Blogs from Henderson, Nevada, United States, North America

Somehow, four months have flown by, and I find myself in my final week out in Nevada. This stirs up many mixed emotions inside of me, as per usual I suppose. On the one hand, I have had an amazing time out here. I have learned quite a bit, both about research and about myself. I feel that I've learned and experienced about all I can. So, although I will sort of miss the desert landscape, I could be ready to be done. Then there's the fact that I miss people from home quite a lot and am thrilled at the prospect of being able to see so many of my closest friends some time in the near future. This however, is complicated by the fact that I have made, as it were, quite a few ... read more

We left Grand Canyon today and decided to take a detour to visit the London Bridge in Lake Havasu City, AZ. It was the furthest south that we will go on our trip. The bridge is the actual London Bridge, and was disassembled and brought here when it was purchased by a man, who probably thought he was getting the Tower Bridge. They created a "Little London" right by the bridge. There is an English Pub, a small theater, and a few eateries, and the buildings have an English look to them. They even have the dragon statues that mark the entrance to the City of London in the real London. And there is also a fountain that's similar to fountains you would see in London. It was a cute little area, but it was so ... read more

On Monday I got to go to Piute Valley, another area of the desert where they are conducting the burn research. I hadn't been there yet so I was quite excited to go. Justin thought we'd only be out there a few hours, since there aren't many tortoises there and there were 5 of us going out. Within probably the first hour and a half we were nearly done. But then there were 3 tortoises that we could not find. And proceeded to spend the next like 3 hours looking for them. While looking for these guys, I saw some flowers! Which I was excited about, cause I had been bummed that I missed desert in spring, with everything in bloom. So it was nice getting to see at least a few flowers. There were a ... read more

Following the wonderful adventures in Sequoia, we ended up back in Barstow. Met up with everyone else from work on Tuesday morning. Which meant I got to get up slightly later than if we had gone back to Henderson and had to drive back down with them. aka, got up around 5:30am. ha. Little did I know that would be the latest I would get up all week. Anywho, bleed week (or days, rather) went quite well. I was with Alison and Felicia for Tuesday morning. We bled some tortoises that I had never bled before so that was kinda cool. Got to see a female tortoise with crazy long nails. (for digging). Were able to work longer than I expected. It was about 12:30pm when it got over 95 degrees and we had to stop. ... read more

The rest of my night tracking was actually kinda exciting! One night a bat flew right past me! I was thrilled. Obviously. :) Then a pretty uncool thing happened, although it all turned out okay. During thursday's shift, I thought that one of my tortoises was dead. Which was odd because it had been fine 24hours early. But when I tracked to it on thursday it was flipped over. I assumed that since it was on its back and not moving at all, that it was dead. I couldn't get ahold of Sarah on the radio and so I wasn't sure what to do so I just left it. The rest of the night I didn't track it. Which saved me time because it was the furthest one out. When we were done I told Sarah ... read more

The rest of last week was spent in Barstow. I actually had to stay until Friday. Think they are kinda running out of things for us to do sometimes. Anyway, it wasn't too bad. Having the dog made it totally ok. :) We were basically finished on Wednesday but Thursday morning we all went out to plot 5 and spent nearly 2 hours looking for a missing tortoise. No luck this time though. Sad. :( Then Felicia Angela and I headed over to do plot 3. After that we were done for the day! Back at the house I just did more relaxing. Finished getting caught up on Greys Anatomy.... still not sure why I did that. Although it did start getting better towards the end of Season 5. And then I was crying hysterically at ... read more

So let's see. An update. Last weekend I didn't do much. Mostly just hung around the house or the pool. We did go into vegas on friday night and went to a place called the Freakin Frog. I really liked it. There was live music so we just sat and had a drink and listened to music that was pretty good. So it was fun. And more my speed. :) Then on monday began my week of crazy tracking. I was prepared for the worst but as it turned out, I didn't mind it. Maybe because we kinda lucked out on the schedule. Normally the majority of the shifts are 10 hour shifts. But because of the crazy heat, Sarah, the grad student who's research it is, decided that we didnt need to go out in ... read more

Hello again! Certain people have been demanding (or, asking politely) for another one of these things, but I was waiting until I had something exciting to report. lol. And now I finally do! So, on wednesday I was just in the office doing random things, mostly entering data for one of the projects they are doing with Joshua Trees. Many hours in front of a computer. Then on Thursday I went with a few others to one of our sites at Coyote Springs where they are doing research dealing with fire damage and what tortoises might eat if some of the vegetation is destroyed. So basically they have many different 10'x10' plots set up and they sprayed different pesticides in each, killing grasses in some and killing bushes in others, etc. Each area started with 4 ... read more