Day 6: Lunenburgh!

Today was by far the most beautiful day we have had! And we spent it the best way possible - in Lunenburgh, Nova Scotia!!! The small town is absolutely gorgeous with its little cafes, art galleries and gift shops. The building are adorable and all different colors. The day started with breakfast and then a drive over to Lunenburgh. To get to the town from Cherry Hill you have to cross the Lahauve River, we got to drive our van onto a ferry where we able to get out and look around before getting back on and continuing to Lunenburgh. Once we got there we had two hours out on our own before we met up for lunch. So we did the typical tourist thing and took pictures and fawned over all the little shops. Then after lunch in a picnic area by the ocean and playing in the playground, we went on our Fisheries of the Atlantic Tour. It was really interesting and I even got to hold a lobster. We then explored the museum on our own for an hour, after we got one more hour in the town. George showed us a a cute little coffee shop and then we headed home. After a delicious dinner, we plugged in the power point projector and watch Sahara. Tomorrow we are going to a national park and that will be extremely pretty too! This is a fraction of the pictures I took today.


This is the mast of the ferry boat with the Nova Scotian flag on the left and the Canadian flag on the right.

Here are a few of the houses and shops in Lunenburgh, these were literally fluorescent green, orange and pink.

This is a really old wooden church called St. John that has been burnt down and renovated.Shana (right) and Brittney (left) messing around in the playground.

Kelsie and I sat on a park bench and and this was our view looking up through the trees. It was a lovely crystal clear day!

In the museum holding a lobster!!!

These are measuring lines for the lengths of whales brought into Nova Scotia.

Here is the jaw of a huge whale.

Brittney, Kelsie and I caught in a lobster trap.

This was one of the railways to the boats we toured,

There were a lot seagulls nearby that would fly really low next to the restaurants.

This is the logo of the museum.

It was a really great day and I can not wait for tomorrow :)

Day 6: Christmas Came Early!

Today started out the same as usual, we ate breakfast then went to Cook's Lake to check our traps. This time when we were done checking them we brought them in since on Monday we will be moving to two new areas. In our trap we sought a mouse and recaptured a VERY old vole. They generally live a couple months at most and this one is almost two years old. We also had to take down all our orange tape that marked our path. Then we had lunch and loaded up the van. When we arrived at the Christmas tree farm there were two Belgian horses waiting for us. And, I will admit, they were quite huge. We got on to a cart that they pulled through the farm, we went on a path that showed how the farm was sustainable and beneficial to the surrounding plants and animals. Our tour guide told us about the place and how it is run. I would have really loved the ride except that it was bumpy; you see, within 24 hours I managed to break a bed, scrape the skin off my pinky toe and fall down steps. Hopefully it will only last for a day and my always present gracefulness will return. After we left the farm we had dinner and then went to the laundry mat. It was really fun and I bought some Advil :) On the way back Brittney, Rebecca, Kelsie, Shana and I had a blast. We laughed the whole home, literally, it actually hurt to laugh when we got home. We then ventured out on a walk down the street to the harbour. It was really pretty even though the sun had already set, but the mosquitoes were absolutely ridiculous. I mean they were everywhere, I think with the water nearby they were already there and we came up and made a lovely late night snack. After that we came back and I uploaded some pictures and had a good time with Shana and Kelsie. Here are a few pictures I got today.

This is Sam one of the Belgian horses who took us around the farm.
Here is our tour guide, he was really knowledgeable about the place and was able to answer all of our questions.

The one on the left is Kim and Sam is on the right. Kim really enjoys pulling the lumber they collect; whereas Sam doesn't really mind anything and will just keep going and going and going... until he actually runs Kim and the bar connecting them into a tree. (on the far left)

Here I am at the lovely laundry mate that was connected to a mini-mart.

Here is Kelsie, me, Shana and Brittney down by the shore later at night.

This is silhouette of a little cottage along the shore and the sun is almost set in the back ground.

