Hello, my happy readers :)
Praying this Sunday finds you well and enjoying your weekend.
As you might remember from a previous post (I’m typing in the airport and internet access is lame…so links and such probably won’t be happening for this post.) I had a trip planned for this month - a trip to Arizona for field work and a course on Lepidoptera. Well, I’m off! Got the critters carted off to their respective caretakers (Thanks so much Amy & Tony; Matt and Judy & Dex!) for the week and I was carted off to the airport bright and early (Thanks Christine!).
The first leg of the trip went without a hitch. Flight was smooth and on time and now I’m sitting in DFW waiting for my 12:45p flight to Tucson. Once I arrive in Tucson there’s supposed to be an airport pick-up waiting to take me, and anyone else arriving today, to the Southwestern Research Station in Portal. Who I am supposed to be looking for, however, I have no clue. It’ll be an adventure!
It’s pretty depressing being in DFW and not being able to walk out that exit door or catch a flight to somewhere else in TX…cruel…just plain cruel. I’m hoping that the return trip on the 22nd will afford me the opportunity to see some Texas loves who might make the trek to the airport to see me since I have a 3hr layover =) **hint, hint**
I’m not too certain as to what this trip will entail as we haven’t really received any info regarding what we will be doing…just a, “Don’t forget sunscreen” message. So…we shall see!
I am excited to meet other people working on leps and make connections with them that might help me with my project or undertakings in the future – plus, it’s just fun to meet people you share some sort of interest with.
Things have been busy, busy, busy on the Tundra front, but all is definitely well. It’s very bitter-sweet to start thinking about moving in a few weeks. While I’m super excited about the new place and adventuring the year with my new roommates, I’m quite sad to leave my current abode. I just love that it’s my space. It’s all decorated the way I like things and it just feels like home. I’ll miss routine there as well. But! All good things do come to an end, and generally something else steps up and fills their place just fine. I am quite excited to build a new routine at the new house and to collaborate with Meg about decorating, etc…we highly doubt Justin will have anything to say about anything we do. As long as he has his projector room he’ll be happy as a lark :) It will also be especially nice for Jake to have more space and not have to worry about running into other doggies in the play pen. Plus, the place is simply beautiful…I mean really, really beautiful. Yay newness!
OK, all, laptop is about to die and I don’t feel like packing everything up to go find an outlet…
Until Arizona!!
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I have arrived! Found the airport pick-up meeting place after using my resourcefulness and looking up the number for the research station to find out (Apparently an email went out with loooads of info…I never got it. But! At least my name was on the airport pickup list!) who/where we were supposed to meet. Got the info and made it to the meeting place just fine. From there we all piled into a 15-passeneger van and made the 2-2.5ish hour (Maybe more? I was too busy oogling over the mountains and beautiful nature through my window) trek to the research station from Tucson. We actually ended up passing through New Mexico for about 30min (ish?) since the shortcut road was all washed out from the rains. 4 states in one day (MN, TX, AZ, NM)!!
The research station is beautiful. I mean, beeeeautiful. It doesn’t look or feel like anything I would ever imagine for Arizona, other than all of the rocky mountains. Gah! I so wish I had a camera!!! Im hoping I can get some of the people here to share some of their snapshots with me so I can show all y’all eventually.
Once at the station I had a little time to unpack my gear and toss it all neatly into some under-the-bed drawers (it’s like being at summer camp!) and chatted with my bunkmates for a little bit. I actually know two of the girls and they happen to be collaborators on the overarching project that my project is a part of. They’re grad students of one of my committee members, JZ, over in Wisconsin. It was nice to see some familiar faces. I also got to visit with JZ for a good spell and then we went to set up a trap before dinner. Dinner was pretty tasty – complete with brownie sundaes! Deeelish.
We have a little bit of downtime now and then we’ll head off for a big info meeting type deal and from the sounds of it, collecting!!
Internet is pretty spotty here, so blog posts, answers to emails, etc. will be posted when possible. There is absolutely NO cell reception however…so, if any of you beautiful people need me at all this week, your best bet will be to email/facebook/etc. me.
Happy Sunday, loves!
Shalom!
~MW
~MW
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