“Hanging tough, staying hungry…”

Despite my jet lag (Lauren is lucky; she lives in Washington state so the plane ride was only a three hour hop north and a one hour time change for her), we managed to get a normal day’s work in today. Stocked up on groceries in the morning – made easier by the fact that for the first few weeks it will only be the two of us – tagged fifty of our minnow traps in the early afternoon, and still got out to trap four lakes.

And we knew Alaska had been waiting for us when Eye of the Tiger came on the radio just as we were pulling out onto Hollywood Drive to head to Whale Lake. (Remember Whale Lake? This was the site of one very crazy conclusion to one of Team Alpha’s days last year.)

To get to Whale, you have to cross a relatively busy road, hike straight up a very steep hill (Lauren w/ traps, modeling in the first picture), walk a ways down an ATV trail, and then walk across about 100 meters of muskeg. Whee.

Also saw a chicken at Rabbit Slough. Not a spruce chicken, mind you, but a I-think-I’m-not-at-the-farm-anymore chicken. Unfortunately it ran into the brush too fast for us to capture it on film. Boo.

Of course Lauren named the bright-white Subaru (Not For Long a.k.a. Noffer), and we found a small plastic yellow-and-brown-spotted dinosaur at Loberg Lake which became our new co-pilot. His name is Banana Split (as he is colored like the Jelly Belly jellybean of the same flavor), but we call him Nanner for short. Noffer and Nanner. Yes, we are very strange twenty-something year old biologists. No, we are not about to change any time soon. You know you love us.

Not For Long a.k.a. Noffer - right now he is the brightest white there can be, but he's going to live up to his name soon enough. — Not For Long a.k.a. Noffer – right now he is the brightest white there can be, but he’s going to live up to his name soon enough.