Wow It has been a long time….

Sorry everyone who has been following. I realize that it has been a very long time since I last wrote anything, for that I am sorry. So a little about what has been going on, big broad strokes view.

Personally

– in the past three weeks Most of the people I came to call friends have left. Maddie was the first to leave, she headed back home and then on to school.

 

Next to leave were the ‘twins’ Mo and Bernadette, These kids were truly blessed in their lives. everywhere they went they brought smiles to peoples faces. I got to meet their parents before they left which was a great pleasure.

and finally Carrie, she was one of my roommates for a time, she is an interesting character this one. She left yesterday.

on Aug 19th I realized that i was starting to get sick. I actually had to take sick time on the 20th and 21st, which was fine since all I did was lay in bed and be sick. Saturday was a bit better I actually went out to Thunder Hole to see how hurricane bill was affecting it; pretty awesome.

Sunday, my birthday, was by far the worst day for wave action. at noon on the 23rd 20 people who were not listening to the ranger warnings to stay off the rocks were slammed by a rouge wave and seven of them were sucked out to sea. One seven year old lost her life to this tragedy and the father is not doing to well either. I don’t have any photos from Sunday but the waves were ENORMOUS!!! there is this one place called Otter Cliffs and the wave crash was doubling the height of the cliffs, which are about 40 feet tall.

 

Work

Wow where do I start, we have been busy for that last couple of weeks with a few projects. these are not in any particular order….except for maybe how much a pain in the ass they are.

 

Seal Cove Pond is a huge problem there is a dam at the south en of this pond that has been there for 50 years. the town of Tremont got a grant to put a fish ladder in to open up hundreds of acres of prime breeding habitat for Ale Wives, a type of halibut. This was great news! the problems started the day before the ground breaking began, apparently the build will be impacting some of the park lands. Well the people involved in this build failed to get park permission for impacting park property. The group came to David, my boss’s boss, and talked to him and told him what the project was and it all sounded great. A fish ladder would be installed and open up habitat yada yada yada…David asked the fateful question…when do you start the build…’tomorrow’ David was a little less then pleased with this. he ran around to everyone at HQ and got verbal acceptance of this proposal. the fish ladder group was a go! what a nightmare, the contractors that are on the job have never done anything like this before, they have put so much silt in to the stream with their construction plans it is ridiculous. They are also so far behind schedule that it will be impressive if they finish at all…they have had a ridiculous number set backs including coffer dams collapsing and excavators not reaching as far as they needed. After hurricane Bill both pools were full and it was like nothing had happened.  After the rain event it triggered a seaward migration of Ale Wives which were stuck upstream of the coffer dam. Bik and I went out to  Seal Cove and dip netted around 4000 fish and never made a dent in the population. There were no workers around for the hours that we were there and as we were getting ready to leave they all showed up. after some discussion it was finally decided to open the spill way up for the night and allow the water to flow and allow the most fish to migrate down stream.

We have a terrestrial amphibian study plot that is behind the local high school, during the school year between the local college and high school the data is collected. During the summer we collect the data and store it until school starts. We go out about twice a week and turn over these cover boards, there are five transects with ten stations and two cover boards each. It is interesting. On average we have seen about two salamanders each visit, not really sure if that is good or bad.

We are starting to have problems with beaver again but in a different location. There is a family that has moved into a location on duck brook road. Not a good area as far as humans go but really ideal if you are a beaver. We don’t have permission to trap yet and are not sure if we are going to receive permission. We are in a holding pattern as far as this project is concerned.

The next big project that we are working on is setting up a hawk watch on Isle au Haut. If you have been reading you all know were Isle au Haut is located and what it is. We have been discussing this possibility for a while. Last week we finally went out to Isle au Haut to scout out locations. We left the office around 8 in the morning and finally arrived at the island around 11am. We hiked from 11 to 3:30. We found a few places but one stood out above all others we called it out lunch break spot…because well we had lunch there. I will have my camera there when I go next and put some up of our location for watching. It is a pretty spectacular location and I can’t wait to go. I will not be going until the week of the 14th. Then I will go two weeks after that.

