Tuesday April 11th, 2006

Hey everyone. It’s been absolutely crazy the last couple or so weeks, with packing, moving, a funeral, then a plane to catch the next day. But I finally made it to Sacramento on Sunday April 2nd. I ended up having to wait at the airport for my ride to Georgetown for about 7 hours (it could be more, but I stopped paying attention- I didn’t want to know)!

I met my boss (Sheila) at the airport and we headed to a hotel to meet Vince (the demography crew leader) where we stayed the night. The next day we went out to Blodgett. The area is absolutely gorgeous! We arrived to find out, however, that our barracks is still under snow! (There’s about 4 feet of snow on the ground) We ended up moving into another building for the time being. Our temporary housing is supposed to be a lot better than the barracks, but there isn’t a phone line that works in the building. No internet for me:( Sometime this week we’re supposed to move into the barracks though!

There isn’t any cell phone service on the Blodgett grounds. I do have a little patch reception at the end of the road to Blodgett near the gate. My cell phone reception seems to be really patchy throughout the area, but go ahead and try your luck!! :)

The first half of our week was pretty boring. There was too much snow to go out and it either rained or snowed for most of it, so we couldn’t go out anyway. (Cold/wet eggs= dead eggs). Our first day was spent shoveling paths to our doors and to our woodpiles then moving in. The next day we woke up to see about 7 more inches on the ground. We shoveled again, made an awesome snow Spotted Owl and did a little training and map work.
Wednesday was more “office work” because of weather conditions. We made tethers for the mice and worked some more on some maps. Our other group members went and got more trucks from Enterprise. Yes, we are using rentals for our work vehicles... SCARY!!!

Thursday was the day we were all excited for. We were going out for owls! We split up the crew to go to these two different nest sites that we can actually get to. Our road still wasn’t plowed, so we hoofed it about a mile up the road and then cut into the forest. The nest tree was only about 50 meters off the road but it took us FOREVER to get there! I didn’t even bother to keep track of how many times I fell hip deep into the snow. It was so deep in some areas. Someone goes in, so you try to help them and you end up going in hip deep too!! :) We finally found the female of our owl pair, learned our protocol for mousing, and identifying the bands. By the time we were done, it was dark and we headed back to our road. More falling knee and hip deep in the snow filled fun. It was hilarious! I laughed so many times, I was crying! I did snap a few pics of the cutie spotted owl for everyone to see though!
Friday was a “free day” we handed in our paperwork and left Blodgett on a fun filled road trip. My crewmembers decided to visit Point Reyes on the coast. Gorgeous! We had two vehicles on the trip and we were following Daniel (our real bird nerd of the group). I get such a kick out of watching/following a real bird nerd. They stop and (maybe) pull over without any notice and point and something. Sometimes we knew what he was pointing at and sometimes we didn’t! :)
Today is Tuesday. We didn’t go out at all yesterday, ‘cause it was raining, then sleeting, then snowing all day. We did a bunch more map work (drawing UTM lines on some new COLORED maps) and that was basically it. I don’t know what’s in store for today. It’s raining again (supposed to all week). We might take out the trucks and do some recognizance on the roads and see how far we can get since the rain is melting a lot of the snow.