Yes, back in May I traveled to Shepherdstown, West Virginia, for a week of government training at NCTC, the National Conservation Training Center. We flew into Baltimore and drove out into the country – Shepherdstown is right across the Potomac River from the historic Antietam battlefield, if that gives you any idea of where I was. The weather was warm and everything was so GREEN, compared to the dry landscape of SoCal. There were deer and cardinals and bluebirds and so many other critters – it made me miss living on the east coast, and reminded me very much of where I grew up in Northern Virginia. NCTC is a fairly isolated campus just for the Fish and Wildlife Service – I took a course titled “Habitat Conservation Planning” which probably sounds more interesting than it actually was. But really, the course was pretty good and I learned a lot that will be helpful to me in my work. Anyway, here are some of the pretty pretty pictures that I took before my camera batteries died and held all my pictures hostage for the past month: