the number recorded on the map, a pink ribbon is tied around the pin to ease locating it in the future.

Owie learned to read the map, Mimi Marti had fun teaching him map reading.

We found a few properties that had encroached onto COE land.  If you look just over the bird bath, you can see Owie off in the distance standing next to a boundary line marker, just to his left (click on the picture to enlarge).  I took this picture looking down the boundary and this homeowner had built a deck over the line and a large fish pond.  The COE will be contacting this homeowner to get the deck cut back and the fish pond removed. 

Other homeowners kept their decks on the right side of the line…just!

We enjoyed having Owie along, with his help, we were able to complete another large section of COE property lines and verified the location of over two dozen survey pins.

And Marti was really pleased because she didn’t fall into any ditches, this time…

But it’s not all work.  We had to feed this little bundle of energy.  Pizza for lunch was the way to go.

The rangers were very pleased with Owie’s work and awarded him his Junior Ranger Badge.

He’s one happy guy proudly wearing his badge .

He had one question for us.  After six hours of tramping all around in the woods, he wanted to know:  “Why are we stopping so early?”

Thanks for visiting and feel free to leave a comment.

A Little Of This And A Little Of That

I wish every day here at J. Strom Thurmond COE was cutting edge, with excitement around every corner.  But as we all know, sometimes life is boring, no matter where you may be.  We do try and find the good and interesting in every day and keep positive, after all, we are living our dream.  Even when we’re “grounded” whilst waiting on the Veterans Administration.  But that is a topic for a whole other post (rant).

One fun task was decorating a Christmas Tree at the Thurmond Visitor Center.  One of the rangers went out on the woods and cut down a tree, it turned out to be a very tall Charlie Brown tree.  Of all the hundreds of thousands of trees all over the COE land, this is the best the ranger could find? (LOL)

We accepted the challenge and with Mike, Terri, Norma, Marti and I, we did our very best to make the tree rival the NYC Christmas Tree at Rockefeller Center.

We missed that mark by way more than a country mile, but it’s the thought that counts, right?

Just one more ornament.

Today, Marti and I set out on another patrol of the Thurmond Lake’s many campgrounds.  Marti, as usual was my navigator.  Armed with a plethora of maps and our GPS, we set out in a Park Ranger truck.

Although all but one campground is closed for the season, they still need to watched over.  Each campground has a “sitter” volunteer couple, who actually live on the campground properties to keep an eye on things and be a presence to prevent vandalism and keep unauthorized people out of the campgrounds.

During the Christmas season, many of the folks take some time off and go home for the holidays.  Some of them take their RVs with them, leaving the site empty.

There are still equipment storage buildings to be checked to ensure they are locked.

We even looked over the satellite dishes to make sure there were no problems.

Other folks leave their trailers at the campground and go home in their cars.  We checked all around the RVs to ensure they were secure and there were no problems.  We take care of our own.  :c)

Also checked were the gate houses, all were locked securely.

Crazy as it may sound, we also checked each heavy steel gate, too, to make sure they were locked and there was no signs of tampering. 

Not terribly exciting, but necessary work.  The COE is a good steward of the American taxpayer’s property.  We’re glad to be doing our part.  It is very satisfying work and it’s a good feeling to be giving something back and help care for our beautiful natural resources.

Thanks for visiting and feel free to leave a comment.

Not All Who Wander Are Lost

We, however, often are.  Not just lost, really lost.

We took on a new task here at J. Strom Thurmond COE.  Around the lake, on private property many people have built nice summer homes.  And what make the homes even nicer is they have access to Thurmond Lake.  Many of the home owners have constructed boat docks on COE owned shoreline property, after obtaining a lease from the COE.  Requirements are to first obtain a permit, have the design approved, then after approval and construction, an annual payment is required for the lease.  The only other requirement is to keep the boat dock in good condition.

To ensure the docks are in good condition, the COE does annual inspections and takes pictures of the boat docks.

This looked like a great way to spend the day doing important work for the COE.  We obtained a list of docks to inspect along with some Google Earth pictures supplied by the ranger overseeing this project.  Off we went to the Georgia side of the lake.

Sounds simple, right?  Knowing we’re involved, nothing ever goes too simply for us.

After locating one address that was locked tight with a sign posted with large letters “Beware of Dog”, we decided to move on to the next location.

One thing we’ve found here in the wilds of Georgia, streets and properties are not all that easy to find, even with a GPS.  We looked for another address and finally decided we were there looking at the Google Earth pictures and comparing them to the roofs of houses.

Off we set to walk down to the property owner’s boat dock.  It seemed strange since it looked pretty heavily wooded, but there was a gate.

After walking into the woods for about 15 minutes, all we found were even more woods…and no lake.

Hmm, this doesn’t look like the Google Earth picture.

Another reason why I like working with Marti is she is so tech savvy (unlike me) and whipped out her iPhone and called up Google Earth.  Fortunately we had a good signal.

Comparing our location to the Google Earth picture we had been given, we found we had gone exactly in the opposite direction of the lake.  Duoh!

Now we were back on track, we walked back out of the dense woods and found the house we were looking for.

Walking around to the back yard, we saw victory was in our grasp.

We walked down to the dock and I took several pictures.

We had four more docks to inspect and photograph.  Thankfully, these were much easier to find and the pathways were very clear.  One crossed a deep ravine and the owners had constructed a bridge across it.  Marti was especially glad of that.

We were glad to finish the job, even though we did wander lost in the Georgia woods for a while.  Why do I get so concerned about the Georgia woods?  Well, recently at a Georgia Visitors Center, I saw this sign:

Thanks for visiting and feel free to leave a comment.