Out in the wilderness again!

Hey! It's the 4th July tommorow - Independence Day!

Anyway, at times today, I have been feeling devestated, bitter and sorrowful - because missed my 6th form prom! I really am upset about it! I've already got everyone's pictures from facebook and I wish I was there. I even dreamt the other night that I flew back to England for one day, to take one last exam and to go to the prom, and then flew back again.

But still, I did have fun today!

We went out into bear territory again. This time it was a different place, over an hour's drive from home, and the forest was much worse. When I say worse, I mean we were hiking through denser, thorny bush that was nearly as tall as me. We were surveying - looking for any potential sites, but we didn't see anything (you have to look at the shape of the ground, anything that looks like it may have been an old foundation, wall, or storage pit).

This time I didn't ride out in Fran's car, I went with a girl that has just started working for Fran, because she was driving up in her own car - and that way I got to meet her, sit in the front of the car, and also she didn't have to drive up alone. Her name is Ginger, and she's awesome! Ginger is her real name too. (And she's also ginger.)

That's Ginger and I: you can see that she is carrying a gun: she has this massive shotgun for bears because she goes camping and hiking a lot. So we were equipped with a shotgun, a handgun, and about 4 cans of bear spray!

Here are a couple of other pictures from the today and the hike:


Ginger with her shotgun, Dan with a shovel and a handgun: (I reckon we gave some people a fright when we emerged muddy from the woods equipped with shovels, guns, and canisters of pepper spray...)

On the way home I taught Ginger (on her request) some British swearwords. She said she'd heard of "bollocks" before, but she mistakenly thought the word only has the same meaning as the more American "bullshit". So I explained that if a man gets "kicked in the bollocks", it really hurts, and I also taught her that the person who did it would be referred to as a "wanker". She did attempt to learn that one, but I had to teach her the correct, English pronunciation.

I also gave her a lesson on the various uses of the word bollocks: e.g. if something is bollocks, it is not very good. However, if something is the dog's bollocks, it is excellent. I think she found it all very informative ^_^

P.S Do you like my new hat? I'm going for the Indiana Jones/Australian/Cowgirl look! ;-)