New Experiences

Today is my first day off in over 2 weeks, so I'm (of course) in the library on the Internet. It's pretty much been the same old, same old here at Seedskadee. Go out on the river, lose a lot of blood from bugs, look for and find scat, come home, eat and sleep. Rinse and repeat. I like the routine a lot. I could definitely see myself doing some field work (although I've been told repeatedly that this "field season" is actually very cushy).

I have had some adventures though. I went with Andrea (another intern here at the refuge) to a racetrack to watch Ron, one of the Seedskadee's handymen, race his stock car. It was interesting, expensive, and VERY LOUD. I actually have decent hearing, so going there and having my eardrums blown out by roaring engines wasn't the most fun. I won't be going to a car race ever again (if I can help it), but at least I can say I tried it. I can still say NASCAR is a waste of time and gas and back it up by saying I've been to a race and still dislike it.

Another adventure is that I spent an afternoon shooting. Seedskadee just got a new Game Warden named Jack, who Brady and I helped move in. He is QUITE the gun-lover. One day, while Andrea and I were in town, he asked us to pick up some clay pigeons and a launcher if we wanted to shoot. So we did and hurried back home, where pretty much everyone at the refuge spent a couple hours shooting Jack's rifles. I hit 2 targets....meaning I need to get better. I almost hate to admit it, but it was fun. I wouldn't mind knowing how to use and care for a firearm. However, that doesn't mean that I would shoot everything that moves or would eventually degrade into a gun-toting lunatic. I'm kind of conflicted right now. But I'm not conflicted about Jack's dog, Lee Roy. He's a black and white English setter ("the consummate gentleman") and FULL of energy. It's insane. I've been taking him running at 6:30am on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays with Andrea (who is wicked fast). It's only a 3 mile run, but it's a ton of fun. Running Lee Roy definitely makes me want to get a dog as SOON as I can take care of one (meaning I'm home enough and have enough money). Dogs are just plain awesome.

Getting ready to shoot the target Jack's about to launch

So yeah, that's basically it. Sadly, I won't be able to go to Yellowstone or Grand Teton at the end of the season, but I'm not too torn up about it. I still have a trip idea and I can come back and go on my own when I can actually plan stuff out. I really want to visit the parks in the fall, when there are fewer tourists and bugs and the leaves are starting to change color. Fall is my favorite season, after all. Maybe after I graduate (depending on if I'm doing a Master's program or a year-long internship or WHATEVER), I can make the road trip back to Wyoming and visit Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Shoshonee Forest, and Thermopolis on my own. 

Only 8 days left of sampling and 12 days until I return to Georgia. I actually don't want to leave yet. I've met some really awesome people and haven't explored even a fraction of Wyoming. Plus, I don't want to go back to the humidity and straight back to classes. But all good things must come to an end, I suppose. Until my flight out, though, I'm going to keep sampling and coming back to watch movies and chill with the people on the refuge.

SWARM

I thought the bugs were bad in Georgia, but I was HORRIBLY WRONG! 

You see, here in Wyoming, the bugs are bigger, faster, and more determined to suck every drop of blood out of you. They don't just hang out near water sources...they follow you up into the high desert and sagebrush. The mosquitoes are about the size of my pinky nail and they REALLY hurt when they bite you. The flies are house flies on steroids and are lightning fast. And the mayflies....are just annoying. They're ubiquitous. It's disturbing to feel something crawling on your neck, think it's a mosquito, slap it, and feel something wriggling under your fingers.

                          

There are methods we are implementing to avoid being eaten alive. One is using copious amounts of bug spray. I'm not talking about the baby bug spray that smells nice...no, we're using Repel with 29% DEET for OUTDOORSMEN. This is the stuff that kills the enviromnment and causes cancer. Wonderful stuff (and I'm being dead serious). Another is running away. That doesn't work all of the time. The mosquitoes and flies just follow us onto the raft and we have to use our hats to shoo them away. I will admit, trying to smack the flies is fun. I'm working on my mid-air strike and my hand speed. I got one in midair today. The third way that I personally avoid the bugs is by wearing a bandana over my face and ears like a bandit. No part of my face is showing which means that the mosquitoes can't get to my face or ears (the ears are the worst because the noise they make drives me absolutely insane). I figured that out today, and I'm going to be wearing a bandana for the rest of the summer. I look totally legit.


