Howdy all. We're back from our western adventures, and in one piece. Two weeks of field work and we're more than happy to be home. The trip was great, and we got a lot done. Well, to be more clear, Rew got a lot done. He did most of the sampling for me, as it was pretty difficult for me to bend and squat by the springs as is necessary for sampling at this point. In essence, I would never have been able to get this done on my own so he's a real hero in my book. Also, I think it's only appropriate to consider him an honorary Geobiologist after this experience! Here are a few pix of our misadventures in wonderland. We were out sampling for 8/11 field days. The other days were rest days (we managed to see Dark Knight in Bozeman, totally worth it).
Rew, taking a bit of a snack break out at one of our locations in the Lower Geyser Basin. You can see some of the analytical mayhem in the background (mostly water chemistry in action).
Here's Rew showing one of the sampling locations after taking measurements of pH, Temp, and GPS. Looks inviting? It's near boiling and would make short work of anyone temped to dip.
Not sure what I'm doing here. Typically I spent my time recording all the things Rew was doing for me in my field book...I needed to feel like I was working on *something*.
Here's a really bizarre hot spring that we trekked to this year. I've seen a lot of springs, and this is the first one like this I've run into (not literally). It's called Tomato Soup Pool. Wonder why.
Here's a shot of the two of us sampling together. I'd been incubating some glass slides in this outflow channel to try to encourage microbial growth. We're taking them out and placing them in a preservative here.
Cool shot of a photosynthetic microbial mat typical of those found in the geyser basins. I don't really work with these organisms, but they make for a pretty picture! The whole field of view is probably 10ft wide.
Gratuitous animal shot. These elk were hanging out near one of our trails. They were totally unconcerned by us, even though they had a couple of babies with them.
First order of business on Saturday was to check in with Gretchen and company via Skype. 
Sprout ordered a fancy cake that had layers of banana-spice, vanilla-strawberry, and yummy chocolate! This came from Ingram's Bakery here in Downers Grove. The little bags in the background held the contents of a guessing game that we played later.
This is an amazing tower of gifts assembled with much care from Becky (and I hear her girls helped with the construction efforts). It's a multi-tiered collection of baby necessities!
Here we are concentrating very hard on one of the games we played. We had to match baby photos to both ourselves and misc celebrities. Much harder than you would think it would be! Luckily, no one confused me with Justin Timberlake. We also had a rousing match of baby shower bingo while opening gifts.
So part two (due!) and three of the "showers" part of the weekend consisted of a cold front that brought a day of rain on Friday, followed by the remanents of Ike that lasted through Sunday afternoon. There was so much rain that we had localized flooding in our neighborhood. For those of you that left early Sunday, "Lake Blodgett" continued to grow rapidly throughout the day. Here you can see some kids who were actually boating on it (that's the house across the street from us).
Mid-afternoon brought the development of our street being turned into a detour, as Barth Pond finally overflowed its banks and began spilling over the street and into the neighborhood. Here, the pond is on the right of the frame, and you can see that it has made it well up and over the curb on the other side of the street! In fact, it's actually flowing. Lots of excitement! REALLY glad our house is up on higher ground!
