hot sand on toes, cold sand in sleeping bags

Rodney coming out of the surf!

Having a house with no internet except through your phone makes this blog difficult to keep up with!

Chinook season has been busy as always, working long nights and long days. I can't believe it is almost over already! It seems like we just started! Right now, Andrew and I are trying to pack up our house, save money for the drive across America, have fun, work, and stay sane all at the same time. We shall see how that works out haha. 

I am also knee deep in my capstone project, which is proving difficult to make any head way on with unstable work schedule and internet access. But as mom said today: "If it was easy, everyone would do it." She was full of one liners today ;)

Our good friend Rodney came out to visit for a bit! That made Andrew's month! They floated the river, Rodney surfed the ocean in his creek kayak(!), they played music, and we all drank some growlers of delicious beer from the Pelican Pub. Overall a good weekend.  

Good ol' Fizabeth came and visited us as well on her way down the coast! She got a job in California playing with salmon and our house was about half way on her move from Washington. We put her to work with us one night marking Chinook to get her ready for her new job. She did awesome and was good luck, she brought in 8 keepers (wild adult Chinook salmon)!!

 Hopefully as we slowly start to get back on the day shift, I can blog more often. 

 I will leave you with a song my lovely friend Ashley sent me, which is a new favorite of mine:

 And a bit of picture purging, to give you all a peek into what our life consists of!

View from our campsite when we fished the Cascade Lakes

Rodney surfing in the creek boat!

Andrew playing on our deck at the old apt in Wheeler

Also, a few new favorite artists:

Suzanna Choffel

First Aid Kit

The Head and the Heart

 

Have a good weekend!!

you and me goin fishin in the dark!

Andrew and I at our new found river spot behind the doublewide!

Well here we are in the depths of Chinook season again! We have been already tagged over half of the fish that we tagged last year, with a lot of season left! So that is a good sign for our marking skills, AND for the fish run!

Bit Blurry, but a good sized wild adult male chinook! (About a meter long!)

Coworker Julia on our Tagging mortality float (Found none!)

It hasn't started raining....yet. So the fish are still holding down near the mouth of the river, once a little bit of rain comes we should be elbow deep in them! (Keep your fingers crossed!) Working nights has caused all of our crew to feel like we are in a time warp, so if we don't call or write in a timely manner... it's because we generally have no idea what day it is, and are generally not awake during normal business hours. Please forgive us. We will be back to the real world come November.


7 Days until we are back home for the Marty and Cassy Wedding extravaganza! Yahoo!

Hello Again!

Back deck at our friend Jitesh's

Wow, it has been awhile since my last post!

It has been a full year since Andrew and I moved out to Oregon and for our last few months here we are back where we started! I am sitting in Stimulus Coffee Shop looking out to Cape Kiwanda in Pacific City working nights marking Chinook salmon and living in a doublewide trailer. This past year has been a constant adventure... living in 5 different homes both together and separate from each other, many different jobs from marking Chinook to banding cormorants we have been all around this Oregon coast.

Adult Wild Chinook male

This season with ODFW Chinook is off to a great start, but I find myself trying to soak it all up because we will be leaving the Oregon Coast for good in a few short months. Our futures are becoming more and more clear with each passing day, we will be moving to Louisiana for January to March working on Andrew's graduate project with common loons in the Gulf, then up to the Northeast to band all the loons we can before we start grad school in the fall at University of Southern Maine. Andrew will for sure be starting at USM next fall, and I have gotten my GRE scores and am gathering my application materials carefully to be sure I am accepted as well.

Will try and keep you all more updated...I am trying to take more pictures of the Chinook than last year!!



GO PACK GO!