Well, I am going to take some Advil and lie down. I am really excited for Lunenburgh tomorrow and have some really good pictures for you!

Day 5: Let It Rain!

We had our first taste of rainfall today, everyone brought out their waterproof clothing. It was considerably cooler today than it was yesterday, which was really refreshing. After breakfast we went to Cook's Lake; we did the usual thing, checked traps as soon as we got there since we don't want to leave the animals in the cages any longer than they need to be. After that we got to set up camera traps in four different groups; my group was Brittney, Kelsie, George and I. It was really fun! Christina told us how to set them up, where to put them and what to angle them to catch any animals in the infrared grid. We set our trap in the huge grassland that is uphill from our campsite. We found a really good trail made by a small animal and placed the camera on a nearby tree. Under the tree we found some sort of animal droppings that we showed to Christina. George has some really good pictures of us setting the trap that I will get at the end of the trip. We then figured since our trap was so close to the campsite that we would explore the top of the grassland. While we were walking we sang the Sound Of Music songs and leaped around. After we stopped to take a few pictures and George could not find his camera; the grass we were in was at least knee high so we set out on a scavenger hunt for his camera. I found it close to where our camera trap was and that made me, according to George, the best volunteer of all time. It was pretty fun getting away and being on our own. When everyone returned, we had lunch and then divided back into groups. My group got construction work on the new station. We had a good time trying to use hammers and saws. Then we checked our traps for a final time before heading back. All day was off and on rain, it was nice since it tended to shooo away the flies and bring the temperature down by shielding the sun. We had dinner, but Kathryn, Brittney and I got stuck on dish duty, and this time there were a lot of pans from the stew we had for dinner. We post-poned beaver watching till next week since it is so wet and soggy in places. Here are the few pictures I took today in the rain.

Brittney is turning our camera trap to the on position so it will start to capture moving animals that break the grid of the infrared.

Here is our view in the clearing, it was really nice with the fog rolling in around the tree tops.

We named this the Ultimate-Mega Christmas Tree.

Here is our current gazebo that shielded the rain today.

Here it the new one that is under construction at the moment.

Even in the rain we managed to have a good time, but I am off to bed now. Tomorrow we will disassemble our traps so that next week we can move them to a new location! And we will visit a Christmas tree farm and look at their porcupine problem.

Day 4: First Time Checking Our Traps!

Today was a looong day, but seeing the results made it worth the while. After breakfast we checked our traps, then we would take the traps that had an animal inside and bring it back to the front of our transects. After we checked our forest traps we went over to check our clearing traps. We had a rather heavy trap that we brought back and Christina thought that it was a chipmunk since they way more. As she was telling us to be careful with chipmunks since they burrow their way out of the bags, she let it out if the trap. As it turns out it was not a chipmunk but a red squirrel. Not expecting that, the squirrel, it jumped out of the top of the bag and landed on Alex then ran for the bushes behind Brittney and I. It was really funny. Tomorrow we should have more in our traps. When we finished we had lunch, then split into two groups. Some stayed at the gazebo and worked on the new shelter they are making, while my group went and did deer scat surveying. It was pretty neat; however, it was difficult to set up the 10 by 10 meter squares in the terrain with fallen trees and sinking swamp. Once we did five squares, we set back out to meet up with the other group to go check on our traps at a little bit after five. Total for the day we had two red backed voles and a red squirrel, this is pretty typical on the first day. In the morning since they were so new and didn't smell natural to the surroundings and then again in the afternoon since it gets to hot for them during the day. On the way home we stopped in a mall in Bridgewater, Brittney and I got our energy drink fix for tomorrow morning. On the way home for the store we saw a porcupine sitting right on the side of the road, but when the van backed up to see, it had a;ready disappeared into the nearby shrubs. When we got back to the house, Brittney and I volunteered to wash the dishes from lunch. So we pretty much stayed in the kitchen with Chris till dinner. After everyone finished their delicious Asian dinner, Chris gave is an hour long lecture over climate change. It was really interesting with global warming, ice age and those affects on badgers and other mammals. When we finished it was pretty late and everyone took their showers and went to bed. I had my first tick today, not exactly a pleasant experience; but Brit and I managed with a little help from google. Here are the pictures from today.

