People of the big river 2025

 Day thirteen: I woke up today a 7:00 AM. Today is the last full day of the trip and we will be heading tomorrow. The first thing we did was go to the Walla Walla fish hatchery and took a tour of the facility. We met Thomas Tallbull. He is a Hatchery manager there, Thomas graduated from the University of Idaho in 2012 with a bachelor's degree in fish and wildlife, and a master's from the University of Oklahoma in 2021, he was the one giving us the tour. He showed us everything there is that happens at a fish hatchery, from the spawning pools, and where they tag the fish so they can keep track of them. Next he showed us how they separate the natural fish from the tagged fish and he even showed us some lamprey. He said that they release hundreds of thousands of fish each year, I liked the tour it was very interesting. Then after the tour we went back to camp and did some gram staining on the rest of our water samples. We did that for almost two hours, and had some lunch, then we ...

 Day twelve: Today I woke up feeling way better than I did yesterday. But I have to take it slow the Doctor said, which I did not like because I do not like to sit around and do nothing. While everybody else is working, but I had no choice. Today we went to a plant nursery and help them with trimming there trees and moved them so they can collect better sun light. We did that for couple of hours, but I to just sit there and watch which was terrible because I wanted to help. After that we went to the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla and met with Andrew Wildbill who is a tribal member. He gave us an introduction to the natural resources program that they have there. he spoke for with us for an hour or so then we had some lunch and talked for a little longer. Then we made our way to the Burrowing Owl Conservation on the former Umatilla Chemical Depot, we met up with Solai Le Fay, who is from Ashland, Oregon. She is a graduate student from Boise State working on her masters in rapto...

 Day eleven: Today is our travel day, we have a ten hours drive ahead of us. I woke not feeling so good, and of all days it had to be on our travel day. I woke up feeling nauseous, and had a headache, I could not eat anything. I was not feeling my best, but we departed crane prairie at 8:00 AM and made our ten hour trip to Pendleton. We stopped at a few places and had our lunch, but I could not eat anything at all. I just slept most of the trip, I felt a little better for a while but that didn't last long. After we got to our camp site to set up, I still was not feeling good. So I had to be driven to the hospital to get an IV, turns out I had heat exhaustion, the IV helped and I was able to recover and felt better. Then when I got back I just went to bed to rest it off.    

 Day ten: Today I woke up at 6:00 AM, I had some breakfast as usual and packed my lunch. Today we will be doing some field work, and help the forest service with restoring some of the beaver dam projects they have been working on. Like what we helped with at Swamp creek around the Mount Adams area on the Yakama reservation. It should be very fun, I am looking forward to it, I like working on stuff like that. We departed camp at 7:30, and went to the Deschutes national forest offices in the city of Sister. We met with some program managers and botanists. The first person was Alex Enna, program manager for various programs in the area he also has a masters degree in forestry from Colorado state, next was Liz Day, district manager, she got her wildlife major from the University of Delaware. The next person was Christine Meyers, Partnership coordinator for the Deschutes national forest she has a degree in forestry but now is in botany. We went to an area called lower black butte swamp ...

 Day nine: Today I woke up at 6:00 AM, and helped get breakfast prepared. Then I packed my lunch, we departed at 7:30, and took a two hour drive, to sand springs. We met up with Marlow Fisher, she is a Botanist for the U.S forest service at the Deschutes national forest. She has been there for over 15 years, she is very experienced at her job. She grew up in Northwest Indiana near Chicago, and around the Smokey mountains area. She went to the University of Indiana and Oregon state. Her job is working on the restoration of the forest, and helps make eco systems better. Right now she is working the rare plant survey, the plant is called pumice moonwart fern. That is what we will be helping her with. We met up with her, at around 9:30, and went to Sand Springs, the place is a desert like area to look for the pumice moonwart fern. The area was dry and it was pretty warm. Our job was to make a grid pattern and flag all of the pumice moonwarts that we find. It turned out to be a lot of f...

 Day eight: Today I woke up at 7:00 AM, today is another science day. I had some breakfast, I didn't have to pack a lunch because we will be staying at camp to have our science day. We started off with incubating some of our water samples, so we can see if any bacteria is in the water where we have collected them. Next we took some of our other water samples that we have already incubated, which had some bacteria growth on them we did that for a couple of hours. Next we got everything prepared for the next steps of our lab work, then we took our lunch break for about an hour. Then after our lunch break, we began to gram stain our samples so we can look at the bacteria under the microscope. I really enjoy the process of the gram staining the bacteria, it us about an hour to get all our samples ready. Then we began to look at them under the microscope. This was very interesting because we all got a lot of really good samples of bacteria, then we identified them and wrote them down in...

