summer on the elwha river

most of my field work these days is on the elwha river in western washington. i am usually up there every five to six weeks from april to october for two to three weeks at a time. yes, the red lion hotel and i are quite familiar with one another and most of the restaurant servers know me by name... 

my work on the elwha is exciting and always changing. in 2012, the two dams on the river started to be removed. a month ago, the final chunk was blasted from the upper dam. the river is free for the first time in 100 years and salmon have already made it past both dam sites...a sight that has not been seen since 1912. incredible! i work in the estuary and the nearshore and am trying to understand how those systems respond to a VERY big pulse of sediment. 

 one of the estuaries i work in. it is really muddy these days!

colleagues from seattle and i just received a grant to do work at sites throughout the watershed, so i got to see more of the river this summer while we were testing some new sensors. 

deploying one of our sensors at the diversion

(i am tethered to the railing and trying not to fall in

or drop the sensor into the river while i attach it)

 mama bear! we got a very close look at her and her cub

while we were hiking out to a site. we turned around quickly! 

(and of course my camera battery went dead after this photo

so i didn't get one of the incredibly cute cub in the tree)

one of the former dam sites.

one of the other things i do every summer on the elwha is scuba dive in the ocean to count algae and invertebrates living on the seafloor. we are interested in knowing how the abundance of these critters has changed since dam removal began. 

 hanging out at a safety stop

heading out to our sites

in addition to my field work, i was training for an ultra-marathon so i was doing a lot of running on the trails in the area. the blackberries and thimble berries along the trail were delicious and the wildflowers were in full bloom in july.

 columbine

 mix of wildflowers

 indian pipe - a VERY cool plant that lacks chlorophyll

field work is not without its challenges, however. shortly after i left port angeles in august a beaver ate through one of my instruments in the estuary! grr! 

family fun in nebraska!

the end destination of our western road trip was seward, nebraska, where we met pete's side of the family that we see much less often. the neukirchs have spread themselves from california to massachusetts so getting everyone together in one place was quite an accomplishment! other than hanging out together, the main driver for our reunion was uncle paul's new barn/workshop/house. it was also the fourth of july - and seward is the small town 4th of july capital. 

we had a great time! paul gave us a tour of the corn field and his new high-tech irrigation system. we went to the 4th of july parade (where we saw many interesting things...i'm not sure if there were more politicians or czech queens). we played a round of 4x4 croquet on the south 40. and most importantly, we blew up a lot of things! it actually felt a little bit weird to the crew from california...if we had lit anything on fire here the whole state would have burned down. thanks family for the fun weekend!

paul giving pete a tutorial on corn

the leaders in the croquet game battling some rough terrain

parade watching in some HOT weather

 pete and eva lighting snakes

 sparkler fun!

erin won our sparkler drawing contest

the whole lovely group

western road trip

pete and i did not have a lot of time together this summer. when we did, we made the most of it and spent LOTS of time with each other...in the car or in an airplane. 

our first trip of the summer was a road trip from spokane, washington, to seward, nebraska. essentially we were traveling from one (foley) family gathering to another (neukirch). we only had four days to drive 1600 miles so we set some travel goals and were on our way. our first stop was chico hot springs, montana. chico is just north of the northern yellowstone entrance and is a place i was introduced to in 2006 when two dear friends got married. and there are hot springs...what else could you ask for after six hours in the car? 

mammoth hot springs

we spent the next day making our way around yellowstone. for such a short time in the park, we managed to cross nearly every large mammal off the list - black bear, bison, grizzly bear, elk, bison, moose, coyote, and bison. the moose we saw had her calf with her...pete thought that might be our chance to see a pack of hunting wolves, but no luck. i wish we had three more days to spend there.

 juvenile male bison "play" fighting

 a beautiful coyote prancing through the wildflowers

 mr. elk, in full velvet

 upper yellowstone falls

 grizzly bear rooting around for food

marmot!

moose (look for her calf in the grass behind her)

 geysers! 

 thermal pools and geysers!

pete tracking a black bear in the valley below

on day three we drove through big horn national forest, which was beautiful! wild flowers abounding and geologic features that even two biologists could appreciate. we ended day three with a walk through mount rushmore and delicious indian food in rapid city, south dakota. (who knew?!)

 wildflowers in big horn national forest

 the fifth head... :)

the men of mount rushmore 

on our last day we drove through the badlands, inaugurated pete to wall drug, enjoyed the sand hills of nebraska, and arrived safely in seward for more family fun!  

 the beautiful but foreboding badlands

 the saddest sheep ever!

 a parliament of owl babies!

 plague-carrying prairie dog

jackalopes and donuts for breakfast at wall drug

we had lots of quality time in the car listening to podcasts, but we had fun seeing such beautiful and diverse places. definitely better than a fly over!