This past weekend I stuffed my little car with gear and rolled on up to Guemes Island, WA to do a little glorified back-yard camping. Every summer some family friends of mine rent a tiny house on the water and let whoever feels like it put up a tent in the big yard and enjoy a little semi-wilderness playtime. I say "wilderness" because Guemes is sparsely populated, as are the islands nearest to it. I say "semi" because at the end of the day we're still camping in a back yard with running water about 20 yards away. Personally, that's my [View Full Entry]

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Am 12.08.08 um 05:30 Uhr war es so weit ich bin aufgestanden um mich bereit fuer meine Orcas zu machen. Um 06:45 musste ich am Hafen sein und um 07:30 ging es dann los. zu den San Juan Islands . Leider war es auf der Fahrt zu den Inseln sehr gewelkt und daher auch recht kalt, zeitweise sind wir sogar durch Nebel gefahren. Aber ich habe fast die ganze Zeit durgehalten und bin oben an Deck geblieben, nur bei Nebel habe ich die Flucht ergriffen. Gesehen gabe ich zwei Weisskopfse [View Full Entry]

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So here are some pictures of the fawns and otters. The fawns have various stories, although recently they have been suffering from some sort of parasite that causes hair loss. We gave them Ivermectin, but one very obviously is showing no imrovement, so she may have to be shot again. As for the otters, one of them came in with his brother because their mother had been trapped and relocated (again - ILLEGAL and particularly inhumane during the spring months). The brother is the one I mentioned that we necropsied last weekend. This one made it, however, and another local rehabilitation [View Full Entry]

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I've definitely been slacking off on the blogging for the past 3 or 4 weeks. This is mostly due to me not wanting to drive anywhere in order to preserve my car so it will take me safely back to Kansas, so I haven't seen much other than town and work. I want to go to the other islands, but the ferry landing isn't in town on Lopez or Orcas (Isle of the Sacred Mountain) so they require a car to get anywhere, and of course taking a car on the ferry costs more. Plenty of amusements exist within walking distance [View Full Entry]

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Today was relaxing--I woke up, talked to Jon, and went to brunch (fantastic as usual). I then ran to lab fast, and met with friends at noon to drive to Cattle Point. Three of my friends here this year have cars, which is quite novel. Hannah, Tanya, Kristen, Daniel and myself all packed into Hannah's little car and drove to Cattle Point. We had a lovely walk around the area, enjoying the beautiful views from the headlands. It was fantastic just to be able to chat and enjoy the beautiful views the island has to offer. After our walk, we headed [View Full Entry]

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I've been super busy! Work is long and I've put many hours in, but I love what I do. ^__^ The first week out at Friday Harbor Labs was nuts--I basically arrived for the best low tides of the year, so I spent the first week working my tail off. Looking back, however, it's amazing to see how much I really got done in that time period! I did predator surveys at three different sites, set up choice experiments, and was working on lots of stuff having to do with the predators of the snails I study. The second week was [View Full Entry]

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As we began to travel more regularly during the summer of 2007, I decided that along with traveling internationally, we needed to make it a point and priority to visit some of the beautiful and interesting places in our own backyard. As Washingtonians, we are so lucky and fortunate to have such a plethora of different and amazing places to visit in our state within only a few hours of our home. It seems so many of us (including ourselves) take our diverse state for granted, not realizing the incredible opportunities that await our arrival. One of the first places I [View Full Entry]

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Well, I think the only people who don't go to the Friday Harbor Fourth of July parade are dead, so I figured I better go. Actually it was really fun and worth it, although I could have done without seeing every single firetruck on the island drive by slowly. After the parade was over, I drove out to Lime Kiln State Park and explored the tidepools. Pictures of the tidepools will have to wait until later. I don't know why I felt the need to take so many parade pictures, but I just wasted two hours of my life uploading them, [View Full Entry]

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After the parade I ran away quickly to get to Lime Kiln Point State Park by noon so I could go on the tidepool exploration walk. I was the only one there, so the guide took me to a more secluded area which I never would have considered going to by myself. The "trail" included a bunch of rocks that we had to climb down and walking essentially up the side of a cliff. She did it in a skirt, though, so I felt like I was being a bit of a baby. Anyway, we saw some neat stuff. [View Full Entry]

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What a nuts week of travel! I've spend more time traveling in this past week than I have in a good long time. Plane from lovely Brisbane to Los Angeles, to Boston (30 hours of travel there, not including driving time back to Jon's apartment, at least another hour and a half). Not a bad flight--I managed to sleep most of it, and had enough time between flights in LAX (even though my luggage was just about the last out of the plane, with Suzi's bags, and I had to perform the great baggage shuffle, making things at weight for travel [View Full Entry]

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