Chat-Uh-Who-Chi.

Welp. Sorry for the lack of posts this week, but in all honesty, I was wating for something worth posting. This past week was a week full of Nitin, so naturally we had some long work days (12-14 hours...). By the time I'd get back from the field, I'd be too tired to blog. Along with that, the posts only would have been a near continuous string of complaints and boring accounts of how sweaty I was all day, or how the dirt felt beneath my absolutely repulsive fingernails. That said, Tuesday was probably the only day worth mention. Coweeta held a conference here where a bunch of the graduate students who were working on ongoing research here onsite gave oral and poster presentations on their work. Coweeta was PACKED. Luckily, breakfast, lunch, and dinner was served to us, compliments of Coweeta for all our hard work as scientists and I got to hear some pretty cool talks such as...

-Future species composition will affect forest water use after loss of eastern hemlock from southern Appalachian forests (Brantley)
-Listening to Nature, Listening to Community: Progress from the Coweeta Listening Project (CLP) (Heynen)
-Magnifying Complexity: Using the Integrative Framework to understand exurbanization in Macon County, North Carolina (Vercoe)
-Variation in hydrologic and sediment transport behavior among the nine intensively monitored watersheds in the Upper Little Tennessee River Basin (Jackson)
and
-The "Ring of Asphalt" and Changing Precipitation in Southern Appalachia: A regional perspective (Shepherd)

There were a TON more, but that was about all my attention span could handle for one day. Following the conference, there was a keg and coolers upon coolers of beer for all the apparently unbelievably thirsty researchers. Drunken scientists were scattered about in every nook and cranny of Coweeta for pretty much the entirety of the night. I'll tell you, I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like it. I'll admit that scientists may be a bit quirky at times, but they definitely know how to have a good time.
So skipping past the rest of my slave driven work week to today...
Today. Was. Awesome. Me, Catherine, and Bryan (the new guy that got in Tuesday fresh from Honduras) went tubing down the Chattahoochee River today back in good ole' Helen, Georgia and finished off the day with a hearty German meal and some windy mountain roads...

Bryan.

Catherine.

Not quite sure what Bryan is doing back there haha.

Catherine.

I could get used to this...

All the people in the restaurant watching the tubers go by.

Alpine Helen, GA. 

Going under the bridge!

Riverside restaurant.

Rapids!

Geoff, does the poster look familiar?? Haha

The most beautiful parking lot ever...

that just so happens to be a Walmart parking lot...bet you didn't see that one coming.

I've decided that there are few things better than tubing down a river in the mountains for a day, especially if said river flows through a cute alpine village!

Wie Geht's?!

The past few days were some of my absolute favorite that I've had all summer.

Friday.

It all started Friday evening when my dad and sister got into town. That night we had Mexican for dinner before heading back to the hotel in Dillard, Georgia where I would be staying with them until Sunday. There, we sat in enormous, soft, fluffy, clean beds watching pawn stars and locked up prison shows on national geographic until bed. I have to say, it was a good feeling knowing that I wouldn't wake up to any ticks crawling up my arm or alarms to wake me up at the crack of dawn.

Saturday.

Waking up at around 9:00 am, we ate a surprisingly good breakfast at the hotel of cinnamon rolls, cereal, muffins, bagels, omlettes, sausage, and even pancakes from a conveyor belt-like machine...it was the first time I had ever seen something like that. Then, we headed back over to Coweeta for me to show them around some...

Cam and I on the bridge to watershed 17.

My dad on weir 17.

A baby snapper!

Dad's hand for scale.

Firetower hike.

Cam and Dad at the firetower.

Firetower view.

Cameron a bit wary of the steps haha

Firetower.

Rust and boots.

Cam.

Dad was of course suggesting we just shimmy up the side of the tower, around the locked door to get to the top.

Cam and I.

Geological marker. 

Firetower.

Family :)

Wish mom was here...

I'm so proud to be in a family with hiking boots!

Typical.

 After showing them around Coweeta some, we decided to go venture out to Glen Falls that I had visited earlier in the summer by myself and I have to say, it was a lot more fun with other people to go with me...

Dad pushing Cam into the waterfall.

Snake number 1,000,001...or so it seems.

Rainbow.

I love my sister.

Cam and Dad at Glen Falls.

Dad and I at Glen Falls!

It was a really cool rock, but it is only now that I realize I was holding the awesome side AWAY from the camera...haha

Overlook view.

 Following a full day of Coweeta touring and waterfall exploring, we headed back to the hotel to shower before eating dinner at the Dillard House restaurant in Dillard, Georgia. This place was amazing. Huge colonial-style architecture, beautiful chandeliers above each wooden table, and enormous windows to gaze out of that look out onto rolling hills and fields of cotton and other crops. We were brought plates upon plates of every sort of homemade southern comfort food you could imagine including acorn squash, corn on the cob, fried chicken, steak, scalloped potatoes, coleslaw, and fried okra just to name a few. I ate my heart out and washed it all down with more than a few ice cold mugs of Georgia sweet tea followed by a bowl of peach cobbler and vanilla bean ice cream for dessert. After dinner we all sat on some rocking chairs on the porch outside the restaurant and rocked and talked as the sun set over the distant mountains, painting everything in faded hues of lilac and muted orange. Finally, on our way back to the car, we got a bit distracted by the interactions of 20 some goats fenced in behind the restaurant and I even got to pet the most enormous, shaggy bull I've ever seen in my life. When we finally got back to the hotel, Cam and I stayed up to watch a movie while my dad fell asleep. Long story short...if I had to picture a more perfect day, I couldn't...

Sunday.
Scratch that last statement, Sunday was probably right up there with Saturday. Getting up around 9:00 am again, we all headed downstairs to eat breakfast at the hotel before packing up our room for check out at 11 am. After breakfast we all stuffed our clothes into bags while watching Mountain Men on tv before leaving Dillard to visit Helen, Georgia for the day. Helen is a small tourist town set up to resemble an alpine Bavarian village of sorts with all sorts of cute shops, German restaurants, Chattahoochee River tubing, and candy shops. I can't believe I've never heard of this place before because it seriously is the coolest.

A weird looking mountain top.

Helen when we first pulled into town

Marcie, this shirt is for you!

Dad lookin' sharp.

Oktoberfest this year??

YES.

The coolest!

He got entirely too much amusement from this shirt...haha

Rock soap!!!!

Just us and some viking heads, no big deal.

Glass blowing shop demonstrations.

COOKIE CANDLES?!

Riverside restaurant.

A natural lazy river?! THIS IS AWESOME.

Hahahaha let me draw everyone's attention to Cameron's facial expression.

So. Many. Tube. Buses.

A wee bit stuck.

Everyone watching the tubers get stuck on rocks haha.

Dad craning to get a good look at one particularly interesting tuber that had been stuck for 20 some minutes hahaha.

Cam and a tree.

Add caption

Duke Falls right outside of Helen.

After a full day of exploring Helen and visiting yet another kickass waterfall, we all got to eat some good ole' sausage and sauerkraut at a local German restaurant. It's never a bad day to have German food. Unfortunately though, after dinner our day came to a close. Dad drove me back to Coweeta to drop me of and him and Cam began their long drive back to Raleigh. It was heartwrenching. The absolute last thing I wanted was for the weekend to be over and them leaving. This weekend was seriously one of the best weekends I've had in a long time and it really made me realize how much I miss my family this summer. It's hard not to when you have a family as unbelievably awesome as mine...