A particularly rowdy squirrel woke us all up early this morning, and I noticed that the sky was a really nice color, so I walked down by the dock quickly. The following pictures are why it's completely worth it to get up at 6 am when you're at Isle Royale. :)
So beautiful!! :)
Hiking to today's lake was particularly difficult- lots and lots of backwoods travel. At one point, we were in a swamp-like area that reminded me of every fairy tale swamp I've ever heard of. This was added to by the carnivorous plants that were scattered around!
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| Watch out for the three terrors of the fire swamp. |
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| This butterfly landed on us when we started hiking! We called him Mr. Butters. |
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| He decided that he wanted to pose with all of us. |
Sampling of this lake was pretty quick too, since it was another small one. There were three loons on it as well! There was a young one and two adults. They kept on making stressed noises, like we were upsetting them, but they were following us around the whole time! We tried to keep our distance, but they wouldn't stop following us! Loons are the drama queens of the bird world.
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| OooOoOOoOoOooooooOOoOoOoOoooO!!! (Translation: GET OUT OF MY SPACE!!) |
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| Angela, you'll have to help me on which plants these are!! I'm tempted to say Potamogeton of some sort, but I readily admit I'm nowhere near positive. |
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| This log was a perfect place to do titrations. |
Hiked back by a shorter route, and I ate TONS of wild blueberries and thimbleberries along the way. they were so delicious. Thimbleberries might be my new favorite thing- they're bigger than raspberries, and tastier too in my opinion. I wish I could plant thimbleberry bushes at my house.
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| Wild blueberries are wonderful!! |
When we got back, we filtered our samples for the day. Then, we used the SteriPen to purify water from down by the dock, and we relaxed while eating instant mashed potatoes and bacon (Seriously, one of the best camping meals ever).
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| Angela had to press some plants down on the dock too! She found a lovely macrophyte moustache in her bag. :) |
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| Basic Step 1: Remove SteriPen from its carrying case |
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| Basic Step 2: Get those germs!!! The SteriPen is so easy to use! |
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| I got pretty cold in the evenings, so I wore my Helly Hansen coat!! It was really comfortable for me, so I wore it a lot, even when it wasn't raining. :) |
The spider was back in the latrine again. We have a new theory, since during the day he was nowhere to be found. We think that during the day, he's a daddy long leg spider. And then, when the moon comes up, he transforms into a hideous were-spider, unable to quench his thirst for blood.
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o____O
It was super cold again! Climbing into my sleeping bag was the most wonderful feeling. I totally wrapped up my head and cinched it up all of the way, so that I was all wrapped up like a burrito. Once I was burrito'd, I got all warm. Best feeling ever after a long day. :)
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