Thursday, June 21, 2007

Today was my 29th day of sampling the I-series, a watershed of lakes and streams that feed into the main Toolik Lake inlet. It was gorgeous weather again today, although the helicopter battery died and so getting back to camp was interesting, logistically speaking. Here are Byron and Joanna leaving the helicopter at the first site of the day.

We saw lots of wildlife including this super hungry catapillar that mowed this leaf down in the few minutes I placed him there.

This is a lichen known as dead man's finger.

Alex tried to get a tiger moth to climb onto his finger.

This is a type of Rhododendron. We saw quite a few of them at the I-6 headwaters lake.















My two mentors tried to capture it as well.






















Cotton grass, Eriophorum vaginatum, is "flowering" quite proliferately this year. All in all, not a bad day to end my I-series on. 29 days at the age of 29. The lake at sauna never felt so good.

Tomorrow I get to stay behind for the second day and prepare for a crazy, intense experiment I'll be running starting Friday. The fun never ends!

Wednesday, June 20, 2007


We drove the Husky up to Toolik on last Friday, June 15th. No major fires and very little road work. However, we did have to race a Princess bus to get a quiet spot at the Yukon River Crossing for lunch.










Yesterday (the 18th) was my second field day of the season. Alex and Ashley joined me in a jaunty little adventure surveying all the inlet streams into my study lake, Lake I-8. If all goes well, Ashley will be taking on part of the survey work as part of her REU project, for which I am mentoring her this summer.
It was a great afternoon- we couldn't have asked for better weather and the skeets weren't too bad.

Training all the newbies is going remarkably swift and well. It's going to be hard to leave so early this year, but it's easy when I remember all the fun adventures I have waiting for me back home. Including writing my dissertation, of course.

Monday, June 18, 2007


Before.
and After.

The day before I left for Toolik, my pup, Sassy got her summer haircut. I swear she's half the size she used to be.