One last thing… A potential trip out to Petit Manan thislabor day weekend and go banding with fish and wildlife :) I will keep you up to date with this and take a ton of photos.

and so we go…

Hi all....I have not fallen off the face of the earth...I have been super busy and was sick this past weekend. I will start a post today but don't expect it before saturday...

Miss you all

J

Week of 3 August

I would like to start right off stating that I can’t fully remember what it was we REALLY did this week, I recall sitting around a lot and discussing what options we had on several of our short term and long term projects. We were also given the responsibility for a loon raft, this is a floating island where loons can nest…It is a fake island in essence. We also wandered around an area of Marsh for about an hour or two looking for beaver activity on ANP land. After much slogging around and searching this incredibly large area we found no lodge or other signs of beaver. Which means it is not our problem, yipee!

Management is starting to have doubts about moving as many beavers that we are suggesting, so there has been little done with beavers other then keeping an eye on where they are working.

GIS work – I have finally completed all the maps for the vernal pools (5) and the map for beavers (1). These have been printed and are going to hung around the building and used for field researchers when they arrive to find these locations. I fret that i missed something or that i put the wrong things in but Bruce loves them and is happy to have something he can work with.

Friday was a day of actual labor, we grabbed the fire team that was on and had them bring pumps to a pool constructed by Rockefeller at one of the carriage road bridges. It has been negatively impacted by the gravel that lines the roads of the park and from the carriage roads. this impacts the historical resource and the natural resource that this pool represents. We shoveled it out by hand for a few hours and until the dump truck was full…we were only half done…I think we will be headed back this week. I will hopefully get some of the photos that Maddie shot while it was being done.

there is one other portion of the Stanley Brook that is impacted by run off water from the town of Seal Harbor. We have some impoundments set up to allow the silt to settle out but they are filling up entirely too fast so we went out to set up further sitl fence lines to allow for more of the silt to settle out. we cut down dead wood and placed it in the way in an attempt to slow the flow down and allow for more settling. We shall see what happens with the next big rain and see if what we have done helps or hurts.

One final accomplishment that we achieved this week was completely taking seven years of data and transferring it into an electronic format (excel). it was supposed to have taken much longer but we spent so much time in limbo this week we worked on it every time we were sitting around. Bruce was really ahppy and surprised.

Well that is is it for this week. And so we go into another week of fun!

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.

The application process begins

So I have started looking for the next path to take in my life, a.k.a. looking for another job. I am using USAJobs.gov and attempting to find something at one of the many national parks. I missed the big hire for winter help at Big Bend (sad), however there are many other jobs that i can choose from…they are all pretty much located in the west or in Florida.

One other place that I have been looking for jobs is in Alaska working as a US Marine Fisheries Observer. This would entail me going out to sea for a few months at a time and recording fish takes, depths, method and other data. It pays really well and it is contracted work in three month increments. I can do this during the winter and then come back here to Acadia during the summer. Not sure what to do, the money is a big dealio, and I am pretty sure I would enjoy the work, and if i didn’t then I would only be stuck for three months.

Decisions decisions. Both my wife and I realize that i would be away from home quite a bit, but I think that I need to go to where the money is, and if working a fishing boat in Alaska is where i need to go…Then i guess I had better get used to some wicked cold weather.

Let me know your thoughts.

and so we go!

Beaver Fever!

This past week was dedicated to moving a family of beaver to a new home. We had to move these beaver because they were affecting the Carriage Road they were setting up house near.

Trapping beaver is interesting because when you frame it with a gov’t schedule it falls way out side the ‘normal’ work schedule. By this I mean, we start at 0700 to go check the traps and then go about the business of the day. Then we go home at the end of the day for about three hours and then head back out to set the traps for that night. we usually go out around 1930 for about one to two hours setting everything up. The reason for the late night is that all the areas we trap are in very close proximity to the public. So we set traps late to reduce possible conflicts that can arise from a difference of opinions.

We were successful we got an adult female and two Young of the year. Here are some photos from the experience.

This week also marked, I am pretty sure, completion of several GIS projects that I had been tasked to do. Now all I have left is creating the metadata for the things that I created.