Other than being eaten alive, field work is going well. One of Brady's friends is coming up the 25th through the 31st, so I'll have that time off. And since I have such a huge chunk of time off, I'M GOING TO YELLOWSTONE AND GRAND TETON NATIONAL PARKS! Yep, going to make the road trip there with another intern here at the refuge. Her name is Andrea. She's a Senior studying all kinds of stuff (all going towards Wildlife biology) from California and is pretty cool. We've been planning out the trip and will hopefully reserve our campsites within the next couple days. IT'S GOING TO BE LEGENDARY!

The Truck

So nothing's really happened this week. Same old, same old. Finding scat, floating on the river, etc etc. So I've decided to rant about my mode of transportation.

I'm currently driving a 1997 Red Ford F-150. The thing is obviously ancient. The interior is bare bones...Gray pleather (plastic leather) seats, a rear view mirror and clutch cap that fall off (often while I've been driving), and power nothing. If I want to drive with the windows rolled down, I have to roll them both down before I start the car, or deal with just one. And I've been driving around with the windows down A LOT because (this is the best part) there is no air conditioning in the car. None, zip, zero, nada. I personally like having the windows down instead of using the A/C, but when you're driving though a dust cloud, air conditioning would be nice. And let me tell you, getting into a truck with pleather seats that have been baking in the sun is NOT fun. When we're shuttling back from the river, I essentially arrive at the house dripping sweat. Saunas have NOTHING on this truck....On the bright side, the radio is actually decent. I get some good rock stations, one eclectic station, and NPR (which I'm going to add to my car when I get home).

My truck is on the right....

Now the "best" part about the truck...it's a stick-shift. Fortunately, I know how to drive a stick thanks to my parents, but this truck is very persnickety. The clutch doesn't always catch and the transmission pattern is very tight. Essentially, it's hard to get this clunker to change gears, let alone start moving in 1st. I've kicked up gravel/spun the tires more times than I care to admit, and I'm being careful! I'm just really glad that most of my driving is out on the highway, where it's actually easy and somewhat fun to change gears (fellas, I now see the appeal of owning a manual, but that doesn't mean I'll own one). It's another story when I drive into town. Stopping at a light or sign on a hill...not fun. I feel a spike of terror when I have to go forward, feel the car roll backwards, and then lurch forward like it's going to stall out, only to have the clutch catch and the car start moving. When I move forward is when I release my death grip on the wheel and the clutch. Driving in busy areas with a manual is no fun.

And that's pretty much all I have. Oh, I'm not running at 6:30am...I'm WAY to tired at that time. So I've been running at 4 or 5pm. When I step outside to start running, it's like I'm stepping into an OVEN. It's that same hot, desiccating feeling, and running in it is not easy. I'm kind of glad that I'm not in Georgia, though. No humidity is a good thing.

Moondance

           So I’ve been in Wyoming for a little over a month now…no complaints, really, besides the fact that the wind is terrible. I do miss interacting with people from time to time, but that’s usually on my days off when I can go into town, get on the Internet, and see that there is actually a world full of people outside of Wyoming. Other than that, I’m keeping busy with fieldwork, TRYING to run in the mornings (motivation…dropping…can’t…keep running alone through such…barren landscape), reading/drawing (doing that A LOT), and meditating.

            We’ve started sampling a new section of river outside of Seedskadee. We’re still on the Green River, but we are sampling it above the Fontenelle Dam, which creates this HUGE reservoir, which was recently emptied out to prepare for the snowmelt. Snowmelt accounts for a LOT of water here and this year’s snowpack was 200 – 300% of last year’s. So that means that the rivers are flowing high, fast, and COLD. This is good and bad. Since the water is flowing so swiftly, we get done relatively quickly, but since it’s so high, some of the latrine sites that the otters use are being washed away. AND ALL OF THE SNOW HASN’T EVEN MELTED YET. Wyoming has crazy weather, man.