 Day seven: Today I woke up at 7:00 AM, and had some breakfast and packed my lunch. Because today is our travel day, we have a long travel day ahead of us. We will be traveling from Wellpinit to Crane Prairie lake in the Deschutes national forest in Oregon. I am looking forward to this, because I never been there and I heard it is very beautiful. We departed Wellpinit just after 8:00, we drove though the Tri-Cities area to get to Oregon it took about three hours to get there from Wellpinit. But of course as soon as we got to Oregon it started raining, which was not a surprise. We drove for about another hour and stopped at a rest area and had some, and I made a phone call to my family. Which was nice, because I haven't talked to them since I left for my trip, and they were happy to hear from me. We had lunch for about 45 minutes, and got back on the road, and set off for our destination, we still had a long ways ahead of us. We arrived at Crane Prairie just after 5:30, the trip too...

 Day six: Today I woke up at 7:00 AM, I had some breakfast. Today is a science day, we got started at around a little after 8:30, first thing we did was we learned about what bacteria's we are supposed to look out for. Then we had a open discussion about the different water qualities we have collected from all the stop we had on our trip. We also discussed about some hypnosis about our water samples, we talked about that for about four hours, then we broke for lunch. After lunch we did some lab work, with some of the other water samples that we have collected at Bird creek and Swamp creek. we look for and found some bacteria growth, and then we put them on some agar plates and incubated them. That was very interesting and fun, it was something different then other lab work I have done in the past. We did that for a couple of hours, and took a quick break, after the break we talked and worked on our posters that we will be presenting at some point in time. Which I am looking forward...

 Day five: Today I woke up at 7:00 AM. we had some breakfast and packed our lunches and met up with some water and fish technicians, Jordyn Matherly and Josh Kieffer. Jordyn started off as a youth worker for the tribe at the age of 15 in natural resources and fell in love with it and knew this is what she really wants to do. So she became a fish tech 2 and has been working there ever since, she has also worked on other reservations too. Josh also works as a fish tech 1 for water and fish, he grew up farming and has also fought fires he is currently working on his degree at the University of Idaho. After they introduced themselves to us they took us to Tshimakain creek, where they showed us what their day to day work life looks like. Their goal is to preserve the red band trout in the area and to make sure the areas are kept clean. First we did some surveying we took measurements of the creek to how deep the sediments are in the creek it was very interesting. We did that for about t...

 Day four: Today was just a travel day. We departed Bird creek at around 8:00 AM, we made our way back to Heritage. To drop off some extra supplies that we didn't need, and get some control water samples to test and compare to other water samples that we have collected. We were only there for a half an hour, and then we set off for Wellpinit on the Spokane Tribe of Indians reservation. Where we will be spending three days, we stopped off at Dry Falls for lunch the landscape was amazing, I learned a little bit about the history of the area, and how it came to be. We were there for about an hour, we also stopped at Coulee city resupply on some groceries. Then we made our way to Wellpinit where the trip took six hours. Now we are settling in and setting up our tents, and going to have some dinner, we have a big day ahead of us tomorrow.

 Day Three: Today we woke up at 6:00 AM to get a head start of the day. Helped with setting up breakfast for everyone. We got on the road around 7:45 AM, we made our way to the MT. Adams around, to a place called Swamp creek. We met up with some Tribal workers and a retired tribal employee, there names were Doug Olney, he is the retired tribal employee he used to work in natural resources, Gerard Foley habitat biologist and fisheries research at Yakama Nation, John Washines he works as a tech for Yakama Nation for 12 years, Patrick Hayden he has been working in the field for 15 years, Jeanette Burkhart she has been with the tribe for 20 years and loves everything about plants. everyone of them is amazing at their job. we worked on the beaver enhancements. We made makeshift beaver dams, don't know if they live up to beaver standards but they will have to do. We had lunch around 1o'clock for about a half an hour, then got back to work. We cut some trees down and dragged them a wa...

 Day Two: I woke up around 7:30 AM, I helped setup breakfast and lunch for everyone. After breakfast, we headed off to the King Mountain and Klickatat areas and took some water samples. We also took measures of the water and temperatures. Now we are in Glenwood showering up and headed back to camp.

Day One: My first thoughts of this trip were it is going to long and rough. But turns out it is better then I expected. I met new people, there is seven of us students and everyone is very friendly. I am really enjoying my time on this trip, It is only the first so all we did was some lab work in the morning had some lunch. Then we traveled to our campsite which is Birdcreek campgrounds.