Peggy's Weather Report from Tolsona Lodge:
Time: 9:40 am
Temperature: 20.8 C 69.4 F
Humidity: 42%
Wind: 14 km/hr from South
Clouds: Cumulus, altocumulus
Cloud Cover: 55% broken
Light level: off scale
Tolsona Lake water:
Temperature 15.5 C
pH 7.81
Conductivity 294 microSiemens/cm
I woke up and could not find my wallet with ID. This was about 4:45 am. Usually I kept at the foot of my sleeping bag, but I could not find it there. I retraced what I had done since I had seen it last, which was at dinner. I must have left it at the lodge. So I got up to ask Caleb and Heidi to check at the lodge on their way to see Jerry about the likelihood of a Hallet Lake run to retrieve our gear today. The lodge was not yet open. But, the good news was that Jerry was able to get in to Hallet on one trip and bring back the gear!!! The weather conditions were pretty bad, so he decided not to take anyone to help him; he loaded the gear himself. So we would be able to press on! We searched everywhere for my wallet, but no luck. I called home to have my husband mail my passport to Anchorage so I could fly home when this expedition is over.
Caleb was in phone contact with Dr. Kaufman who had been trying to fly to Valdez to meet up with us when we drove there so we could all fly to Allison Lake together to take long sediment cores of the lake. He was fogged in. Due to the need to share equipment by different research groups at different lakes at the same time Dr. Kaufman decided to cancel our flight to Allison Lake because if we got stuck at Allison Lake another field team would be without vital equipment. Plan B was that he would rent a car and join us along the Richardson Highway as we all travel towards Valdez. Chris, Heidi, Caleb, and I would do water measurements on lakes along the road from Tolsona to Valdez. So with disappointment about Allison, but excitement about testing many lakes we packed up our camp and headed down the road. On the way out of the campground we came across a female spruce grouse and a red squirrel.
Chris was in charge of water measurements. I brought my pH, conductivity, temperature meter as well, so we both took measurements of the following water bodies as we traveled to Valdez: Plumbob Lake, Glenn Richardson Survey Lake 1, Willow Lake, Pippin Lake where we saw a bald eagle soar across the lake and we saw leeches and planaria in the water, Glenn Richardson Survey Lake 2, and Kiekel Lake. Below you will see photos of this water testing road trip and the sites and animals we saw.
Dr. Kaufman caught up with us at Willow Lake. This was the first time I had met him in person. We stopped for a late lunch, and then traveled on.
We stopped at Blueberry Campground outside Valdez for the night and set up camp. While unloading all our gear, my wallet was located with my sleeping bag in the stuff bag. Go figure! Good news. I canceled the request for my passport.
We had a falafel dinner and blueberry crunch for dessert prepared lovingly by Heidi, which was simply delicious! It was late by the time dishes were done, so we went to our tents for the night.