Work Week Summary's June 19 - July 20

So since I am behind by a lot, I am just going to summarize everything since June 16th. I have just been traveling a lot and have been away from my main computer.

June 19-22
This week I was in Kemmerer collecting temperature logger data with Alex for a combined project with Wyoming Game and Fish Department in the Pinedale office. At each site, I would get into the creek and fish around looking/feeling for a cable that had the temperature logger attached to rebar.

Once I pulled it out, I had to get the logger out of the pvc pipe container and plug it into the reader. A green light would show up if the data transferred or red if it failed. If I can remember correctly all of them worked. Moving between each site was fun because Alex drove the side-by-side. All I can say is mud was flying and water was soaring!

That Thursday, Kee and I tried to go sample a site on Carl Creek but had to reject it because it was a wetland. We did try to sample it and I had just finished collecting 12 macroinvertebrate samples! Oh well haha. So back to the office we went to work on next weeks site plan.

June 26-29
Back to south of Rock Springs to sample three more sites. Kee and I went back to Red Creek and have the help of Kevin Spence (Wyoming Game and Fish Department's Aquatic Habitat Biologist in Green River), Alex, and Dennis.

On our way there we saw a herd of 20 cow and calf Elk running and throwing up dust. Kee thought they were horses at first haha but makes since if you have never been close to them because Elk are as large as horses.

The water level had dropped a lot since last time, it was now just to our ankles. We finished the site earlier than normal and went to look at the next days and saw some more Elk that afternoon.

Storms kept rolling around us the next day at Greenhough Creek. This creek was one of the narrowest that we have been to so far being as wide as my hips to thigh wide. Our last site for the week was Krause Creek and we only had to do half of it because the other half was on State Land. If any of our sites land on State or Private, we can't sample that area.

There was two bull Elk that came over the top of the hill that morning not too far from us. It was incredible.

I was happy that we finished that afternoon because I was ready to get out of the wind and be home in a bed instead of camping.

Thursday once again was spent in the office in Kemmerer planning out the next hitch, meeting with Alex about our data, and calibrating equipment.

July 5-7
It was a shorter week due to the 4th of July Holiday so we did three sites around Kemmerer. We sampled Picnic Hollow, Muddy Creek, and Sheep Creek. When we did Muddy Creek, Alex and a gal from the office that works with the oil rigs came out. It was an easy site to sample and we got to cross the train tracks to get there.

I was nervous that Muddy Creek was going to be like the other ones that I have worked in were you just get stuck in mud up to your butt and can't move. Sheep Creek took us along time to get down too. We scouted it out Wednesday after Muddy Creek and tried to get out another way but could not because of the steep gradient. This site was within the Bear River Divide Hunt Management Area and cows were all over the places. It took us an hour just to go down the two-track road to get there. Sheep Creek is a very down cut creek but was not bad to work in. We finished at 4 pm and I was able to get back on the road home by 6 pm.

July 10-13
Kee and I meet in Farson, WY which is just north of Rock Springs about 45 miles. Jim and Dennis meet us out in the field that Monday to sample Pacific Creek. It was nice to have other people to talk to because Kee and I don't talk much while we are working making it a little boring each day.

That evening we camped by Big Sandy Reservoir and it was one of the best sleeps that I have had out in the field. A lot of the times I end up sleeping better outside then inside so I do find myself looking forward to it. I just don't like setting up and tearing it down every day.

Tuesday, Kee and I went to Dry Sandy Creek. Once we got there you can only guess what we found or should I say did not find. There was no water to be found and it looked like no water had been moving through there in a long time. So we took lots of pictures and decided to try and sample Fog Gulch but that one turned out to be a wetland and only half of it was on BLM land and the other on private. It was noon by this time so we decided to try Rock Cabin Creek. On our drive to it, we came across about 12 bull Elk and a couple larger herds of cow and calf Elk. It was so cool popping up over the edge to see that and Kee was sleeping so I was hitting him to wake him up. He had never seen them that close and I missed out on taking pictures because they took off.

Rock Cabin Creek was not fun to work in because three transects were in a wetland and the rest where ether underground or really narrow. I kept stabbing myself in the eye with sedge trying to do substrate size collection. Kee and I started this one at 2 pm and finished by 7 pm. Since there was no good spots to camp, Kee decided that we would just drive home and meet back in the Kemmerer office in the morning. On our way out we saw the Elk herd again. On Wednesday, we went out to West Willow Creek with Brent, Wildlife Biologist. Ended up rejecting this one also because there was too many beaver dams impacting the flow for us to find bankfull.

Finished the day off working on maps and decided to meet back in Farson to check up our replacement sites. Those sites ended up being oversamples of other Dry Sandy locations and yep they also had no water. This week was not a good one for us in narrowing our list down.

July 17-20
Back in Kemmerer for the week. On Monday, we headed out to sample Little Muddy Creek and WOW it was the first Muddy Creek that was not even close to its' name. It really was a nice site to work at and all the thunderstorms went around us.

Dry Fork Smiths Fork was fun to work at on Tuesday because there was fish! There was suckers and creek chub and I think some of the suckers might have been native species. Oh and I also saw Sculpin but they kept hiding so I could not get any pictures of them.

The only thing that sucked about the day was when Alex came out and did not like where we had placed bankfull so we had to remeasure some transects.

Mill Creek was last on the list for the week and this area was heavily impacted by cattle making bankfull hard to find but after showing Alex the pictures the next day made it better knowing that we had placed them correctly then. There was a ton of Caddisflys, Mayflies, and Stoneflies under all the rocks and moving along the creek bottom.

Thursday was office day and of course I forgot my ID badge back home because I went home for the night. So I could not get into the building let alone get onto my computer. I was able to get in but it took 2 hours for me to get computer access and I am happy that I was able to get on at all because I needed to make maps for next week and look at other locations. I was so ready for the weekend to come at the end of the day.