This is the green house, it is all girls and the meeting room that we eat our meals in. The top middle windows are in my room, the one on the middle right is where my bed is and I can open it and night and get a fairly decent breeze.Here is the group first catch, this is a red-backed vole in the bag that we put them in when we release them from the traps.Christina showed us how to grab him so as not hurt them or let them escape.Here she is giving them a sort of tag, you simply trim the fur in the right leg and expose the dark under coat. This way we will know if we have any recaptures - which are quite common.
This is our trap with the red squirrel inside, it was pretty heavy and with usual mice and voles they will weigh less than the trap itself. Thus making it pretty clear to Christina that there was in fact something inside and that it was not a dud. You can see the B7a, the B is for our group, the 7 shows which trap number we are on and the a tells you that it is in the clearing not the forest.

You can barely make out the fur if the squirrel, that is the escape hole for shrews. They are so tiny that it can be dangerous for them when we capture and handle them. This is the only picture of the squirrel before its escape.Here is the front of a closed trap, when the animal reaches the end of the first tunnel the lid will swing closed. The dark colored bar is what keeps the door open when the trap has not caught anything; it is what will release the door to the shut position. Thanks for checking up on me! It is tiring work, but it really does pay off. :)

Day 3: Setting the Traps

It was another beautiful day today! After breakfast we loaded up the van and left Cherry Hill for Cook's Lake. It was gorgeous, we have had the absolute perfect weather. Once we got to Cook's Lake (the research site) we took a long walk around and explored. When we were done it was time for lunch at the make shift gazebo/tent. After everyone was done, we headed out to the feild and Christina showed everyone how the traps work. We all set up different traps from different boxes since everyone has such different scents, there were twenty traps in each box. Then we placed them back in the boxes and took them out to the clearing. By clearing they mean a patch of land that had been clear cutted.... twenty years ago. It is now overcome with brush and shrubs. We had to get in teams of three to place traps in the feild. Then each group got a number A through E, we would place a trap then walk twenty paces and set another, doing this so that there were 5 columns with 10 traps in each. Then we moved on to the forest part where we did the same thing with rest of our traps, the forest was much more challenging for our group since there were plenty of fallen trees, walls of bushes and swamps. I will say that Brittney, Shana,Kelsie and I have the most colorful rain boots. Also the deer flies and mysquitos are very determined and persistent. I got my first blister today on my big toe from walking around in rain boots for so long. It won't be that bad anymore, today was one of the hardest since we had to set up the grid. Chris said that we may find only 3 to 8 mammals tomorrow when we check the traps; however, each day it tends to double as they get used to and less afraid of our prescence.

This is part of the group grabbing some lunch after our hike around the lake.

This is the view we had after lunch when we were about to start setting traps.

I am on Team B with Brittney and Lauren, we seem to get along and do a great job with each other. Even though, we all managed to fall at least once in the dense forest.

Here is Brittney carrying our box with the traps inside. The foliage was so tall that it was easier to carry the box on top so the branches couldn't scratch you!

Here is Team A, it had Shana, Kelsie and our team faciliator Kathy. They are fun to have next to us even though at times, we can't see each other through the trees.

On the bus ride back to Cherry Hill Brittney found an inch worm on Chris's seat belt, his name is Chubby Ellis!

Day 2: Our First Aventure!

