CUVA Week- 1V&RP

Cuyahoga Valley National Park has been an overall learning experience for me. The first few days I spent in the Headquarters located in the northern side of the park. During this time I was introduced to a lot of National Park employees and got to sit in on a few introductory meetings. I was given a tour of the Park and shown the different jurisdictions. CVNP or CUVA works alongside two state parks which are Summit County and Cleveland parks. Together these parks work together to help the visitors have a good time and enforce the NPS Mission.

During the First week I was Taken to both Ranger stations and introduced to the Protection Rangers. The First Ranger station I got to visit was the one that I would be working out of the most. It is called Everett Ranger station (E.R.S) which is located on the southern end of the park. The other Ranger Station is called Coonrad after the last family whom lived there. This ranger station is located in the north district and sits not too far from headquarters. The Rangers and I went on a bike patrol and we stopped at beaver marsh which is a wetland for photos taken by a dedicated volunteer for the park.

I got the chance to participate on the Bike Aboard program offered by the Railroad. The Railroad is in partnership with CUVA. The Bike aboard program is a unique program that allows park visitors to commute up and down the valley with their bikes and the train. They have a special bike car that holds a ton of bikes while the visitors sit aboard the train and enjoy the valleys scenery. Each stop the visitors are allowed to get off and continue their biking. After we got off the train we biked to Boston store (Visitor Center) to end the day with a division meeting. At the meeting the division n chiefs introduced their self’s to me and told myself and the others what kind of projects they were working on so everyone would be on the same page. After that awards were given out to Law enforcement officers for all of their years spent working at the National Parks Service.