Shepherdstown, WV

While my counterpart has been away, I have been acting as the GIS Manager for the Nevada State Office. It's been busy with the extra responsibility, and allows me to travel for more meetings. Most recently, I got to spend a week in Shepherdstown, WV for the BLM GIS Mangers meeting for all the states. It was busy planning out the BLM GIS objectives for 2011. We had a very successful 2010 in integrating GIS with a few programs and creating BLM wide datasets.




I won't try to explain what that means, but the place we got to meet in was amazing. It was at the National Conservation Training Center, off of the Potomac. The fall colors of the leaves were at their peak and the weather was nice and cool. We spent much of our time in planning meetings and small groups, but the walks between meals were gorgeous.




It kind of felt like summer camp, except this one included a bar. We had all of our meals together, met together and then relaxed in the evening together. Most of the time we just talked about work. It was really great networking, but was pretty exhausting.





Thursday afternoon we took a field trip to the nearby Antinetam Battlefield. It was the first large battle of the Civil War and the most single day casualties on America soil. Around 23,000 people lost their life that day. Standing there on a beautiful fall day, it was hard to believe such calamity occurred.







Being in the area reminded me of being on the AT again, I hope I can go to more meetings there.