It’s getting into crunch time! My paper is coming together, but there is still a lot more work to do.

I went to seatle this weekend with my roommates and I saw a friend from college there! Seattle is one of my favorite places ever. Here’s a low quality picture of a high quality place.

I wonder what the first person to see this thought? The only way I can describe the hot springs is otherworldly.

Gotcha Day!

My service cat Juniper is my entire world and yesterday marked one year of her being in my life! We celebrated with salmon and snuggles yesterday. 

This is the last week of field work for team SPAW! Here is Dee Dee collecting phonology data and some a picture of some ripe huckleberries.

This weekend I went to visit some people very dear to my heart at Rosebud lake, Montana. It was a six your drive but so worth it! We went hiking, went on the lake in a row boat, I failed at paddling, and we did jigsaw puzzles. Overall it was a wonderful weekend! 

I went to Glacier National Park this weekend which was beautiful! The lake was really cold, unsurprisingly. This picture was taken about two seconds before my feet went numb and started hurting really bad.

Yesterday I saw my first bear here in Montana! She was at one of our huckleberry sites with a cub and had no intention to leave. We will collect data there another day. .

Here is a picture of a tree that a bear market and some almost ripe huckleberries near a site, which were ingested for “research” purposes naturally. 

Two days ago the huckleberry crew went to the bison range. It was incredible to see the animals up close, especially the buffalo. It’s pretty surprising how the bison really don’t care about the cars and so what they want. They’re pretty chill dudes. My favorite part was seeing an elk for the first time!

The weather today was perfect and the sites we visited were beautiful. I caught this action shot of Laura in the field collecting soil samples.

Yesterday was a little hot but it was nice to be outside! Our site for huckleberries was a 5 mile hike round trip. After collecting data we saw Jocko Falls and Lake McDonnal. The lakes are beautiful and pristine here, I wish more lakes in Minnesota looked like this!

I had an exciting first week here in Pablo! Montana is gorgeous and I am thankful that we were able to get out into the field several days this week…even if it was a little chilly some days. I learned a few of the plants in the area including Lupin, heart leafed arnica, Ponderosa, bear grass, and of course, huckleberries. It was neat to see huckleberries for the first time and I look forward to eating them later in the season!