Monday September 15th
So, I had my first 20% exam today in Wildlife Physiological Ecology, which thankfully didn't go bad! I think I did okay in it. We also had Chloe, Dr. Breuner's dog, roaming around the classroom looking for affection. Saying that, normally when I do exams, I may think I've done well but it doesn't turn out to be the case. I'll have to wait and see..
We had our Vertebrate Design and Evolution class from which we went straight to our lab. Again this week we worked on our cat dissections, dissecting this time the muscles. This was a three hour lab. We had our first quiz on muscles also at the beginning of this lab. I think I have probably done more rote learning in these labs than I have since the Leaving Cert.!
Monday evening I spent working on yet another assignment that is due in on Wednesday. Nothing too exciting I'm afraid!
Tuesday September 16th
Today myself and Fiona had a meeting with the academic advisor of Wildlife Biology in the University. During the late summer I had been corresponding quite a bit with Jeanne Franz as I was having trouble registering for classes, which she was kindly able to sort me out. After this we had an hour wait until our first field trip with our Wildlife Habitat Conservation and Management class to the Wildlife Refuge, Ninepipes.
We left on one of the Yellow School Buses at 12.10pm (very precise in the USA). We traveled to Ninepipes which took about an hour where we met with the manager of the land who gave us a tour and chatted to us about the conservation and management they do on the land also. We learned about the various species that are on the reserve and also what organizations participate hugely with the refuge.
We got home and both Fiona and I worked on our assignments again before settling down to watch The Amazing Spiderman 2, which was incredible. Far better than the first one!
Wednesday September 17th
Had my Wildlife Physiological Ecology class where we moved onto the topic of Oxygen and why it's important. Vertebrate Design and Evolution consisted today of a lot of physics, which quite a few people in the class found it hard to grasp. Physics was never one of those subjects I really liked anyways.
Fiona and I got to catch up with Sarah from home for a while on FaceTime which was nice to hear how different third year is at home for them. We also prepared ourselves for Yellowstone on Saturday by watching a documentary on the wolves of Yellowstone, learning about the Druid's Peak pack and the Slough Creek pack that live in the Lamar Valley.
Thursday September 18th
Had our Wildlife Habitat Conservation and Management class at 12 pm today where we've moved onto studying habitat selection and what affects it, it's pretty interesting! Next week both our Teaching Assistant, Charlie, and Dr. Dreitz are away so we have guest lecturers speaking to us, which should be pretty cool. Today we were supposed to hand in our field report from the field trip on Tuesday but the questions were not made up on time so we thankfully get an extension until September 30th - lightens up my workload a small bit!
This evening just consisted of starting an assignment that is due for Monday, an introduction into our Research Project on Perch Compliance in birds. A lot of research into this paper has to be done so it's tough but thankfully this assignment isn't marked, as far as I know, it's just a stepping stone for our project.
We watched The Lion King tonight, my favorite childhood movie! Elliot and Dave called over, hadn't seen them in a few days! They've been busy doing labs for their classes. They ended up watching the movie with us for the night. I also got invited to a bbq at my Missoula families house on Sunday evening which I'm really looking forward to!
Friday September 19th
One step closer to Yellowstone! So excited and only one assignment to do over the weekend, sorted!
Not so much.... Ended up getting another assignment to do for Wildlife Physiological Ecology for Monday which didn't look too bad when I first opened it up, 6 questions, grand. Then I opened it up again later on when I was waiting for my lab to see there was actually 16 questions that had to be answered as well as reading the paper. Yaaaay ... We had our dissection lab again today but this time with Bret instead of Kris, which was a nice change! We then discovered we have homework in finishing off the origin, insertion and action off all the rest of the axial, appendicular and pelvic muscles, as well as another quiz on Monday. The one weekend I'm quite busy, classic.
So I got home and I didn't waste any time, I started on the muscle homework straight away, taking the best part of an hour to do, but I got it done with only a few missing because I genuinely couldn't find them. I then started on my WILD346 assignment which took over an hour to do also. In the middle of this I met Sofia outside Lewis and Clark as she was letting me borrow her binoculars for the trip to Yellowstone tomorrow.
During this time we also had a phone dilemma. Fiona couldn't find her phone and we literally turned the apartment upside down trying to find it. Neither of us could remember seeing it, then we thought she may have washed it in the laundry. I suggested going out to the buses to see if anyone found it but no luck. One of the other Irish lads out here rang me later on saying that the bus driver found her phone and he was going to cycle back to Lewis and Clark this evening with it for her - how nice?! So thankfully this story had a happy ending!
