Round three, shuffle round, in San Antonio Texas working with the Land Heritage Institute!
Getting to know Texas very well...
Anyway, the most exciting thing we discovered other than the awesome housing was the fact that two strays lived on property!
Ameri-Dogs!
Bandit:
and Daisy who was pregnant:
Bandit (who really lives up to his name) is also an Americorps Super Hero!
Totally Laid back awesome dog, almost adopted twice while we were there:
We ended up with the best housing ever. washer, dryer, four showers/toilets/bathroom sinks, central air, wrap around porch.... just amazing!
Not to mention our back yard had some of the coolest cows ever. Texas long horns! Plus many were having their calves while we were there. Roughly 40 were on the property including one adult bull named Adobe.
Adobe:
Baby!
They had the most amazing curly horns!
Our first day consisted mainly of a tour of the grounds. It started with visiting the long horns and then we walked along a few of their trails:
One trail that starts off LHI property is the San Antonio bike trail, a 7 mile paved trail.
Our main job at LHI was to build more trails that were geared towards mountain bikes and horses!
Two of the trails we built ran along side the Medina river, for one we had to build check dams to keep rain water from eroding the trail:
Chainsaw!
I even got to name one of the trail!
This is the 'Saddle and Spur' trail in its early stages.
Surveying
We also assisted in wild hog trapping by building traps:
We ended up catching one adult pig and three piglets.
We also built a garden next to our housing and ended up having to kill a rattle snake:
Apparently if you hang a dead rattle snake on a fence it rains.
We tested this and so far it turns out to be true...
We also went geocaching!
Geocaching is basically a world wide treasure hunt using a GPS and coordinates!
Also made Cookies!
I had my 21st birthday!! We went to Fiesta Texas Six Flags and then to Olive Garden!
We worked one Saturday because LHI was hosting the Native San Antonio Festival. One of our sponsors awesome friends (who is also on the board that makes decisions for LHI) Hans Let me ride his horse for a little while!
First time on a horse since Americorps started in October last year. It was a blast riding around!
We went to an art museum and met up with a team from a different Americorps program dealing with environmental stewardship. The girl next to me was in NCCC last year and was on my team leaders shuffle team with him.
The Wednesday before we left we went Kayaking and Canoeing on the Medina river. It was quite the adventure, we saw several water moccasins a dead boar and spiders rained on us from the trees, but it honestly was fun!
The day before we left for the second project of our third round Daisy had her Puppies!
Three black ones and one brown puppy!
Our next project is in Austin Texas with the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems or CMPBS
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