Two in One.

Sorry about the absence of a post yesterday, I've kept pretty busy the past few days...

Yesterday.
We had originally set out yesterday with the intent of doing my least favorite thing in my most favorite watershed. Dilution gauging in watershed 17. Why do I hate dilution gauging. By all means I should really enjoy it because of the dye we have to put in the water, turning it a lovely shade red. Who doesn't want to see a stream turn into a river of blood (hypothetical blood of course) before their eyes? Well, it's everything else that annoys me. The hours we have to spend beforehand meticulously measuring out bags of salt. The slow trickle of stream water we have to use to try and fill a 10 liter bucket. The pouring of salt into the bucket one bag of salt at a time, bit by bit, until a certain amount is reached (5, 7, 10 salt bags later). The stirring of said salt into said bucket after the addition of each and every said bag. The dumping of the bucket of saltwater in the stream. And finally, the waiting...and waiting...and waiting for all the salt to pass by our conductivity probe only to pick up all our stuff and do it all over again 50 meters upstream. I've never been the most impatient person, but neither have I been the most patient, so I find this experiment particularly trying. To pass the time, Catherine, Joey, and I sat around talking. One thing led to another and next thing I know we were having a pretty indepth exchange of ghost stories and paranormal anecdotes. My kind of afternoon. I even came to learn that Nitin himself is a real life palmist! As in reads people's palms to determine their future!!! Who would have thought I would be working under one! I can promise you this, you have not heard the last of this discovery...After our first try at dilution gauging, we realized that we hadn't put enough salt in the stream to get the results we wanted, so we tried a second time with 100 grams of salt rather than 30 and then sat back down and kept talking ghost. Welp, turns out that by the time this second go-around finished up, we realized that the data logger we had been using wasn't recording any of the data correctly. A bit discouraged, but relieved to have an excuse to stop dilution gauging, I went upstream to grab my walking stick when I had my first one-on-one showdown with a snake. About to step down on its wrigling body, I proceeded to hold my foot mid-air for a brief moment before leaping further than I ever thought possible back onto the trail and down to Joey and Catherine. Clearly startled by my excessive panic, they assumed it must have been a substantially large copperhead, so of course hurried up the hill to get a good look at the beast before it disappeared. Much to my embarassment, it was instead a harmless little garter snake. Better safe than sorry though? Anyways, upon seeing the snake, Catherine proceeded to fetch her work gloves and quite literally WRANGLE the thing from underneath a log...

So there he is ladies and gentlemen, the vicious killer I tumbled down a mountain fleeing from...I've really got to get over myself...

Today.

This morning also began in the heart of watershed 17...

Sent to collect serial numbers from the cap rods, I hiked up to 17 only to discover that you needed a computer to determine the serial numbers by connecting them into the cap rods...oops. Instead of wasting the hike out, I decided to explore a bit and saw some pretty cool critters...

My hand for scale.

"Sup."

I haven't yet decided if this is a queen bee or the bodyguard for a queen bee...

Please take note of the abnormally large size of the above snails and bee and the beauty of watershed 17 in the early morning light. 

While Catherine came back to get a computer to actually collect the serial numbers of the cap rods, I prepared all my syringes for tomorrow's rain gauge sampling and did some data entry before we all met back up for lunch. After lunch we drove out to Josh's sites about an hour away from Coweeta to look around since the last time we had been was on my first day here, needless to say we needed to reacquaint ourselves with these long since forgotten wells and transects. After all the re-touring was over with, we stopped at a cute little diner for milkshakes and visited this cool rock museum/store that we stumbled upon in Ruby City. Seeing all the cool little shops and random museums and mountain stores made me excited to be driving out to these sites every week to collect rain gauge samples. I guess there is stuff to see way out here in the middle of nowhere...

Today also marks the day my little sister graduated from high school. Unfortunately being here at Coweeta prevented me from attending...still, I can't help but bragging some about what an amazing sister I have and how proud I am of her for all that she's done and the person she is growing up to be. Being without her or the rest of my family and friends is probably the worst/hardest thing about this summer internship, it gets a bit lonely being surrounded by people but not really knowing anyone, if you know what I mean...but I digress. Point blank, congrats little sis! I love you Cam, you're going to do some pretty great things...