Girls Can't Play Clubs

Hello Everyone! Just back from a loooong day in the field (9:30-7). We were down to one bag of bones to catalog but after today we brought back six or seven more. Not all of them are full, but it still means work, work, work! Mathias is feeling a little crunch because he now has to go through all of the bones we’ve cataloged and start cutting chunks out of certain ones. He hopes to take back a few hundred samples with him. His girlfriend arrives tomorrow (another Ancient DNA gal) and will be extremely helpful in accomplishing all of the work.

Before I continue I feel like I should give a small apology to the grammatical state of these posts. Most of the time I write them in between showering and dinner or sometimes before showering (which means in a hurry). I do not edit my posts and now that I’ve gone back and read some of them I realize how many mistakes are there and sort of broke out in a cold sweat. I hope the amazing pictures and awesomeness of my words has tricked you all into thinking this is writing gold, but if it hasn’t I apologize and promise that I normally edit.

The night before last a few of us headed back into the town to the Pit to watch The James Murdoch Band for their last performance. It was just as good as the previous night, and the guys were giving it their all even though they had a THIRTY HOUR NON-STOP road trip home directly after. They had a cool green mini school bus, but that wouldn’t make 30 hours in a row any easier. After buying their CDs, we wished them luck and sent them off.

We stopped at four different sites today in the gold fields. We had great timing for all of them really, getting there when water was being shut off so we could see things, or leaving just before the rain. It was great. At Dominion we fed Slim Jim the Female Feral Fox some jerky and she followed us around for the remainder of our time. We also located a large ash (tephra) deposit and collected as much as possible before a huge ice chunk fell nearby and we rannn out of there.

Saw another porcupine on the road but alas, he was another one that was not photogenic. They are so cool looking in the wild though. We took a small detour in between a few sites and drove up to King Soloman’s Dome, which is the highest point in the Dawson Area. It was cloudy but you could still see the amazing landscape of the Yukon. Tyler took a panorama shot and when he patches it together I will definitely pass it along to you all.

To end today’s post I would like to talk about a special animal that every single person warned me about when I first told people I was going to the Yukon. Every single person commented on the mosquitoes and how bad they would be, even my eye doctor! I have been very surprised, I can count the number of bites I have received almost on one hand. I do not know if it is the peppermint soap and shampoo I have been using or what, but they have really left me alone. They aren’t too bad, no swarms, no real buzzing. Some days have been worse than others, but I have to say, I like the Dawson mosquito population. Wasps are another story…

Until next time! Cheers!