Day 14: July 18, 2012

It was so cold when we woke up today!! It can get really cold on the island, even during the summer. As soon as I poked my head out of the sleeping bag, my body rejected the idea of moving another inch. So I snatched my ice cold jeans and pulled them into my snuggly warm sleeping bag to warm them up. Figured it would make changing into work clothes less of a shock.

It wasn't. It was freezing this morning. I can't believe that I didn't notice it earlier. Our Lafuma bags are made to keep you warm in temperatures as low as 30 degrees Fahrenheit! I didn't think we'd need it, but as it turns out the temperatures on Isle Royale can be pretty cold in the summer! I appreciated the fact that the area of the sleeping bag around the zipper is a little bit more fluffy, so that the cold zipper doesn't hit your skin when you're getting all comfortable in there. There's also a different kind of fabric at the bottom of the bag, near your feet. The bag itself is synthetic, but the foot-area is more felt-y, and keeps your feet really toasty. That bag has some really cool design features!!

It was a really long hike to sample today- with lots of backwoods hiking. Once we got there, we ate a quick lunch and packed everything up to start our work for the day!

You can see the lake!! Such a nice view.

We saw butterflies!

Ready to sample!!

We sampled the lake pretty quickly! It was a tiny one. There also wasn't tons of wind, so Charlotte and Sarah were able to paddle around without added difficulty.

Although the boat can be difficult even with no wind.

I'm also starting to get really used to testing alkalinity and water color, so that's going more smoothly now and taking up less time. Basically, from one site in each quadrant of the lakes, we fill a bottle with water 1 meter below the surface in an area that hasn't been stirred up by our walking. I test that water, both filtered and unfiltered, to determine its alkalinity, and I test the unfiltered water color. I usually sit somewhere along the shore to do the tests, or on a log or sometimes even in the water. I use little alkalinity and water color kits, and we have a small container for any chemical waste, little jugs of deionized water, kimwipes, and extra reagents in our tiny Eagle Creek backpack!

Angela usually grabbed the sample bottle of water for me while I set up my chemistry gear somewhere on shore.

I usually picked a spot on land where I could run my tests. Occasionally though, I'd sit on a floating log, or stand up in the water and use the floaties as lab tables!

Chemistry is such fun. :)

I also run an alkalinity test on 5 mL of sediment porewater, the water that's found in between particles of sediment a few inches from the sediment's surface. We collect it by sticking a tube sampler with an airstone attached to the inside into the sediment. The airstone goes below the level of the sediment, and we use a syringe to pull water up through the tube attached to the airstone! It takes a really long time to get water up when the sediment is mucky. We put the first 45-60 mL of water back into the lake, just in case there was water from the water column in the tube. And then, we fill up our sample bottles!

Angela became a master of working the tube sampler!

Hiked back to McArgo, and rested on the dock for a bit while Angela pressed plants. While there, we decided that Latin names for plants sound like Harry Potter curses.

EQUISETUM FLUVIATILE!!!

You can't tell who some of these characters are supposed to be. The sparkly one is Cedric.

Sarah brought up that while carrying the integrated tube sampler, she looked like a sand person. So of course, we had to take pictures.



Imagine these sound effects

"The sand people are easily startled. But they'll soon be back, and in greater numbers."

Told ya

There was a killer spider in the latrine when I went there before bed. I'm not joking. You all think I'm joking, but it was seriously huge. And its eyes were glowing, and it was right there on the wall. So I went back to get someone, and Sarah went back with me to take a picture of it.

We were standing very far away, just in case it decided to leap toward us.

To confirm its size and creep-ocity, I'll add some scale to the picture. It was huge.

Not photoshopped.

See?

But in all seriousness, this spider was at least the size of my palm, including his legs. After seeing this guy, I'm convinced that no spider back home is going to frighten me ever again. We had a conversation back at the shelter about how spiders would be less frightening if they looked like ponies.

... Tiny 8 legged ponies with one shiny eye.

And now, reading back over that, I'm sort of terrified. Maybe spiders should just stay the way they are.