Saturday, July 22, 2017

7/22 Last Day!

This morning we woke up early. It was time to check our mice traps for the final time! To my surprise, three of the buckets contained mammals. Pedro then showed our group the proper way to handle the NW species of mouse. He described that this variety of mouse has pocket cheeks to hold extra food. "Pej" told us how to distinguish sex and maturity also. They were actually very adorable. After the mouse-capades, we began to pack up and break down camp. We left our camp cleaner than when we arrived. "pack it in, pack it out"

After we finally got loaded up, we pulled out to go take showers, blog, and head for home! Jessica, Monet, and pedro made & wore cool team shirts.(picture attached) Im riding home in the blue truck with Pedro, pretty excited to shoot the bull with him. I wish he'd get hired on at heritage. We need a wildlife person in our faculty. He is so nice, intelligent, and charismatic.  

i can't wait to see my son.


7/21 Pow-Wow

Today was the last full day of our trip. We checked our mice traps and not a single group caught a specimen. We are heading into Washington state to go to a state park to meet up with one of Jessica's favorites. We met Landin Charlo, he was an incredible guy who attends WSU to complete his masters. We learned about forest ecology and the tools needed to calibrate wind, temp, direction, etc. the proper term is land surveying i believe. Mr. Charlo then began to tell us about his research project. It was so fascinating to learn about the biggest woodpecker in North America, the "pileated" woody. It was shocked to find out that the pileated is a keystone species. Meaning a species on which other species in an ecosystem largely depend, such that if it were removed the ecosystem would change drastically. Landin even told us that up to 20 species reuse the nests that pileated woodpecker abandon. We had to hike up a steep hill also! after that we headed to take showers and get ready for the pow-wow. It was amazing at julyamsh. The food, culture, people, and dancing were all amazing! i loved it, and in fact hated to leave so early. Oh well, ill attend next year for sure!  

7/20

This morning we traveled to the casino and were able to speak with Quanah & Dave Matheson. The are both apart of the coeur d'Alene tribe. They talked and taught us about the history and values of the coeur d'Alene indians. After our talk we loaded back into the vans and headed back to camp. We had mammalogy 101 with pedro where he taught us all about different kinds of mice & rat species. We briefly touched on a few designs of traps that can be set to capture the small mammals without harming them. Hopefully my group can catch the most specimens. We had yummy hamburgers for dinner. (made myself a double)😏

During the middle of the night a deer ran down the hill into camp and smashed into Robyns tent. It was very intense but I'm glad nobody got injured. Hopefully the poor deer is okay

Thursday, July 20, 2017

7/19 Lake Coeur d'Alene

We are preparing to move to a new location today. We were woken up early so that we could begin to pack up camp... It took forever.

Our new location is located in Idaho. When we arrived at our new location in lake coeur d'Alene, we were greeted by a huge traditional feast. We had smoked salmon, and elk which were both cooked underground. I enjoyed camas and moss, it was very delicious! We ended the evening with a canoe blessing ceremony which was very moving. (I was so stuffed, I could hardly move.) The day had lots of traveling, so I attached a selfie of the marshmallow crew, along with a few other memories of the day!


 

Wednesday, July 19, 2017

7/18 Wellpinit pow-wow grounds

I finally arrived after missing the first week. I got dropped off at the pow-wow grounds in Wellpinit Washington; while the group was out, I set up camp and familiarized myself with the grounds. I was only alone for about an hour before everyone returned. We made some spaghetti for dinner and then prepped for a swimming trip at lake roosevelt. We took canoes out and found an awesome swim spot. After loading up the boats we headed back to camp; Warren and I saw a healthy black bear! Awesome first day to my trip