back from florida

north hollywood beach, fl


the everglades


the solar decathlon on the national mall where all different colleges feature the solar powered, super energy efficient houses they've built

as you guys probably know, i spent the last week in florida for work. things were quite hectic at work before that because we had so much prep to do for the trip, like cleaning a bazillion bottles...and because the everglades is so low in certain nutrients that we are testing for, we have to clean reallllly reallllly well with a special regimen of acid washing and washing with distilled water to make sure they really are clean... so that's the kind of stuff that takes so long. i flew down to fort lauderdale on sunday, and i've never been down to south florida before so that was pretty cool. we stayed at a hotel about 10 miles west of downtown, so that we could be closer to our field site in what is known as water conservation area 3A, north of the national park area of the everglades. we seriously lucked out with our hotel because hyatt is in the process of renovating this building of suite rooms and so the prices for these really amazing rooms (with huuuge comfy beds and way too big flat screen tvs) were really low due to construction still going on. we also lucked out with weather because it was mostly in the 70's when we were out in the field and since there's absolutely no shade that was quite nice. our 'site' is actually a platform built from wood and aluminum pipes with flumes built next to it for our experiment. the flume is just two parallel lengths of plastic pieces that is closed off at the end so we can use pumps to change the speed of the water in the flume and see how that then affects the water chemistry and how much/what kind of sediment gets turned up in the water column when the water's moving faster. before humans came along and built levees and whatnot, the everglades used to flow faster (5 cm/s versus 1.5 cm/s) and one thing that that is seeming to be changing is the sediment transport. its likely that the slower water carries less sediment and smaller sediments and that seems to be affecting the 'ridge and slough' landscape of the everglades (there is a pattern of alternating higher ridges of sawgrass in the everglades and lower areas with deeper water) this special kind of landscape is very important to all the critters and birds that live out there so the fact that its disappearing is bad, and that's something that is being addressed in all the restoration efforts in the everglades. in fact, that bill that the congress just overruled president bush's veto on includes lots of important funding for everglades restoration. one of the great part about getting to the site was that we had to take an airboat out so that was always a fun ride, and one time we did see an alligator on the way! we worked really hard to get the experiment done on schedule and get all of the water samples processed and get our equipment shipped back to VA, so we actually had extra time before our flights on friday. me and one of the other techs, leanna, explored the area a bit and found a great beach between ft lauderdale and miami, and man was it gorgeous! it just made me soooo happy to get out into the ocean again :) after that, we had a bit of an adventure because our rental car wouldnt start, so we ended up having to get it towed, then missing our flight, getting rebooked, missing our connection back to washington because of plane problems, then finally finding one last flight that went to dulles airport instead of reagan airport.... but we made it home finalllly and didnt have to sleep in the airport! just a random thought, here's the websites for the agency i work for.... the US Geological Survey... if you ever want to check them out. www.usgs.gov or water.usgs.gov. also another really cool website that you should check out just because it's so awesome is earthasart.gsfc.nasa.gov. i can't believe it's november all ready, but i'll be home next week sometime for thanksgiving and man am i excited for that!

photos

FDR memorial

WWII memorial

capitol lawn

lunch spot in iowa

my bedroom

return of the blog

i spose y'all are curious about what i'm up to down here in DC/VA, living on my own and having a 'real job'.... i figured maybe i'd pick up my old blog and dust it off with a little update of what i've been doing for the past few months, complete with a few pictures. by this time, i've gotten around to doing quite a few of the 'touristy' things in the city like the museums and the monuments. i finally made it out to the FDR memorial today which dad has been bugging me to see, and i have to say, it's quite great. it was a crazy 92 degrees down here today.. i'm ready for fall already! one of the things that's really been great has been all the free music and festivals going on down here. last month, i made it to a couple of jazz festivals, and saw some other musicians at the kennedy center, which has a free performance every single night of the year! yesterday, i volunteered at the 'green festival' which had a lot of environmentally minded speakers, organizations and businesses so that was cool. being down in this area and amongst so much political activism is very cool... a few weeks ago i was involved in a war protest with about 10,000 other people. it's been nice having so many people that i know around town, including janelle and a good number of people i knew from cornell. my new roommate's quite nice, and so is our apartment... it almost feels too nice though it was what happened to work out. i'm totally loving being able to walk, bike, and take the metro pretty much everywhere, and poor reggie's probably collecting quite a bit of dust in the parking garage. work has been pretty good... a mix of computer modelling, lab analysis, and a little field work. it's rather interesting seeing the inside workings of the federal government. the people i work with are pretty cool, especially the younger ones. my bosses are nice, though our personalities don't totally mesh. there's quite an interesting age gap going on at the USGS... all the permanent employees are in their 40's and 50's while all of us younger people are just temporary employees because they're not doing much regular hiring. as most of you know, i spent the last 2 weeks in Iowa (Iowa Falls/ Eldora to be exact). the stream reach we worked on was the south fork of the iowa river and we did a bunch of measurements of velocity, stream discharge, dissolved oxygen (to quantify how much photosynthesis was going on), sediment mapping, and GPS surveying of the stream bed and banks. it was nice to get away from the city for a while and be out in the middle of soybean fields working outside. it was definitely nice to get back to my own bed yesterday and be able to cook for myself again. (let me tell you, it is not easy finding things without meat in them in iowa! we definitely gave up at least once and had a turkey sandwich when there wasn't much other option) for now, i don't know of any other field work that i'll be going away for, so it'll be back the office and analysing samples and data. next weekend, i'll be heading back to good old ithaca for homecoming and to rendezvous with a bunch of friends, so i'm definitely excited for that. i'll have to get back to you on the pictures, because my new mac computer doesn't seem to be agreeing with the photo uploader for this website right now...

