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!

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.

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.

With the assistance of my officemate, I discovered the search function here on blogger. We typed in "Toolik" and up popped several personal blogs dealing with research and life at the station- some of which are quite unprofessional. I've known about the dangers of posting online, but I never really considered it to be a problem. However, we found a blog by an employee of a company that deals with many of us at the station where the employee rants about an associate of ours. Now, if it had been me, I know I would make sure that the person's employer knew about this as well as the camp management. It's definitely over the line. If you are going to post something like that, you'd better make sure you know who is reading your blog.

My last night in camp, we had the grand opening of the pub art gallery, with the exhibit "Lost Antlers", complete with wine, cheese, and a piece of performance art. We actually had quite the range, from a line up of mosquito repellant (Safety in numbers) to a quite striking post-modern piece made of rebar, a milk crate, and rounded small rocks.

I was packing like crazy, so I took 15 minutes to bring over some silly things, including pages from a Finding Nemo coloring book several of us colored last year. It was a fun event to end the summer with, and I hope it becomes an annual event.

I left Sunday morning and met some really awesome people on the ride south. Met a friend for dinner in Fairbanks and got to see her "new" one room dry cabin. It's got potential. After a three hour nap, I headed to the airport this morning, and spent about 15 hours in airports and planes. Northwest left my bags in Chicago (including a cooler of frozen samples), but I'm home again...

well, on a friend's couch, at least.

Today was my last day of field sampling! We did the second half of the "I-series" where we get dropped off by helicopter and walk back in while sampling. We made pretty good time and were back in camp by 3 p.m. We also saw many more caribou and this small herd passed fairly close by. I was able to catch a tsik-tsik (arctic ground squirrel) watching, on guard, with a mouthful of dried grass (used for winter insulation). The mountains have been beautiful the past few days with the snow they received on Tuesday. It's still been chilly here with some rain, but luckily the sun is peeking through the clouds again.

Later, after lunch, we walked through a large patch of cloudberries, Rubus chamaemorus. Apparently, some other people ahead of us ate most of the ripe ones, but we were still able to sample a few.

Dramatic much?
Have you ever seen anything so beautiful? The package arrived tonight with one of our lab members. The helicopter also broke and everyone is blaming it on me.

Not only are there few people in camp, but everything is the end of the world and in the evenings we just wander around camp, aimlessly... Yup, it must be August.

Please excuse me while I go run down the haul road.

I just found out that a key package was shipped up here on the Lyndon truck. If there is anyway to guarantee that a package won't arrive quickly, it's to put it on a Lyndon truck. The next two days we are scheduled to go sampling on the helicopter with a large group, and I need that package. Now imagine me muttering around camp.

Nice rack.
The past week has been a blur, with many parties and the internet and phones going out for two days (courtesey of lightening storms). There was a bachelorette party, a metal birthday party, a couple of going away parties and a tropical luau. Yesterday I actually got to leave camp in a truck- for the second time this summer. We took a scenic drive up to Deadhorse and while the other three people went on the Prudhoe Bay/ Arctic Ocean tour I sat in the hotel doing data entry and reading the day's newspaper. Usually we get the paper a day late in camp. The drive up was a bit cloudy and we saw lots of caribou (and hunters at every pull-off).

The drive back was sunny most of the way and we did a short scouting trip (in sandals) to the Sag near the D.O.T. station. There were tons of ripe blueberries everywhere! On the way up, Christie gave us a recap of the story Hunted and so on the way back I read the last 20 pages out loud to everyone while she drove. The sun is going down around 11 pm these days (still not sure what time it rises, but I'm guessing sometime around 5 am) so it was still fairly light out when we finally made it back late last night.

Oh to be half-asleep and editing a post from the night before. Here are a few new pictures. These flowers (monk's hood or wolfbane) are by the outlet to my lake. The weather keeps bouncing back and forth between sunny, nice, and warm versus cloudy, cold, and rainy. Typical Toolik.






On Sunday, I went hiking with Cody, Ken, and Alexia, desperate to get "out" of camp. We hiked up over this ridge west of Jade and had some fabulous views of the rivers and lakes west of here. On our way back around, we saw a scruffy looking fox who really wasn't that afraid of us, but kept a comfortable distance away. It's been quite the summer for wildlife up here.


