at home in the rockies

So after more than 2800 miles and about 6 days, I am at last in Polson, Montana! It was pretty boring at times being by myself, but it was pretty nice too after constantly being around people last semester. Since I don't have a CD player and was usually too lazy to hook up my iPod, I mostly relied on the radio. Needless to say, I know about 100 country songs by heart now.. In Mitchell, SD, home of the Corn Palace, I met up with two guys from Virginia and West Virginia who are in this program as well, Nate and Robert. We checked out the Badlands, Mt Rushmore, Crazy Horse monument in SD, Devil's Tower in WY, and LIttle Bighorn Battlefield and the National Bison Range in MT.
The weather was moslty nice except for some scary golf ball sized hail in WY and some crazy wind in MT than just about knocked my bike off my car. Everything has been so incredibly gorgeous.. its so different driving myself out rather than sleeping through alot while dad drives. The black hills of SD were gorgeous, and of course all of Montana and Wyoming, and even the hills of Wisconsin that I camped in.

The program that I'm doing is called Research Experience for Undergrads, or REU for short. It's a grant from NSF to U. Montana that allows us to do it.. schools all around the country have similar programs in varying subjects. The Biological Station is on the east shore of the lake. The lake is just stunning.. it's bluegreen because its so clean and has lots of glacial sediment in it. and its cold hehe. It's actually a pretty huge lake, largest in MOntana. BEhind us you can see snowcapped peaks, the Mission Range. To our northeast is Glacier NP, and Canada. There's about 40 of us students here, living in little 2 person cabins. 10 of us are REU'ers and the rest are taking summer ecology classes. For now we're all just settling into things, starting to figure out what we're gonna be doing. It's pretty cool, because we're really independent. I've basically been exploring a little, reading articles, hearing some talks, and today I got to tag along with my mentor's class taking out our bio station boat on part of the lake. we went to a little island called wild horse island and had breathtaking views from the top of a knoll overlooking the lake. In typical fashion, the boat overheated a tad on the way back , but we eventually made it back. It looks like already next week, I'll be camping out with the class again, deploying a wave gauge out on the lake, and possibly rafting down a river from the canadian border to take some hydrological measurements. very exciting :)
and it hailed again last night!