4 days left in montana!!!!!

i can't believe it, but it's august 6 already!! friday was the last day of classes here.. they lasted for 8 weeks.. so yesterday i drove a few people to the glacier park airport to head on home. we took advantage of having to be up in kalispell (the nearest 'city' to us at 60 miles away) and had some yummy mexican food ( i wish we had some good mexican restaurants near us in ny..) and stopped at the 'mega thrift store' run by salvation army. i pretty much could've stayed there forever, but i had to leave sometime and so i left with some nice 50 cent stoneware dishes for my apt and some awesome shirts :) we were going to take one last good day hike today in the mission mtns just south of us, but all this smoke is settling into our valley from the various forest fires around us. it's actually pretty creepy looking... the moon and sun have eerie orange colors behind the haze and i feel like we're living on the ocean now because we can't see the other side anymore. the sunset's have been pretty cool looking too.. i can't believe the sun is setting at 8:30pm now already when it was setting at 10:30 when we first got here in june!! we actually took a nice hike last weekend up in the east side of glacier np. we had a moose run right across the trail in front of us and while i sat down by this lake while everyone else was taking a quick climb up the cliff behind us.. it was just my luck that a grizzly cub came lumbering around the side of the lake and fortunately went running into the woods, and then a marmot came scampering over to me! crazy! lotsssss of fresh huckleberries on the trail on the way back. last sunday, we went and picked cherries at the orchard across the street from the bio station. 5 lbs. for 3 bucks!!! wooo :) and sooo good! the east shore of our lake is seriously lined up and down with cherry orchards and so we have all the cherries we could possibly want. the area's kind of obsessed with cherries.. the brewery in town actually makes a seasonal cherry ale too. right now i'm basically just trying to finish up my paper and presentation, because i'm supposed to go out rafting for tuesday and wednesday to help my mentor collect some water samples and such. the time's just a flyin'! i'll be heading out on thursday afternoon after our presentations, caravaning with nate and robert again via yellowstone and teton, so i'll hopefully be home next wednesday (the 16?)

banff and jasper

two weeks ago nate, jeannie, and i headed up to canada for a little 4 day excursion to banff and jasper national parks. it's really nice having flexibility in our work schedules.. i mean we don't really have a schedule. generally we're here monday to friday but everybody's research projects vary and with many people working out in the field to collect data, their schedule is pretty abnormal. it's really nice because through the REU program, we get all of our meals provided, even weekend ones. for this trip, we put in a food request form and got a whole cooler of goodies and leftovers to take with us. we started out by driving up to the southern part of jasper np where the columbia icefields are. it took about 350 miles to get there. unfortunately the weather wasn't so hot up there.. pretty rainy and chilly, but it couldve been worse. we camped that night near the icefields and had a nice big campfire to warm ourselves up. also unfortunately for us, the canadian exchange rate pretty much stinks now.. our dollars are almost equal in value. the next morning we hiked to wilcox pass, which was really cool because it was all alpine environment...so lots of low shrubs and cool lichens and little alpine bogs. we also ran into a whole bunch of bighorn sheep chilling out on the cliffs. that afternoon we drove back down into banff np, trying to skirt the rain, and hiked out to a pretty waterfall. the lakes up there are totally awesome because they're really bright blue right now.. almost fake looking. it's because of all this 'glacial flour' (fine minerals) getting washed into the lakes with glacial runoff due to warming. i was pretty excited because on the hike back, i spotted a female moose taking a drink out of the pond and i had realllly wanted to see a moose:) that night we camped in a beautiful little campground near lake louise and stopped to buy some marshmallows so we could toast them over the fire. the weather predictions continued to say 'sunny' and 70, even though it was more like 50 and rainy. the next day we hiked out to some points overlooking lake louise and then out to the plain of six glaciers, the area whose runoff feeds lake louise. we were surprised to find an old teahouse built by swiss mountaineers at the turn of the 20th century at the end of the trail where i splurged on a $2.50 but very hot cup of tea. that evening we explored the city of banff (which unfortunately was even more touristy than i had thought) and then camped outside the city. on our way back to our campsite, we ran into a whole herd of elk, so that was pretty cool. the next morning we drove back via yoho national park (since we had come up to banff via kootenay national park) and that way we could say we visited all 4 canadian rocky parks. yoho was neat because it's where they found this super important area of well-preserved fossils that we talked about endlessly in one of my classes back at cornell. after a little trouble at the border, we made it back home and stopped to see pirates of the caribbean 2 (which i would not recommend...) and checked out a cowboy store where i refrained from buying some cowboy boots hehe. this past weekend, we headed down to missoula to pick up our friend robert and went tubing on the blackfoot river just northeast of missoula. it was over a hundred degrees and the good ole inner tubes cost just 4 bucks to rent so it was a wonderful and cheap way to relax... and we went through some pretty sweet rapids. basically everybody and their brother were out on the river.. it was like one big party.
it's hard to believe that we now only have 2 weekends left and our projects are wrapping up. the kids taking classes will be leaving in a week and a half so it'll get pretty lonely here the last week with just us 10 REU"ers left. my project is going really well.. since it involves mostly computer modeling and data analysis (which i dont mind that much because it's pretty cool the stuff that i've been able to do) i've also been going out in the field helping other people with their sampling so i can enjoy the warm weather and get outside. i've mostly been helping jeannie sampling vegetation in a little wetland/bay south on the lake, so that's been fun because it involves me wading through neck deep in grass and muck to sample stuff.
i cant believe it's almost august!!! and julie's gonna be 17 soon!!