Today kicked off with breakfast in the downstairs living area followed by a lecture from Christina till lunchtime. Once we had lunch, everyone packed their backpacks and we drove up the road for our 5 mile walk along the coast. It was absolutely gorgeous! Kelsie, Brittney and I walked together for the majority of the hike and had a wonderful time! They are really nice and hopefully we can stay in touch once after this ends. When we returned 4 hours later, we unpacked and chilled out until dinner time. Shana's birthday was Friday, so we had cupcakes after. When we finished up, Kathy had a team building activity for everyone to try; it consisted of tying strings to your hands but you had to cross the yarn with your partners and untangle it without reovinh the string from your wrist. It was really hard, but Brittney and I figured it out eventually; then we laughed at how easy it was. The temperature is wonderful; however, tomorrow when we go inland and it can get pretty warm and humid, but with band camp under my belt - I'm sure I can manage just fine. The only complaint that everyone has had are the mosquitoes! No matter how much bug spray you put on they can always find you! Luckily for us, Tom seems to attract them all away; however, he isn't that thrilled. Here are some of the pictures I took on today's hike!

This is Lycos, he is 2/3 Husky and 1/3 German Shepard. He is a lot like Mattie only slightly taller, larger paws, really soft and a lot more mellow!!!This is of a small lake that has formed due to a couple high tide and the sun just broke threw the clouds. This was a mailbox we stumbled upon along the way. It belongs to a house that sits right on the shore. Inside there was paper and we wrote down who we were, what we were doing and took a picture of us that we can e-mail them. It was pretty neat!
This is Chris showing us some droppings left by porcupines! The one on the left is my roommate Brittney and on the right is Kelsie. We snuck some M&M's in while Kathy takes a picture in the background. A fallen tree blocked our path but it didn't lower our spirits; Lauren has made it through and Brittney is close behind!
Here is a frog we saw in one of the many small lakes we found along our way.

This is also a pond, I took because I like the clouds in it's reflection.

This is a footprint left behind by a raccoon.

The lovely view from the rocky shore.Another view from shore, this is of the tall trees in Nova Scotia.

Welp, I am super tired. I will try to post something every night, but there may some exhausted nights in my future. So I am off to bed, tonight we opened our non-broken window so there is a bit off breeze. Hope everyone is doing well, goodnight!

Day 1: Made It A-Okay!

It was quite a journey here today! Mom and I left for the Indy airport at 3:00 newburgh time, when we got to the airport we had to wait in line for 45 minutes. I made it to the departure gate with a few moments to spare. After I got ot the Washingtin DC airport I sat around for an hour before flying to Halifax. I met an really sweet young woman on the flight who was an opera singer/teacher. We made our way through customs together before parting ways. Once I grabbed my bag and headed to the lobby, I meet Kathy and George, the team facilitators, around 11:30. She showed me where the cafe was and I met Tom, Amy, Shana and Kelsie. Kelsie is also here on a fellowship, her biology teacher in Massachutes told her about it. After waiting around till 3:00, Kristie, Brendan, Rebecca, Brittney, Maya, Alex and Laurren arrived. We then started the 2 hour van ride to Cherry Hill. Once we got here we moved in (Brittney is my roommate) and met up down stairs of the green cabin (mine, the yellow one has 3 boys and 3 girls). We ate dinner, went outside and then had a ice breaker. Now some of us are talking and pretty soon everyone is going to turn in! I feel bad for the UK people, it is now 2am back in England! Getting some rest, tomorrow we are giong on a four mile walk after lunch along the coast in Broad Cove. See ya!

Almost there!

It's getting done to the wire, this time tomorrow I will be in Indy checking in to a hotel for the night. My flight out will be really early, so my mom and I are going to get a good nights sleep. We will have to leave the hotel sometime around 4am, to be at the airport in time. All I have left pack are a couple t-shirts and recheck my check list! Hopefully Mrs. T will be home tomorrow from AL, I need to thank her again!!! I can't believe that this is finally here and I'm so glad that I can keep everyone updated on this amazing experience. Wanna know the only draw back?
I can't take these three little angels with me! Mattie may be fine, but I don't think the cats will get along to well with team dog Lycos!

Mattie (aka. Dory from Finding Nemo)

Chip (mine!)
Murray (the furball)

Once I get up there I'm sure I won't have a lot of time to think about these guys... much! Oh yea, I'll miss all you guys too! Well, time to go, one last family adventure calls!!!