Alicia and Colin – Going Rogue. Sort of.

After our fifth day in Alaska we are still not used to the lack of darkness! Our typical Alaskan day starts at eight in the morning, the sun just rising from its laze on the horizon; it never fully sets! Our first full day was extremely busy, with setting and collecting traps from ten different lakes. Fortunately, the last lake of the day, Echo Lake, made up for the “redonculousness” of the hard day’s work with the set of rope swings we found on the shore. Of course our next most logical course of action was to come back the next day for a quick swim.

Later in the week we discovered what the Alaskan natives call “muskeg”, the swampy marshes that surround the massive amount of lakes in the region. Colin discovered that the muskeg is a force to be reckoned with; he fell into Finger Lake after his first few steps in the muskeg. Luckily he was wearing waders and didn’t get too wet.

Yesterday happened to be Matt “Dr. Wund”’s over-the-hill birthday which we celebrated with a colorful hamburger and fries cake. (He isn’t actually over the hill…yet).

Earlier in the day we managed to collect and set traps at a multitude of other lakes, leaving us tired and in need of some late afternoon fun. We were strolling through a Sportsman’s Warehouse in search of a raincoat for Alicia when Dani noticed some neon orange fisherman’s pants, after which she said to us “hold my stuff I’m going to try this on and you’re going to take pictures”. Needless to say we ended with another good day.

Our next project involves dissecting male stickleback to make crosses for the Clark lab in home base Worcester. We had a successful learning day today and plan to spend all of tomorrow fertilizing about 80 clutches to be shipped home in the next few days.