That is all for the week. And so we go!

A Weekend of Friends and Camping

This past weekend I went to Isle au Haut. Where and what is Isle au Haut you may ask yourself, well here is a map of where I am and where I went.

It is a two hour car ride to get to get to Stonington, which is where we catch the ferry. The ferry is a bit pricey, especially on a budget. It was a great weekend and thus worth the money.

The people who went:

Adam My roommate -

Maddie the ‘Intern’ & Jack the Cousin -

Mo the Trails girl -

Bernie the Sister -

What a cast of characters this was… Mo and Bernie have never been camping before so this was their first experience at anything approaching a camping experience. Maddie and Jack had been camping before so had Adam. This is the cabin that we stayed in, called the Eli Cabin:

It is a great place to go for a get away…there is no running water except for a stream out front, No electricity and there was a wood burning stove. There is also a view of the Ocean from the front porch. We slept six at the cabin, the sisters slept in the loft, I had the bottom bunk, Maddie had the top bunk, Jack had the tent on the porch and Adam had this Taj Mahal of a hammock that he slept in, her is a shot of us putting it up:

Bernie thought it was really cool and was the first person in it:

so after we got things settled around ‘camp’ we went down to the water and watched Huck Mo and Tom Bernie try their hand a rafting:

and then they tried it separately which was funny:

Unfortunately even solo the raft was a little tinsy weensy unstable:

Both sisters eventually gave up and just started ‘swimming’ with the raft.

Bernie and Mo came in and Jack wanted some of the action too so he tried his hand at the raft:

After we were done playing around at the water we went back up to the cabin and took shifts in changing in to some dry warm clothes and the cooking commenced. By all accounts I made a very delicious stew.

after sitting around and talking for a while we all bedded down for the night, couldn’t even tell you what time it was but it was dark.

Then next morning it down poured early we had a tarp over the hammock where Adam slept but it filled with water and dumped on top of him right at sunrise. he came walking in to the cabin and said' ‘ I got wet’ we all sat up and said ‘oh no’ and then promptly fell back to sleep. We finally rose after sunrise and started cooking breakfast.

When we finished breakfast we went out to hike it was still wet from the rain and there was a fog hanging around. We decided to go to Long Pond, found the trail and started. By the time we made it to the pond we were all soaked through. This was because the trail in a great many places was covered by blueberry bushes which were covered by rain. When we got to Long Pond we stopped for a swim in the fog. It was very … Bracing … aka COLD! At this point Mo and Bernie took off to head back to the mainland. They needed to go to church on Sunday but had to leave Saturday in order to make it…so we parted ways at the pond. so that left Maddie, Jack, Adam and I for the rest of the trip.

After we were done freezing…swimming…we took off again and finished our hike which included a 1.5 mile ‘shortcut’. needless to say we were all tired so we went down to the waters edge to hang out for a while…by this time the sun had come out and blessed us with a great day…We just sat on the beach and relaxed in the sun for a few hours, basically basking on the rocks like iguanas.

That night for dinner we had chili with hotdogs. Mo had made the chili the night before camping and had us bring it out. It was delicious and the four of us devoured all of it. we were stuffed.

We sat up late into the night chatting I also taught Maddie and Jack how to play euchre. it was a great ending to a really good day.

The following morning we had pop tarts for breakfast and began the laborious process of cleaning up the cabin and packing our things up to leave. there is a pack it out rule meaning you take out what you bring in…It was a lot of shit that we had. We had two miles of back breaking work to get all of our things back to the dock. and we barley made it in time.

One really cool thing that i have forgotten to mention, in the cabin are a set of journals that have been kept by the transients that have stayed at the cabin. It now holds entries by Bernie, Mo and Myself. the journal started in September of 1987. It has some interesting reading within those pages.

Here are two last image i will leave you with on of Jack recovering form the hike on the deck chair fo the ferry and on of Maddie and I sitting just in front of Jack.

  Jack is 18 and Yes he is starting Harvard in the fall.

And so we go!

Tomorrow I will get together some stuff from today's work list and yesterdays and post about them.

Till next time