My summer with the Friends of Blackwater: July 2nd -- Mission Impossible Day 2!

Well, at first I decided to wait to check the snares because our new flying squirrel bait and lure was supposed to come in the mail today. After checking the tracking, I found out it will not be in until Saturday! I was so disappointed, but pressed on with my daily routine.

I started off with Yellow Birch as usual, but I was hurrying along because it looked like a storm was on its way! I noticed when I was walking down Yellow Birch that the rhododendron is finally blooming! I've been waiting 2 months for that to happen because I have never seen them in bloom! As soon as I finished checking the last snare it started down pouring and there was lightning and thunder, and the whole nine yards! I decided to hunker down under a tree to try to stay as dry as possible since I didn't have any of my rain gear. The tree I was waiting under had saw dust all under it, but I couldn't find any evidence of what may have caused it!

After about 5 minutes the rain let up so I decided to make the hike back to my vehicle. Well, about halfway it decided to start down pouring yet again, but I pressed on to my van getting soaked to the bone on the way!

I headed back to the office and ate lunch and worked on a few other projects while I waited for the weather to clear up. After about an hour things were looking good -- the rain stopped, the sun was out, the wind calmed down...and I decided to head back out to our newest site.

I parked my van, went in to snare 1 and sure enough it started down pouring AGAIN, I couldn't believe it! I went back to my van and decided to drive to the end of the site and wait it out...by the time I got there it had stopped raining so I gathered all my stuff and went to go check number 10. Before I went into the woods I decided to go down to the river which is only about 40m away from where I would go into the woods. I took a few pictures and guess what happened...just guess...YOU GOT IT! It started POURING again!!!! After sitting in my van for another 15 minutes I decided to just head back to the office and admit that I had been defeated by the storm.

I called Lon because he needed some help with a water flow project he is working on and we did that for about an hour and then I went back to the office to finish some other projects and then I called it a day -- and what a day it was!!