The Month of August

Woah I'm sorry to anyone who actually follows this about my being mia for the last month. I've been insanely busy & just kind of forgot about it. I finished up my time in the Soluk lab and I can say it was an amazing job and I was very happy to have it. I drove home from Illinois the last day of July just in time to present my undergraduate research at the Ecological Society of America Conference. It was SO so soooo cool! I got to meet professors whose papers I had read (which to a nerd like me was kind of like meeting a celebrity) and after much hard work and practice I totally rocked my presentation! My boss even said I did perfect and he wouldn't change anything, which is a big deal coming from him. :0)

After ESA I flew down to visit my friend Marquis in Miami. He is

working as anaccountant for Bacardi (you know, the rum) and I had never been to Florida before. Unfortunately for me it rained 4 of the 6 days I was there, which is apparently unheard of in Miami... But I did get to see all of South Beach and at least spend 1 day at the ocean, so it was all worth it. I also flew over part of the everglades while I was there, which was amazing to get to see!

I came home for a day to attend to the Fleischer family reunion (my mom's side) and then back on the road to hang with Kahli and Landon for a week while their mama was working in WV. We had a blast visiting the children's museum and learning more about pokemon than I ever really needed to... haha Then Brandi and Mikey came and we went back to the children's museum, to the Indiana State Fair, and to this awesome mini golf/adventure place! I hope that K and L had as much fun as the adults did :0)

I finally made it back home last Sunday and have been catching up with friends, purging my room of junk that has been collecting dust since high school (yard sale next weekend if anyone is interested!!), and attending birthday parties. I start my internship at the National Aviary tomorrow and I couldn't be more excited. I guess from here on out the blogs will be much less boring and much more about birds but I'll keep it up. Hope everyone had an amazing summer!!

<3

22 July

Sorry I haven't blogged in awhile, it's been crazy busy. I moved to the Lemont Illinois fieldstation now. The first weekend (july 10-11) Ashley and I actually drove back up to Door County to help with a party that the Nature Conservancy of Wisconsin was having at our cabin to celebrate their 50th birthday. It was pretty cool, met some nice people and got a bunch of free nature conservancy stuff! (hat, water bottle, poster, screen saver, and a bumper sticker)

The next week we started doing adult observations. Much of the funding for our project comes from the Illinois tollway. 5 years ago they built a bridge through known Hines Emerald habitat, so once a summer they close down a lane of the bridge for 2 weeks (1 week in each direction) and we stand both on top of and below the bridge looking for dragonflies. We end up spending about 4 hours a day doing this, which is hot and sometimes scary work! But overall it's been pretty fun. I got to wear a yellow vest and hard hat like a construction worker and I've collected quite a few beeps ;-)

Last Saturday we decided to take a day trip to Chicago, as it's a 40 minute train ride away. Bristol, Jesse, Amy and I took the train in, then got a water taxi to go down and visit Navy Pier. They are currently filming parts of transformers 3 in downtown Chicago and have the main road blocked off so we actually took the water taxi underneath of part of the set! We got to see fake debris and a car half hanging off of the draw bridge for Michigan Ave. We walked around Navy Pier and ate lunch their, then walked to the Field Museum. After that we walked to Grant park and got our pictures taken in front of the fountain with the skyline in the background and caught the train home. Overall it was a very touristy experience!!

Sunday we just chilled and recovered from the blistery heat of Saturday. I'm afraid I may have gotten heat exhaustion walking around. Then Monday we did bridge observations again. It turns out that one of the many quirks of the Hines Emerald Dragonfly is that they don't like to fly when it is too hot, raining, or overcast. So on Tuesday it was too cloudy to do observations and Amy let us go into Chicago to see the aquarium. This time Tom, Jesse, and I went and made a day of it. It was crazy! There was an hour long line to get in and it was a freaking Tuesday! It was totally worth it though because we saw tons of beautiful fish, frogs, penguins, and a seal. I will eventually post some of those pictures on facebook as well when I get a chance. Then we stopped on the way home and got a proper deep dish Chicago pizza, which I never want to eat again. The thing weighed as much as a small child...

Yesterday was more bridge observations and today was mostly cleaning and inventory. Tonight is the last night we will all be together then we will split up amongst Door County, a trip the Upper Peninsula of MI, and here in Lemont. I will be staying in Lemont because next week is my last week working here :0( I will be home for the first week of August to present at ESA, then to Miami to visit Marquis!!!!! for a week, then out to Indy to chill with my rock star niece and nephew. Phew what a crazy and awesome summer.

<3

4 July :0)

Happy Independence Day!!

This was another pretty full week. The month of June flew by and with it my time in Door County. I'll be moving to the field station in Lemont, Illinois (about 20 mins west of Chicago) for almost all of the month of July. What a crazy change from a place that doesn't have running water and the closest mcdonald's an hour away to one of the largest cities in the country! This summer is turning out to be such an awesome adventure!! :0)

Earlier this week we mostly worked on adult training for observations. Two days in a row we saw swarms of between 20 and 30 Hines Emerald's up at Toft point by the ridges sanctuary! On Thursday we had some weather that was still nice out but not nice enough for dragonflies to be out so we went to mussel beach. This stretch of shoreline is all piles and piles of dead invasive zebra mussel shells. It's really quite sad but still very pretty. I posted a whole bunch of pictures to facebook of it.

