The Shocking Begins!

Taking photos of our sites after we have shocked them for next years sampling.

A wood river scuplin!

This past week we finally started electrofishing! We went to Lake Creek and did some wood river sculpin surveys. The wood river sculpin is a "species of interest" for the Forest Service, especially in Lake Creek. Idaho has some odd water policies, so land owners are allowed to divert streams on National Forest land for irrigation purposes as long as they have a permit. We are monitoring the sculpin in this area to see how the diversion affects the fish population in the stream. Pretty cool stuff!
View from Steve and Bonnie's back porch

This past weekend fellow bunkhousers and I experienced life outside of work in Fairfield. On Friday we went to the local bar for some great live bluegrass/rock music, which proved to be a blast! Saturday we helped out a fellow forest service worker plant 200 juniper trees for a Wind/Snow block. He and his wife payed us with a elk and moose barbeque, beer, and bonfire! The photo above is the view from his back porch... something I could definitely get used to!

This next week we will be traveling down to Northern Utah to sample yellowstone trout, we will be camping out overnight from Monday to Tuesday. Then we will be back in our district to hopefully sample because the streams have finally gone down after all our rain we have had! Then Thursday evening Andrew flies into Boise for the weekend! Yahoo!


Hope all is well back home, Love you all!

Ohh The Forest Service

So sidenote: I can't get the slideshow feature to work...so the pictures are a little delayed.

So my first few weeks in Idaho have been... interesting. The sight of a woman in the Forest Service, working on Fish Crew has been a surprise to a few good ol' boys out here, I think. Overall, people are nice, the town is small, and money is short, so there is little to do. I have gone up to the hot springs in the mountains with a few fellow bunkhouse dwellers, which was gorgeous and really fun... sitting nestled in the mountains in nature's hot tub…beautiful! My two fellow crew members Dan, Desmond and I went up to the nearby (1.5 hrs away!) town of Ketchum one evening for thrifting, and I fell in love with that city. It is a gorgeous ski/mountain bike town with log cabins, coffee shops, gear shops, fly fishing shops, and friendly people, and a house with skis as a fence! So Ketchum seems to be the place to visit when we don't have to work.

Work is slow. It has rained everyday save two that I have been here, so the rivers are all blown. It is unsafe to electroshock (send electricity through the water to temporarily paralyze fish so we can make a population estimate) and unsafe to wade... so no fish! We have gone through training for First Aid, defensive driving, and dealing with the public.... what a first week. We were also informed by the Forest Service Law Enforcement Officer to look out for Mexican's hiding out where "they shouldn't be." What does that even mean?!? The mentality out here is a little different than I’m used to, so that is something to deal with.

Lewis and Clark

Our trip out west was... AMAZING! On Thursday the 20th we made it across Wisconsin and Minnesota and got a little turned around in North Dakota. North Dakota is...... interesting. We tried to make a shortcut to some State Forest campgrounds and ended up driving around in no mans land for what seemed like hours! But we finally found the park, Fort Ransom State Park (not creepy sounding at all). It was a gorgeous campground right on a river, we had a fire and set up the tent and crashed, we were so exhausted! The next day we headed across North Dakota.... all day. Yes, all day. We made it into a campground in Montana... that was... bizarre. It was right at the end of "town" and was just a ring of sites... around which the locals drove around and around all evening until the Park Ranger gave US a key to lock up the park.... WHAT? But it was next to the beautiful Rosebud river.... and was a good nights rest. Saturday was an interesting day of driving. Montana is beautiful, Idaho is beautiful, SNOW is beautiful! HA! We drove through the Sawtooth Mountains until Stanley, ID (look on a map... its deep in the mountains!) It was extremely snowy and slippery on the mountain roads, so I suggested (maybe insisted) that Andrew and I stay in a motel that night... he grumbled that it wouldn't be as fun, but agreed anyways ;) We woke up bright and early Sunday to drive to Boise for me to leave Andrew at the airport as I continued my journey to Fairfield. The drive was gorgeous! We saw a herd of elk, a fox, and a radio collared WOLF, an extremely rare sight! Then a tearful goodbye and onto the bustling town of Fairfield, population 400... including sheep. HA.

More on the fairfield adventure later. Enjoy the Pics!