Catch up time

So lets go back to last Saturday; I volunteered to transport cars from Schoodic to MDI. The cars belonged to staffers of the Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, Senator Susan Collins and the NPS director. It was minimal pomp and circumstance which was kinda nice. the Secretary was very engaged with the small presentations that were given concerning the money given to ANP by the government from the Reinvestment monies. after about an hour or so there I drove back an X-terra to the Visitor Center (VC). It was not a bad experience and I got paid overtime for it so it was nice. After I was done with that for the day I decided to go Hiking for the remainder of the day.

I decided to head out to Pemetic Mt. I figured since i had walked all the way around it that maybe I should go over it. So I did. It was a comfortable 4.2 mile hike up and down the mountain.

On the way up i found this cool waterfall coming don the side of the mountain:

and finally that night I went contra dancing with some friends at the local college:

This photo was taken by one of the girls from Schoodic, Twas a fun night of dancing.

Sunday was another day of hiking. I went up the West Face trail of Cadillac Mountain. It was a very treacherous hike that day because the mountain had not dried up from the last rain we had and it was foggy so it was getting wetter as the hike went on. I was supposed to go hiking with a friend that day but they bailed on me so I went by my self. Prolly not the greatest of ideas but I didn’t realize how bad it was going to be on the climb up. about halfway up this climb I started encountering folks who were turning around and headed back to the top because it was so bad. I did make it to the top of the trail but WHEW it was a nail biter. the climb down was not bad at all…I went a different way. when i reached the bottom of the mountain the clouds let loose and it poured on me the last two miles of my hike. Oh well I was headed home anyway.

I also applied to jobs which was the first half of the day. Hear is hoping that i find something before I leave here.

 

Monday, the first day of work was supposed to be spent climbing the Precipice Trail. Unfortunately it POURED rain and there was no way we were going up the mountain. so instead we worked inside for the first half of the day. I worked on GIS and creating metadata for some of the data layers that I created. around one when the rain had stopped and the sun came out we headed out to finish up some things we had left over from Friday.

Tuesday, Awesome day, Maddie and I got to hike the precipice to open the trail. It took us about an hour and a half to reach the summit of Champlain Mt. It was wicked HOT!, the cliff face is fully in the sun during the morning and let me tell you we both felt it by the time we reached the top. I had to take my uniform shirt off to cool off.

  As a side note this is the first picture of me that i have not taken myself.

For the rest of the day Maddie, Bruce and I collected our invertebrate bags from three locations before the end of the day arrived.

Wednesday, I finally got to go banding, we were target banding for Nelsons Sharp-tailed Sparrows. the researchers are looking at how mercury is affecting this marsh species of bird. Here on MDI is the ‘clean’ site and they have a ‘dirty’ site somewhere on the Penobscot river.  we finally caught five after setting the nets in a big line a flushing them into the nets.

 

When I was done with banding for the day I met up with the rest of the gang and we finished the Invert bags. and then it was time to head home.

 

Thursday, I spent the day in the field with a researcher who is looking a Dragonflies and Damselflies. We basically drove all over MDI and stopped at a ton of vernal pools and small ponds searching for exuvia, the shedding left behind after emerging into adult morph. It was an excellent day out with good sun. During the day Alyssa and I were talking about what it was she was looking for in these water systems. It came to light that I had seen Dragon flies at the top of every mountain that I had hiked. After some more conversation she was interested in visiting some of these sites. I mentioned several sites that met her criteria and told her to ask if one of us could help her again on Friday.

Friday,  It is Beaver Dam tear out day. We got to use the YCC (Youth Conservation Corps) kids to help us for the day. We hit the dams with a vengeance and had them  ripped out in about three hours of labor intensive work. It was rewarding to watch the water start flowing again. after that was complete I went out with Alyssa and we hiked out to one of the ponds at Cadillac Mt. We drove up Cadillac and Parked close to the South Ridge trail…My first time driving Cadillac…and hiked out. It was about a mile hike out, really short. we sampled the pond called the feather bed and started back up about a quarter of the way back we saw another pond and I asked Alyssa if she wanted to sample that one as well, she said yes. And so we headed back down and had to go off trail to get to it. We were finally done and headed out, we made the parking lot and decided to call it quits for the day. I headed back to HQ and found Bruce and he said call it a day. I did, I was exhausted for this weeks worth of work.

I am finishing this on Saturday the first of August, today I will be hiking most of the day and will probably going to a Contra dance tonight in Blue Hill. should be a great time.

One other thing i completed this week was my first monthly report for IES. After e-mailing Sandi, she said that I could use this four month job as my full internship.

And so we go, in to a week of undiscovered fun.