to missoula and beyond

i realize, much to your dismay, that i haven't updated my adventures in a while. i haven't been on any really exciting backpacking trips lately because (gasp!) i've been out on the lake working on my project and working on writing programs in MATLAB (a computer programming language) to analyze wind data on the lake. in short, we're deploying wave gauges in various spots around the lake which will collect raw data on water pressure and velocity changes. using this information, we can make graphs of wave amplitude change over time, direction of wave propogation, and how much wave energy is directed towards certain parts of shore. i've been working for the last week on actually putting my MATLAB skills to real use and writing a program to take wind speed and wind direction data and calculate how much wave energy that would result in for 6 different wind stations around the lake. this guy living in the area works for UC santa barbara doing analysis of wave data and whatnot and used to deploy wave gauges for them out in the pacific, so he's been helping me figure everything out and debug my program. after lots and lots of errors and frustration, i got some rough, but very pretty to me graphs of wave power on the lake using my program.
here's proof i really have been doing work here...

for the weekend before july 4, we headed down to missoula to drop off robert and help him move into his dorm at the UM campus because he has to work on his project at a lab down there for a bit. the town is beautiful and green and very bike friendly. the campus has a mountain right behind it where there's a big white 'm' that you can hike up to and see the whole valley from. we hung out on campus for the weekend, exploring the town, playing ultimate frisbee and eating lots of huckleberry pie and huckleberry ice cream and trying out big sky brewery's brews, including the famous moose drool brown ale. while we were at the brewery, i saw a sign for a bluegrass festival down in hamilton, MT (about an hour below missoula) that i thought would be fun to go to. never in my wildest dreams did i think that i could convince 15 people from the bio station to come down with me to the festival for this weekend! it was quite a fun time, with lots of good bands and we got to camp there at the fairgrounds. of course, i had my cowboy hat on all weekend. yesterday, i went out to a bay on the southern part of the lake and helped jeannie survey vegetation for her project and check out this invasive plant that i'm also studying. the weather changed so quick and we ended up having to rush back to the state park where we had our truck and trailer parked to avoid the rain and hail just in the nick of time. ps. i need to learn to drive stickshift for real when i get home. oh, and we also drove through the national bison range last weekend and checked out the beautiful views of the mission mountains, glacial lake missoula and of course the pronghorns and bison. tomorrow, i'm headed off to banff national parc in canada until saturday with nate and jeannie just to hike and sightsee because i've been dying to go there forever. my mentor's gone for the rest of the week so my schedule's pretty flexible as long as i get the work done that i need to so i'm pretty psyched to head out tomorrow! and of course there will be some beauteous pictures of that when i get back.. :)

Logan Pass --> Hidden Lake

My mentor's been gone a lot the last few days so instead of doing work on monday, I got to go out and hike. Nate, Jeannie (the other girl working with the same mentor as I) headed up to Glacier and drove up to Logan Pass, which is the steep valley through which the road goes to get from the west side of the park to the east. it only opened up on last friday, because they had to clear out all the snow and deal with flooding from runoff, so it was exciting to drive up through there. we parked at the logan pass visitor's center and took a trail from there to a little lake called hidden lake. in the first mile of the trail, there's lots of people because at this time of the year there's still snow covering everything. tons of people went walking by in shorts and tanks toting their telemark skis and snowboards as well, trekking up to the top of the slopes. it was pretty exciting to hike through snow, especially since i've been pretty deprived the last year. we saw lots of mountain goats along the way, and even a kid. the peaks around us were so majestic and still snow-capped. it's sad though.. i was just reading that only 35 glaciers still exist in the park, down from 150 when it was first explored back in the mid 19th century.. all thanks to climate warming in the area. we hiked down a steep slope to the lake, which was still mostly covered in ice and relaxed for a bit. we ran into a one-horned goat that people had warned us was pretty mean, but he didnt seem too bad. we hiked back out towards our car and did some serious sliding down the snow in our shorts on the way, providing entertainment for all the people still on the trail. when we arrived at our car, we found a big ole bighorn sheep waiting to greet us. all in all.. pretty awesome.