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Published: August 14th 2011
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Wow, I realized that I am very behind on my blog updating! Can it really be August 13th already? CRAZY!!
Anyways, this one is going to be a little more brief, but I had some good photos I wanted to put up. During the fourth of July, we were working in the hatchery, but got off early and spent the afternoon napping, watching the Alien trilogy, and then wandered to the tractor field to watch the fireworks. For such a small place, Onaway had pretty good fireworks. It wasn't the most eventful holiday and a persistent June Bug attacked me not once but twice making me run around like a pansy in the tractor field, but overall not too bad. A couple days later, I got a mini-vacation and headed to Traverse City to see some friends and check out the Cherry Festival.
There were people everywhere but it was gorgeous and I got to see Rachael and Bene who were surrounded by lushes cherry trees and counting cherries. The grad student life...Then I met up with Mike, my frog-researching friend from KBS, and we caught some dinner before going to see KANSAS in concert. We had more fun
at the beer tent considering we only knew 2 of the songs, but it was still nice. After the concert, we got some snacks and headed back to the hotel room. The next day was a little quiet as we had brunch then played mini-golf at the Pirates Adventure 😊. Mike had to take off to go to a seminar so I did a little shopping then went back to the hotel. After their work was done, I met up with Rach and Bene for dinner and we just walked around Traverse City. It's actually amazingly gorgeous. The city is set up like a college town with cute little shops and pubs downtown and very easy to walk around. The waterfront is a stunning blue/green color and kind of reminds you of a tropical ocean setting. Both Mike and I agreed it kind of makes you miss the ocean when you look at you because you expect to smell brine and see some sea life, but it's freshwater so you see zebra mussels and ducks. Still pretty nevertheless.
The next morning, I headed back to Onaway and back to work in the sturgeon hatchery. That next week in July,
we started gill-netting on Burt Lake which meant all day outside on the boat pulling nets and checking for sturgeon. We met up with crews from Marquette, Gaylord, and Grayling throughout the week and got shuffled around a little. By the second week, our tech Ryan was running the MSU boat and we actually had a lot of fun. One good memory was one afternoon, we pulled over near a sandy shore and swam for an hour, harassing gobies and crayfish. I even brought my mask and got some interesting video. The next day, we went to that same spot and some stuck up sixteen-year-old told us to leave because we were on "private property" even though we were on a lake. I just stared at her from the DNR boat while Ryan said, "Okay, sure." One day when I was assigned to the hatchery instead, the nets got tangled and the boys came home with a giant knot that took almost 10 hours, numerous beers, and all 5 of us to work on. We couldn't get it untangled though and it ended up being sacrificed and sent for repair. Overall though, it turned out to be a good gill-net
season. One day, the Marquette/Gaylord boat got 45 fish on one net and spent hours working through them up as fast as they could. And one was a 6-footer, a monster that took 3 of them to get into the boat. Most of the ones I saw were pretty small, but still fun. It was nice to see larger sturgeon again! We even got interviewed by a reporter from Gaylord. Here's a link to the article: http://www.petoskeynews.com/gaylord/news/ght-livingfossils-08062011,0,5777683.story
Well I ended the sturgeon season on August 2nd and took off from the field house on August 3rd. I can't believe it's already been 10 days. It's been both fun and busy though as I moved into my new place, went to see an old friend from Alaska, and have been meeting up with some of the grad fam. I'll save that for the next entry though. Thanks for reading and will update again soon!!
~kari
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