I can't believe it's already been three weeks since this happened.  Maybe time is going by faster than I thought it would.  Honestly, I thought that after I stopped working with my most awesome field buddy, that the rest of the season would drag and drag.  It seems like a long time, though, since last November, when I ended the 2010 season and couldn't even stand the thought of going back out again.  I thought it was going to be terrible.  And well, the first week was pretty darn crappy, but then J started coming out with me and I thought, "Wow, this totally doesn't suck."  But alas, he has to go back to school and get married and all that crap, so no more good field season for me, I guess.  But it was good while it lasted.  The past two weeks I worked with Egghead, and it was not so bad.  I had someone to dig holes for me and someone to talk incessantly to when I was feeling bored.  Next week, I'll be working alone.  But camping with my boss.  So we'll see how that goes...

But anyway, catching up, here's what went on in the field those few weeks ago.

Like I said before, we didn't camp at Negrito.  Instead, we went off on a random road somewhere and found a spot to set up camp.  J put up the tarp and set up our little area underneath, with the table and stove and everything.  It was a pretty nice setup. 


One reason we got this spot was because of this cool flat(ish) rock, which J liked to sit on until he said it hurt his back.  Should've gotten the camp chair.  Anyway, it was still cool looking.  And we were finally allowed to have fire, so we did.

The mountain in the background is Elk Mountain and we spent a fair amount of time traversing around on there throughout the week.


Here's a view from up there, kinda sorta near the top.


And since we were up there trundling, I got a picture of another different view the next day.


That was our last full day in the field and we got 5 holes described that day.  One of them, I even dug myself.  I don't really expect to get that many next week.  I made a goal of six for the whole week, since I'll have to do everything myself, and things will go a lot slower.  But if I can get those done, that will be the end of that quad, and I'll only have one more to go before I'm done with field work!  Hooray!

As usual, I'm way behind on my posting.  So we're going to go back in time, to two weekends ago, when Matt and I went to the Sandia Crest.  I had never been there before, can you believe it?  I've been up on the tram twice but I never took the Crest trail.  So that is what we did.  This time, we drove up.  This involves going around through Tijeras (which means scissors, if you're curious : )  and up the East side of the mountain.  It's a really pretty drive going up, and when you get to the top, the view is incredible.

Later, we went to the East side of the mountain and took in the forest views, including one of my favorite trees, corkbark fir, which actually does have squishy corky bark.




We spent the evening looking at the sunset, and getting a preview of where we would be spending the next weekend.






Can you guess where we went?  I'll give you a hint.  It's that mountain waaay off in the distance.  I'll tell you more about that later.

Because we can.

P.S. I don't know what's up with the weird lighting.  My camera is old.  Sorry.

For the past several weeks, I have been staying at the Negrito Work Station while I do my mapping.  The firefighters stay there when they're not off, you know, fighting fires.  They have barracks that they stay in but we just sort of set up our tents somewhere and call it good.  However, we have access to everything else.  We're not staying at Negrito next week, though, because it's more convenient to go somewhere else.  I may or may not go back later by myself (next week is J's last week before school starts and I am sad : (   but in the meantime I thought I'd show you some crappy blurry pictures I took of Negrito, so you'll see what it was like to stay there.

Ok, so first of all, they have bathrooms with flush toilets, sinks with running water, and showers.  This, to me, is pretty darn fancy.  Last year, at Ben Lilly, we had some latrine type toilets that I thought were nice compared to the behind the tree pee that I normally did.  But these... they flush!  And oh my gosh, showers... I've taken one every week and it is super amazing being able to get clean after working with dirt all day, especially now that monsoon season is kicking in and everything is all wet and muddy.


This is the kitchen and mess hall where we often cooked and ate dinner.  Other times, we've just used our own camp stove and sat on the back of the truck but when it's raining, it's nice to have a place to go inside and eat.  Plus, they have a tv.  That's pretty awesome.  I should have taken a picture of the mess hall with the tv in it but I didn't because J was in there watching baseball and I got nervous he would think I was weird for taking all these stupid pictures.  But I did take a picture of the entryway.


And the kitchen.


The only thing I didn't really like about it in here was that it smelled kind of weird.  Oh, and the rat poops.  But the firefighters clean it all the time so it wasn't really that gross. 


I guess that's it for now.  I'll try to take some pictures of our camping spot next week to show you as well.  I can't believe it's August already.  The summer is going by too fast, and I still have so much more field work to go.  I'm starting to dread it again.  At least I'll have one more good week.