For the long weekend I decided to drive down and visit the fam in Indianapolis!!! I google mapped the distance between DC and Indy and thought it was a doable 9 hours. After and accident outside Milwaukee, rush hour traffic in Chicago, and an unknown delay right on the border of Indianapolis it turned more into an almost unbearable 12 hour drive.... but i made it!!! We've had tons of fun going to the drive in to see toy story 3 (amazing movie), cookout and fire works for the 4th, and lots of Harry Potter Lego Wii. I'm just so happy to get to see everyone and spend the holiday with family

I also got a new app for my phone (thanks Anna!) I can take pictures on my phone and make them look like a polaroid!!






Happy Birthday America

27 June

Back at the brew with an iced honey latte, uploading my weekly photos and the blog. This week we started doing adult observations! I'm really excited for this part of the job because I have no experience with adult dragonflies so everything I do I'm learning. I can now tell the 5 families apart pretty well and can pick out certain species from 20 m away (like the 12 spot). Next week we're going to do practice observations, which means 8-12 we stand and talk into a recorder about every dragonfly we see and certain characteristics of them.

Ash and I are getting along amazingly and spend all our time together even when we don't have. I'm super happy to have such an awesome roommate! Also Jesse is back at this field station, so we've been having tons of fun! We watched the USA/Algeria game on Wednesday (yay!) but I napped through the USA/Ghana game yesterday (probably for the best...). Right now I'm winning the lab bracket, but It's too early to get that excited haha

On Thursday night we went looking for swarming dragonflies, but a storm started to come in so we went to cave point. It's this really cool state park where the cliffs go right into the Lake and when the wind is just right it makes amazing waves!


I tried to get the perfect wave picture, but never quite got it right. All the pictures I took are on facebook though. I even got a picture of Jess and Ash because Mom said I don't have any pictures of people.

Yesterday we participated in this really cool event called Bio Blitz. It's where a bunch of scientists get together and organize any public volunteers to do a huge day long survey of an area. There are 3 planned around the great lakes area of WI this summer, the one we did yesterday was on Europe Lake. I was there to help with the herpetological survey and aquatic invertebrates. Our group put in about 5 hours and found some American Toads, Spring Peepers, 2 treefrog tadpoles, a red backed salamander and eggs, and some pretty damselflies. I also got some really cool pictures while we were hiking, including this awesome orange fungus.


Afterwards Adam (the masters student in our lab) invited some of the people back to our cabin and we had a bonfire, which was really sweet. We got to meet Jenna, who is an Americorps volunteer working for "wisconvservation". She is one of the people who helped coordinate the bio blitz. We also met Jason who is part of the "green living project". He drives around the country making a documentary on sustainable living and green projects. He's like a modern day anthropologist documenting a cool part of American culture. On Tuesday he is driving over to Minneapolis and doing a large event working with Kashi.

All in all it was a cool/exciting week. Time to buckle down and spend the rest of the day doing work.

:0)

20 June

Sorry I haven't kept up that well this week. We had a spell of nasty weather and it messed up my ability to use my cell, the internet at the cabin, and our ability to leave the unpaved driveway (now partial swamp) in anything but the work trucks! We've been trying to get as much work done as possible despite this though, and we've had an absolutely beautiful weekend!

Last weekend Dr. Soluk took a couple of us out on his boat while he fished so I got to see more of Lake Michigan/Green Bay/Death's Door channel. It was a lot of fun, and so calm/relaxing I fell asleep :0)
Ashley finally made it up here and she's totally awesome! I really like having her around to talk to and hang out with. Also Daniel (aka Bristol) is pretty cool and after this summer I'm going to say things like "This proper English tea is gorgeous" and "Chiiiiillll Winston" Also we went yard sale-ing on Friday and I got a fondue pot, a super sweet present for Dr. Cothran, and spent $1.25 to get 2 sets of knitting needles and 3 balls of yarn. Needless to say I'm already half through another scarf i don't need... haha

We went back to fish creek yesteray (Ashley, Bristol, and I) and got some really super cool things! We also had a bon fire last night right on the lake :0) We have a to do list of all the other things we want to accomplish this week which include Toy Story 3 at the drive in, a kayak trip, and trying to find some karaoke! haha

I'll finish off with my current list of cool wild animals I've seen up here so far!
*Porcupine
*Skunk
*Deer
*Snake
*Wood frog, Spring Peeper, American toads/toadlets
*Coyote (from afar, and that's fine with me)
*Osprey
*Bats

:0) I'm a happy nature nerd

12 June

I found a cute little coffee shop in Ellison Bay (like 5 min drive) with yummy coffee, jazz music, and free internet! sooo here come the pictures! I think I'll try to post a few in this blog but the majority will simply be on facebook. Also i got a little nature happy, so if you aren't into that then it won't be worth looking on fb... haha

This is currently the best picture of the cabin I have. When it was originally built (almost 100 years ago) you could only get to it by boat from the lake. SO this is technically the front of the house, though from the point of view of our super long driveway it is actually the back. You can also see our fire pit and hammock (neither of them have gotten much use lately because of the rain) and a little of our canoe.