I finished off my WILD346 assignment and read through half the paper, the other half I'll do on Sunday. I had a quick dinner and then began making a variety of lunches for our trip to Yellowstone tomorrow. Seeing as we are going to be leaving at 3am that means bringing something for breakfast also, and back up sandwiches for dinner. So much food!
Saturday September 20th
It's FINALLY here!
My first alarm went off at 2 am. I turned it off, falling back to sleep again until my second one went off at 2.20am. I got up to this one - such a crazy hour of the morning to be waking up at. Myself and Fiona got ourselves organized, bags packed and all batteries/cameras charged up and ready to go. We went outside at 3:10am waiting to be picked up at 3:15am. By 3:20 there was still not sign of the bus - we were slightly worried. I took a walk out onto the road to have a look and spotted the bus down at the other bus stop for Lewis and Clark! So lucky - we could have missed the bus. We hurried on down there and hopped onto the bus. We were the only two being collected from Lewis and Clark as well as one of the helpers, who never actually turned up. We boarded up the bus and headed for the Lomasson Center on campus to collect Mona, the trip organizer and tour guide, and the other students. We left campus at 3.30am and headed for Yellowstone! Everyone slept on the bus with some people even bringing blankets and pillows with them for the journey. We stopped about 1.5hours away from Yellowstone for one of the bus drivers to get off. He was resting himself at a Motel for the day in order to drive us back to Missoula that night.
We had to change the itinerary of our trip due to one of the roads at Yellowstone being closed for construction so instead, we entered from the North side of Yellowstone. Here, we got the see the very first official entrance, a bridge/wall constructed out of actual rock from Yellowstone. Within five minutes we saw our first sign of wildlife - a very large bull Elk who was bugling. There was so many cars with tourists and/or photographers looking at him and photographing him. We kept driving past him so I didn't have time to take my camera out to take a photo. We drove through the park with our first stop being the Mammoth terraces, these were pretty cool and were thriving with bacteria.
We walked around having a look at all the different terraces before hopping back on the bus and heading to our next destination. We passed so many bison along the road, Fiona and I were probably the only people on the bus who were not excited to see them as we've already been to the National Bison Range twice. Mona talked about the history of Yellowstone as we made our way to the beautiful Yellowstone Lake. She talked about the wildfires that happen in Yellowstone and the major one in 1988. Surprisingly, the animals did very well in this and not too many died. The pine trees that are in the park, actually need the fires in order to open the pine cones to release the seeds in order for new trees to grow. The National Parks Service have now since decided not to interfere with the fires unless they are going to do harm to humans and/or human structures.
We arrived at Yellowstone Lake where we sat on the sand by the beach and had a picnic lunch. Such a beautiful location that had a surprising amount of ladybugs there also! We had half an hour here before we had to get back onto our bus and head back in the direction we had come.
The next stop we made was at Mudpools or otherwise known as Mud Volcanoes. This was an incredibly cool stop, seeing the mud bubbling and boiling actually looked really inviting for a mud bath! We had 30 mins here also before we had to hop back onto the bus for our next stop.
While on our way to the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, we got stuck in traffic due to Bison walking across the road way blocking traffic. Seeing as this is their land, you are not in any way allowed to interfere with any of the wildlife! Bison can be particularly aggressive animals and can run at speeds of 37mph which is incredibly fast for an animal of its size! We arrived at the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone and had between 20-30 minutes here where we got to see the beautiful Lower Falls.We walked up onto the viewing platforms where Mona talked to anyone who wanted to listen about the Canyon. Both Fiona and I got pretty annoyed here too because there was another tour bus here with people who were so rude and once when I was trying to take a picture one of them tried to push me out of her way. Needless to say I wasn't going to move. As well as this, they would skip ahead of you if you were patiently waiting to take a picture that had a nice view, they were not having any of it! This not only severely annoyed me, but many other people around.
 |
| The Lower Falls |
After seeing the Lower Falls we then went to see the Upper Falls, a smaller waterfall but this time we were stood on a platform over the falls. You could literally feel the power and strength off the water gushing through it was phenomenal. It even had it's own mini rainbow to complete the atmosphere.
