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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