I can’t believe it’s July already. Time is flying by this summer. June has been a mixture of hot and dry with cold and rainy, and that has been good for my garden. Last year, I built two raised beds, each 8′ x 4′, but I only got one bed filled with dirt. It yielded some nice tomato plants that I had started from seed, until the goat got in and ate them down. This year, I got the second bed filled with dirt and built two more 8′ x 2′ beds which I filled with strawberry plants. The two…
Ever since I first visited Elk River during my interview trip in February 2010, I had a desire to get to the top of Elk Butte. After all, who could resist a lookout tower boasting 3000 foot views? The only problem was finding a suitable way to get up there. While the maps show a road to the summit, descriptions also warn that the summit is not accessible by car. Most people reach the summit by four-wheelers in the summer and snowmobiles in the winter. I had read that it was a 7-mile one-way trip, which ruled out a day…
I think I’ve mentioned before that there are a number of cedar groves, stands of old-growth Western Red Cedar, nearby. I’ve already posted about the Hobo Cedar Grove out near Clarkia and Grandfather Mountains. Several times I’ve been to the Giant Cedar out near Elk River. On our way into Idaho when I moved out here, Erin and I stopped at the DeVoto Cedar Grove along Rt. 12. There is a cedar grove on Moscow Mountain, but I haven’t been up there to explore it yet. The last one that I know of in the immediate area is also…
For the past seven years, I have been living with slow, unreliable internet. In 2004-2005, the Weis Ecology Center was on dial-up service. Camp McDowell in Alabama was also on dial-up service, shared on a wireless network. If you can remember far enough back when dial-up was the forefront of home internet technology, you might also remember how long it took for webpages to load and how it would randomly lose connection, and then the busy signals trying to reconnect. In 2006, those problems had not improved. Ferry Beach had a more reliable connection, though it was still slow. I’m…
View Oregon Butte – 5/26-27/2012 in a larger map Things don’t always go according to plan. Along the journey, you discover new interests or find obstacles that end up providing you with a totally different experience than originally expected. This lesson was hard hit this weekend as we attempted a backpacking trip in the Blue Mountains of southeastern Washington. The trip was a success, but certainly not what I had expected. It’s really a lesson in not getting enough information ahead of time. On paper, it looked like the perfect trip. It’s a 16-mile loop up Panjab Creek to the…
I was left home alone this weekend. Erin had gone down to Boise and Ontario, OR for a regional meeting of one of the support groups she attends. She was also taking Lana down to Boise to be transported to her new home with a trainer in Wyoming. So while she was gone for three days, I was in charge of watching the animals. This unfortunately meant I couldn’t go out for any extended trips. No backpacking. No camping. So I did what any responsible adult would do when he’s got the house to himself: I threw a party. Well,…
The photo above was taken in February of 2010, my first visit to Asotin Creek. I’ve been back a couple of times as it is usually a reliable winter hike that is free of snow. I had never gone down in the spring when everything is green, and certainly not in the summer when temperatures can reach the 100 degree mark. So it was that Erin and I decided to spend a day down at Asotin Creek. The local wildflowers should be in bloom, and the hills might show hints of colors other than the drab brown of dried grass….
Since last week, we had been down to three puppies. Three is much more manageable than seven, but still a crowd. In fact, having two out at a time was still a handful. Tuesday, I made up posters advertising the rest of the pups, and in less than 24 hours, we had two more sold. This left us with one Pink Girl to care for. Having one puppy isn’t so bad. They’re a lot more mellow by themselves, they don’t eat as much, and most importantly, there’s not as much pee and poop to clean up. Of the three that…
This past weekend, I was in Port Townsend, WA for the bi-annual Evo-WIBO meeting. Evo-WIBO is a small, regional gathering of someo of the biggest names in evolutionary biology in the Pacific northwest. Its only a day and a half long and very informal. Yet, because of its size and intimacy, I got more out of this meeting than I did when I presented at the much larger SICB meeting in January. I met and hung out with more people than I would have, which made it a lot of fun. The only downside is that it was so nice…
Somehow, I managed to go to two conferences in one semester. Tomorrow, I’ll be heading to Port Townsend, WA along with several other members of the department for the bi-annual Evo-WIBO conference. This is a small, regional conference for evolutionary biologists in the Pacific Northwest. There are only going to be around 200 or so people attending (compared to the 2-3000 at SICB), and there is only one talk session at a time. So lucky me, I got chosen to give an oral presentation. Did I mention it’s a small conference? It begins Saturday morning and ends Sunday at noon….