            Where we are sampling on the upper Green River is actually quite pretty. There are a decent amount of trees (cottonwoods, willows, alders, and some evergreens) and we can see the mountains in the distance pretty clearly. After all, we’re only 169 miles away from Yellowstone (SO CLOSE). There are also some really beautiful cliffs and buttes that always make me smile…and get a crick in my neck from staring up at them. There are moose (we saw 5 today), Mule deer, and birds galore, but we aren’t really finding any otter scat. Brady said this happened last year when the snowmelt came through. The otters follow the fish and, when the water is high, the fish go to quieter pools…pools that we can’t get to in the raft. At least, that’s the theory. So we are currently floating down the river and checking sites that SHOULD have otter poop, but don’t. Rather disheartening. However, on the VERY LAST DAY, I found a really smelly, fresh scat, so it wasn't a total waste. 

            There is a bright side to this tragedy. The section of river we’re sampling is near the bustling, thriving metropolis of La Barge, populated by 431 people at an elevation of 6600 ft. I think I have more friends on Facebook than there are people in this town (which makes me want to go through and see who I should de-friend…is that bad?). There are ranches all over the place and the “houses” in town are actually trailers...but La Barge has one HUGE redeeming feature. The Moondance Diner. This diner is a hole in the wall joint with a jukebox, funny signs, and posters of older musicians (they even have something from Woodstock). It hearkens back to the days of cross country road trips with nothing but one small suitcase with all the personal belongings you’ll need, the windows literally rolled down because your car didn’t come with A/C, and your favorite cassette in the tape player. And the FOOD IS AMAZING. I’ve eaten there twice now and I LOVE IT. I’ve had a Magnetar Melt (hamburger, sautéed onions, and cheese on rye) and a Veggie Melt (broccoli, pepper, onion, and mushroom with Swiss on a hoagie) with French fries (HOMEMADE…yeah, be jealous). Both were excellent, and I already have something in mind to try the next time I go. But the best things (so far) are the milkshakes and the Green River soda. The milkshakes are legit. They make them right there behind the counter with ice cream and fruit. They have banana (personal favorite), strawberry (good), peanut butter, Milky Way, caramel, chocolate, and raspberry, to name a few. I WANT TO TRY THE PEANUT BUTTER AND THE RASPBERRY ONES SO BADLY. Then there’s the Green River soda. Evidently, there was a brewery that made beer off the shores of the Green River until Prohibition started, so it switched to soda. This soda, which is EMERALD GREEN, rivaled Coke and Pepsi. When Prohibition ended, they switched back to beer, but it fell through. Their soda, however, survived and is currently being sold in 4 states (sadly, not Georgia). It’s really tasty and refreshing, kind of citrus-y with some grenadine or something. It’s absolutely wonderful as a float, and I’ve never really liked floats! Yeah, this diner has it all. No wonder it’s home to Wyoming’s #1 burger (the Mountain Man, which Brady had and loved) according to some big magazine. If anyone ever comes to Wyoming, VISIT THIS DINER. 

            So yeah, that’s life right now. OH, we FINALLY got our own washer and dryer! Now Brady and I won’t have to wear the same field clothes for 2 weeks because we have to wait to use the bunkhouse’s washer and dryer! It’s the little things that make me happy.

The Officially Awesome Day

            Yesterday was undeniably, indisputably, unshakably awesome. It was our 5^th day of sampling the second section of the Green River (which means that we were sampling the first half of the second section...there are a lot of sections and halves and other nonsense) and the winning began at our first site. Not only did we have otter scat, but we also had the ideal conditions for teaching Blue how to swim. At the first site, there is a “pond” behind the willows. I put quotation marks around the word pond because it’s not exactly big enough to be considered a pond. It’s 30 or 40 feet long by 8 or 9 feet wide and probably 4 feet deep. Can’t really tell yet (I’m planning on getting in once the weather warms up). Anywho, Brady waded in with Blue in hand and brought him to a level where Blue couldn’t stand. Instead of swimming in a circle and coming straight back, Blue swam across to the other side of the water! Brady was so proud and then realized that we had to get Blue back on our side of the “pond.” I was cracking up because Blue had swum across in a hurried/controlled panic and Brady said “No, this is no time to be laughing because we have to get him back over here,” which made me laugh more. Using chicken jerkey dog treats as bait, we were eventually able to lure Blue back over to our side (after much running up and down the banks, pathetic looks, and then one crazy swim by Blue himself).

