Bear Repellent is NOT to Be Used Like Bug Repellent.

It has been a slow day around here, although a bit of work was accomplished While I’m updating you all on here I’m also trying to update Twitter with a pic of the work accomplished today, but the internet (even the landline connection!) it not working and making me frustrated. Ah, must have patience.

The bone contest is officially over. Andi was correct, the bone in the picture is actually a mastodon vertebra. There are quite a number of differences between the mammoth and mastodon, but in terms of bone identification the differences are subtle. It was sort of a trick question, but not really because I wasn’t picky about the answer. Andi, you will be receiving something exciting for winning the contest.

Yesterday we took half a day for cataloging bones and then half a day in the field. After searching for an hour at Dominion, I headed with Tyler and Britta to a (new to me) site called Paradise Falls. They monitored there last year and Britta did collections, but she wanted to see how it has changed. We were turned around a bit because in the mining areas, roads can change almost daily depending on where stuff needs to be, so after months of mining, it took a bit to get to the correct spot. The faces of the exposures were lots of fun to climb (while Britta and Tyler were actually working), and I got very dirty.

(Can you see Britta in this pic? Look closely!)

Today the weather was nasty in the morning and a cool wind has come over the valley. Mathias and I unfortunately left our bones uncovered last night when we went to bed because the weather was nice and sunny (at eleven pm). Of course, we learned a lesson the hard way like the boot incident, because overnight it poured and poured. We spent an hour getting water off the tarp and out from under the bones, but luckily they were all labeled and even had nail polish on them so none of the whiteout became compromised. We learned our lesson though.

Because the day was so slow a few of us drove up to what is called the Midnight Dome, which is the huge dome overlooking the city and the Yukon River. I’m glad we drove and can’t figure out why people would participate in the Midnight Dome Run in a few weeks. I guess it’s like the La Luz Trail Run in Albuquerque. Craziness. The views were pretty good even though it was still a bit cloudy. We have some nice pictures. On the way home we stopped at the Dawson City Information “Museum” and took some brochures and pictures. There was a small funny section about “collecting fossils”. The first thing it said to do was “Take a Breath.”.

Tonight we may be headed down to the Pit because one of Tyler’s friends is going to be performing. We’ve been playing his stuff on the drive out to the sites in anticipation and I like it. If anyone would like to look him up it is called The James Murdoch Band. Hopefully it won’t be as crazy as last night for some of my coworkers.We may stay home tonight so some of them can *ahem* recuperate and go tomorrow. He's playing for three days.

Cheers!

P.S. If anyone is wondering about this title, Tyler told us a story about a group of German tourists who did in fact use Bear Repellent as Bug Repellent. True story. Don't do it.