In other news, I now have to share the lab with a large research group and might even have to share my room. It's been a nice, quiet, productive summer and I think I'll spending the last week and a half here with my headphones stuck in my ears.

Inspired by David: 326 days at Toolik after this season, 345 days including travel for research in Alaska, plus ~3 weeks of vacation over the years in Alaska = over a year of my life in Alaskan summers.

Stuck in the towers...
The other day I went to use the towers (above ground pit toilets) and it was so stinky that I was in quite a hurry. When I finished, I turned the deadbolt, and it wouldn't budge! I panicked since last year someone actually got stuck for quite a while before they were rescued. After what seemed like an eternity, I realized that the lock was already open- I had forgotten to lock the door in my rush. Such a dork...

Cody eats fish smoothie

What scientists do for fun, or at least after losing a bet. And to think, I've actually had daquiris made in that blender...

Holy crap! I was almost run over by a pair of male caribou this afternoon! (There was no fence between us). I was headed to the porch for some reading and I heard some running behind me. Simone yells my name and I see the caribou headed straight for me. They veered away, but I stood practically pinned next to the truck until they passed by and regretted not bringing my camera with me. There are stray caribou all over the place today, and apparently the main herd is still hanging out by Jade. I'm a little nervous about walking back from sampling by myself tomorrow. They can run so fast over the tundra!

EDIT: David got some good pictures of them.

A herd of caribou passed by the west side of Toolik today! It's the first time I've seen so many in one place, and I know it doesn't compare with the herds in ANWR. Luckily, I had just finished setting up my experiment for the day and was able to join the rest of the lab in taking a boat to the other side of the lake to get a closer look.
See if you can see them in the above picture full size- they are near the saddle in the center.

We also saw some new flowers, argued over berry identification and found this beautiful mushroom.

See, I do work too. Taken by Luke on July 18th while I was setting up an experiment.

Fiesta! In celebration of a birthday here, we made several pinatas. There was a caribou (pictured), a muskox head, a hot air balloon, and a penguin (because despite all the marketing, there are no penguins in the Arctic). I also made some maracas. We also had Mexican food for dinner with tres leches cake and this time they even made proper rice and a double batch of guacamole!

After the party, I went on a canoe trip with a lab mate. We spent some quality time with the pair of yellow-billed loons that live on Toolik and we saw one of the first sunsets of the summer. The yellow-billed loon, Gavia adamsii, is the largest and rarest of the loons. They have spindly little legs and generally stay on the water most of the time, diving for food.


The sunset was all the sweeter because yesterday was the first day in a very long time that has been sunny! We're expecting clouds and rain by tomorrow, so I'm enjoying the blue skies while I can.

Here's another picture of the wolf- a very classy shot taken by our head cook.

Finally! Some pictures to share. Here are the higlighters we used to decorate ourselves and the lab under blacklights (picture taken by a labmate).











This is the wolf that's been hanging around the camp- I saw him on a different day, this picture was taken by a labmate on their way back from a hike. We're not sure if the wolf brought down the caribou, but it sure looks content.




And last, but certainly not least, here is the fabulous "burning man" bonfire we had last night. It was a great deal of fun.

EDIT: the burning man was successful! The sun came out on Monday, and has so far stuck around on Tuesday!

food for thought:
daily show clip on the president's veto for stem cell research

Today was my 13th trip, and 25th day, for an intensive thrice a summer synoptic sampling trip. To celebrate, I took many tundra naps and tooks lots of pictures of pretty flowers. This one is a harebell, Campanula rotundifolia.








These flowers had several flies crawling on them, answering the question of the dominant pollinators up here. There are all kinds of flies of different shapes and sizes. Unfortunately, I'm no naturalist, so I can't even guess the identification. The flower is possibly a Bistort.






Again, we had looming clouds, with periodic rain. We've had very strange weather this year- short spurts of rain or snow, usually lasting less than a day. Here is another bistort, Bistorta bistortoides or maybe Valaria capitata.