            About 3 sites later along the river, I was rowing along and Brady was scouting the banks when he said “OH MAN!” and grabbed the binoculars. I looked to my right and right on the bank coming down from an island was AN OTTER. Now, otters are elusive little buggers and the fact that we saw the otter come down and slide into the water was AWESOME. Brady didn’t see an otter last summer until the last few weeks of sampling. We hurried and beached the boat, hoping we could catch a glimpse of it, but the otter was gone. In it’s place, however, there was a fresh scat. The freshest we’ve collected thus far. Thanks to that otter, we found its scat, an additional scat, and a new site to sample. 

            A little ways down the river is where the awesome (and danger) got ratcheted up even higher. We floated into one of our sites, a bank with lots of hawthorn bushes (at least we think they’re hawthorns because they have big, annoying, painful thorns all over) and sage further back, and split up down the banks to look for signs and check snares. Earlier when we first checked out the site, I was looking for scat and looked up to see a moose checking me out over the sage about 30 feet away. I don’t know if anyone realizes this, but MOOSE ARE SNEAKY AND QUIET FOR THEIR SIZE. I saw the moose, grabbed Blue by the collar, and walked back to the raft, checking to see that the moose wasn’t charging at me (it was actually running away into the sagebrush). We thought, “Oh, it’s one moose, we probably won’t see one again.” WRONG. Today, I went down the same way to look for scat near the hawthorns and heard a low grunt (I call it a hum-grunt because that’s kind of what it sounds like). I looked up and saw a moose calf 10 feet in front of me (at most) and the mother moose’s leg poking out of the hawthorn on my left. I immediately turned tail and ran back towards the raft (I can run pretty quickly in waders, evidently), hollering “BRADY, GET BLUE!” I thought Blue was with Brady, who thought the dog was with me. Blue was actually checking out a pile of fresh guts behind a nearby bush, so we grabbed him, leashed him to the raft so he wouldn’t chase them and get into trouble, and went to check out the moose (me with camera in hand). On the way back towards the moose, we were walking really slowly and saying in loud, calm voices, “Hey MOOSE!” so we wouldn’t surprise them. Well, we found them. It was a mother and 2 tiny little calves, probably only a few weeks old.  They were coming out of the hawthorns as we were walking up, and Mom was rounding up both her calves by hum-grunting at them and a keeping sharp eye on us. I snapped a few pictures and we went back to the raft, talking loudly to let the moose know where we were and glancing back to make sure she wasn’t coming at us. Closest I’ve ever been and ever WANT to be to a wild moose. I was actually pretty lucky in that situation. I have a habit of talking out loud (a pet peeve of my sister), and that most likely alerted the mother moose to my presence when I was walking down to look for scat, so I didn’t startle her. When you startle a moose or get between a mother and her calf, it’s bad news for you. So my talking out loud is definitely good here (HAHA TAKE THAT, SIS). In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have high-tailed it out of there, That could have scared the moose into charging. I should have walked back slowly, keeping an eye on the moose and talking calmly to let her know I was leaving. Now I know.

            The awesome-ness did NOT end there. We continued floating downriver until we saw some splashing on the left side of the river. We thought it was an otter catching a fish or otters playing, so we booked it over there. Turns out, it was a bunch of GINORMOUS carp spawning in a small inlet (or at least we think they were spawning). These fish are ridiculously big. Earlier in the week, we had found a fish skull at one of our sites that was monstrous and had no idea what species it was…Guess we know now. We watched the fish for a while (Brady wanted to catch one bare-handed but no luck) and then continued on our way. Our last site was the end of the awesome day. There are beaver lodges spotted all along the river, and our last site has one and a beaver-made pond. Well, Brady stepped over the top of the lodge (most beaver lodges here are on land and not in the water) and heard something come out of it. We stood by the water and waited silently for a few minutes and then a big beaver popped up! It was rather large. It slipped back underwater and we waited again for it to come up. The second time it surfaced, Brady moved and the beaver smacked its tail on the water and went under. That was the last time we saw it, but it was still totally awesome. Hopefully we will see some more beavers and otters (otters LOVE beaver ponds and lodges) at that site.

            And that was my awesome day. It would’ve been better if I had run that morning at 6:30am like I’ve been doing, but I laid in bed and fell back asleep after my alarm went off. Getting into the habit and finding the sheer willpower to pull myself out of bed to run 5 miles at 6:30am is NOT an easy task. I made it up today though.....not too shabby.