Here is the lake from our dock at sunset. It is pretty amazing :0)

I guess for now i'll also throw in a pic of where i'm currently sleeping. It isn't much and I get my new roomie tomorrow (they keep changing the day but I'm excited to meet her!) but it's homey and I can hear the frogs call at night!

so that's the whole thing haha. It's enough for my stuff and to walk to the bed. If you look behind the bed the pink "wall" is what separates my room from the guys next door. It's basically insulation soooo there isn't much privacy.

I think that's about it. Yesterday I returned some dragonflies to the Mink River by myself and made spaghetti for dinner. Today we decided to go to a local resturaunt/bar to watch to world cup (1-1 isn't so bad when playing England). Guess that's it for now!

:0)

10 June

Hey Everyone!

Not too much to report here. It's been raining a lot, you know random downpours. So work has either been really cold/wet/miserable or non-existent since we can't go out. Today was a nice exception with some beautiful sun and a day on the Mink River doing sampling. Same basic work, different site. Dr. Soluk must have years of survey data on these areas that are really cool since we seem to do a ton of it. :0)

I went to fish creek last weekend and bought a moo cow cup that has the word Wisconsin on it (pic to come maybe) and a Door County sticker for my nalgene. Everybody called me a tourist, but it made me happy haha. I haven't really done much hiking yet but I'm hoping maybe maybe mayybe it will clear up this weekend and I can get a little bit in. I'm also hoping it will eventually warm up enough to go swimming!

I got my camera cord from the rents (thank you!) and so now that i can charge it again I will take some pictures and get to the biblioteca to upload them. The frogs have been calling really loud lately (peepers and tree frogs i can pick out) and Monday night the coyotes were howling as well. Also I'm convinced there are NOT this many stars back home, as I've never seen so many in my life! Supposedly sometimes we can see a little of the northern lights but I haven't yet. Overall living in the wilderness is pretty awesome.

My two good tech friends (Jesse and Tom) got switched the our other field station in Lemont Illinois and won't be back for a few weeks. In their place I'm getting a roommate (Ashley, hope we get along since we're sharing 20 feet or so...) and the new grad student of Soluk's Daniel. Daniel is from Bristols soooo he has an accent! Guess it will keep things interesting, everyone moving around and such. Supposedly I might be in Lemont in early July but we'll see what happens when.

I think that's about it. Trying different foods all the time and maybe by the end of the summer I'll like more vegetables... though i doubt it...

:0)

6 June

Hey everybody,

I thought I would do a blog type thing since I'm not getting very good cell reception out here and it's easier to keep in touch. I'll try to update it often just in case someone actually wants to read about what is going on (haha) The cabin gets satellite internet and we are kept to a certain bandwidth per day sooo i may at some point put pictures up on my facebook and/or flickr but I will have to go into the closest town and find a library to do it. So that is on hold for at least today.

So i guess this one will be a long one since it's the first. I drove out here last Sunday and made it to our second field station in Lemont Illinois. I slept there for one night and continued on to WI. I'm officially in Ellison Bay in Door County Wiscosin. The cabin is over 100 years old and is literally right on Lake Michigan. It's absolutely beautiful even though we have no running water (aka porta potties and a 15 min drive to a campground to shower... not so bad though) and that my room is barely big enough for the chest of drawers and bunk bed in it. The people are really nice and will be changing throughout the summer as people go back and forth between the two field stations.

The first day of actual work I did we "burrow pumped". The dragonflies we study live in crayfish burrows along streamlets. This makes them really easy to find once you actually find the burrows. So far I have learned how to "noodle" for burrows (aka put my hand in muck and look for holes), pump them (we have a hand pump that sucks out everything from the burrow), and sort through to look for the Hines Emerald Dragonfly. I also learned the proper way to ID them, what they eat, and their general life history/care. The days go pretty quickly and the work isn't so bad. I'm having a lot of fun doing it and it's nice to do something slightly different each day.

Last night we drove about an hour down to Sturgen Bay and got fried fish and chips for dinner. We had a lot of fun hanging out as a lab. By the end of this week a couple of the other techs have started to call me Pitt and blame all my faults on my being from Pittsburgh (so sorry everyone from home i'm giving a bad name) Other places I've visited are mostly wetlands but I've also been to the shipwreck off of Gull's Rock's (you can snorkel there) and to the landing where the ferries are (i think maybe next weekend i'm going to take the ferry over to Washington island. they have a brewery and an ostrich farm! and i really just want to ride the ferry) I want to visit Fish creek (it's an artsy town with cool shopping) and some of the hiking trails on the rest of the nature conservancy land.

We get sketchy cell phone service, not much internet and NO tv but we have a projector and a screen and a wii so we play lots of that and watch movies (so far we saw alice and wonderland and tonight avatar)

I think that's all to report for now... here is my address in case anyone wants it. i do love mail haha


Wisconsin Dragonfly Research Facility
11575 Juice Mill Lane
Ellison Bay, WI 54210

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