Again, we hopped back on the bus and next went to the Fountain Paint Pot, here was a series of geologic features again. We saw more bubbling mud, a hotspring with a gorgeous blue and green color, a small geyser erupting.
We had 30 mins here and then went onto the Midway Geyser Basin which contained the Excelsior Geyser and the Grand Prismatic Spring. The Excelsior Geyser is now inactive but it used to erupt with over 300ft of water bursting up into the air, it went off randomly some years back but since then is inactive. The Grand Prismatic Spring though is gorgeous. There is a variety of colors here caused by the different bacteria that live in the spring, all having their own ideal temperature and pH at which they work best. There was a lot of steam here though and the angle of the sun didn't help matters for photos but the colors could be seen by eye! I did pick up a postcard which I'll put it down below showing you the different colors in the spring.
We then made our way back to our last stop of the day at Old Faithful. The Old Faithful Geyser erupts regularly, with scientists being able to predict when it's next eruption will be based on how much water and how high the water is that comes out. We arrived just in time with a viewing happening in 20 minutes. We all gathered outside and waited. It was amazing, with a variety of ooooohs and ahhhhhs from the crowd of people, everyone was amazed.
We had 3 hours to do what we wanted to here at Old Faithful, getting our dinner here was also one of the to-do things. Fiona and I went to the Old Faithful Snow Lodge 'Geyser Grill'. Dying for some proper food we got burgers and chips, which didn't last very long. We then went into the Old Faithful Inn which is absolutely gorgeous. Words cannot describe it! There was a grand piano on the second floor playing some very nice and relaxing music. We went into the souvenir shop that was here and got some bits and bobs for ourselves and those at home. We saw that there was an ice-cream shop here also so we couldn't resist and got ourselves a 'single' portion which turned out to be three large scoops of the ice-cream of our choice. We chilled and ate this, before watching the next eruption of Old Faithful on a balcony outside of the Inn - truly gorgeous.
We took a wander around the area, passing the Visitor Center where we had a chat with one of the Park Rangers about where is the best place to spot wolves and bears (already planning a trip back here), we passed the geyser again and strolled around the Inn. We were all meeting back at the buses at 8:30 pm to head back home for Missoula. Everyone arrived on time thankfully. We stopped along the way to pick up the other bus driver who was taking us back home. We arrived back in Missoula at 2:30 am. With Fiona and I arriving back to Lewis and Clark close to 3 am. A full 24hours after we left. It was an absolutely incredible day and I'm already looking forward to going back!
Sunday September 21st
Today is the biggest day of the year for anyone from Kerry or Donegal. It's All Ireland Football Final Day!!! After only 4 hours sleep, my alarm went off and I hopped out of bed and got the game up on my laptop. Way too excited for this hour of the morning I also turned on Radio Kerry just to make it feel extra homely. With the Kerry Minors winning their match, it'd be a huge deal for the Seniors to also win as they haven't won the double since 1980! After a minute Kerry had a goal scored, this is looking to be a promising match so far! I was able to watch up to the second half until the internet here caved in and wouldn't let me watch anymore.. (our wifi isn't the greatest here). I tuned into the second half with Weeshie Fogarty and Gary O' Sullivan on Radio Kerry. What I would have given to have been up at the match today! Since then, I've been to a couple semi finals if we're not in New York. Anyways, long story short, we won our 37th All Ireland Title today, beating Donegal by 2-09 to 0-12. Not a man in The Kingdom will be disappointed tonight, that's for sure!
At 5:30pm I headed over to my Missoula families house for a bbq, we had absolutely delicious steak with a range of food accompanying it. Absolutely delicious! And afterwards, we had delicious brownies that Shannon had made, which we even brought some home too! I spent the night trying to learn roughly 30-40 muscles for a quiz that we have tomorrow, as well as finishing off some of my three assignments that are due in tomorrow also. Talk about a crazy weekend!
So this week, I took a bit of a different approach to the blog, I cut down big time on what happens during the week, because no one wants to read about what I do every second. I just kind of mention the basics and that. Friday marked my 5th week here in Missoula. The 5 weeks have absolutely flown by it's crazy! We've already seen so many of the landmark places here it's just been fantastic. Really am thoroughly enjoying myself here. Fiona's blog for anyone interested in reading that is : http://fionasamericanadventures.blogspot.com/
Next week I FINALLY get to go to my first Griz game. And it's not any ordinary game, it's homecoming!!
Thanks for reading,
- Shannen.
