Yesterday, the biologist and I did a vegetation monitoring survey. Basically, we got to drive around in an ATV all day, and then we'd look at random points (generated by a GPS tool) to determine the kind of vegetation that grew in 25 meter transects: native or exotic? Grass or forb? (forbs being plants like wildflowers, shrubs, and basically everything that wasn't grass). The day went by pretty smoothly, except for one point - I will forever loathe #4! Transect 4 was down a ravine (or "cleuch," I think the call it here? I couldn't tell...), which, if you aren't familiar with the term ravine, means a small valley-ish thing, with VERY STEEP sides, and a stream at the bottom. As such, the vegetation there was of a marshy type, mainly thistles, cattails, and Reed-Canary grass, which grows taller than me! We spent literally over an HOUR trying to locate the point, because the GPS unit couldn't find the spot. We had it narrowed to probably a 50 square meter area, considering we had a map and such, but needed much more precision to accurately measure the spot. Finally, after walking around in circles for what felt like forever, the GPS finally cooperated and gave us the location, where we promptly spent about 30 seconds walking the transect, as it was was almost entirely Reed-Canary grass, anyway.

The rest of the day went without much trouble, so I suppose one bad point out of 23 can't be too bad. Although, apparently I'm "crooked as a jaybird," as it was pointed out on numerous occasions that I can't walk a straight line, but I feel it was his fault, as "aim for that set of bushes" over there isn't very descriptive, when you are in an entire field of bushes! We sorted things out, though, so all's well that ends well.

Today was another day of hanging around the office, not too much to report. Only one week left...