Antarctic reunion!

I just got back from a long weekend in California where I was visiting my pals from Antarctica! Team Ice Aged planned a reunion only a few months after we left the ice; it was great to see everyone again! We met at the Kenneth S. Norris Rancho Marino Reserve right next to Cambria, CA on Thursday and stayed until Saturday. I flew down on Wednesday night and crashed with Kevin and his wife, Lisa, at their awesome house near Santa Cruz. After hitting up the huge Memorial Day weekend sale at the Patagonia outlet (hee hee) we all drove south to the reserve and soaked up the view! It is gorgeous there! And despite the chilly wind, I was thrilled to see some sun. We took advantage of our time together to chat about building databases for all the data (dating back to the 60s) and to go over some of the data I've collected for Paul from SCINI photos. But we mostly played - walking around the reserve, taking photographs, drinking wine/beer, and watching slide shows of old and new photos from the Antarctic.

The stars were pretty incredible at the reserve

Part of the team - Kevin and his wife Lisa (and Puka), Jennifer (and Denali), David, and Julie

Gorgeous - if you blow this up and look all the way to the right you can see the buildings we stayed at. Most of us camped though and used the buildings to eat and escape the chilly wind.

Kevin, Puka, Julie, and David

Paul, Stacy, Lisa, Kevin, David, and Gordy (Paul's dive buddy way back when and another great scientist)...Julie and Jennifer on the bottom

DJ and Tina didn't make it out to the reserve, but we got to see them in Santa Cruz!

When I arrived back in WA yesterday, Jay and I took advantage of the opportunity to visit SAM's (Seattle Art Museum) outdoor sculpture garden. Then we hit a brewery we had been hearing about for a while called Elysian. And it gets even better! Jay searched around and found a Nepali restaurant in Seattle called Annapurna - we went and drank hot chai and ate yummy Nepali food and remembered our great time in that place. Ahhhhh.


More photos are here: https://picasaweb.google.com/julie.barber1/AntarcticReunionCalifornia2011#
and here: https://picasaweb.google.com/julie.barber1/2011May#

Morel season!

Spring has arrived in Washington (this means it is still freezing but Washingtonians put on shorts) and that means it is morel season! Now, Jay and I are not very seasoned mushroomers. In fact, we are super beginners. But, I knew that morels grew in areas that had recently been clearcut or dealt with a forest fire. So, I'm a dork. I found some GIS layers of recent burns and I was able to map out where recent burns had been in WA so we could drive to one of those burns. It turned out that this particular burn was too high in elevation - there was still too much snow! But lucky us - just by driving along the road we found another burn and off into the woods we went. I'm not sure either one of us expected to find a single mushroom. Everything we have read about morels tell you that they are impossible to find and that many mushroomers become "demorelized". Well, we were in the burnt forest for about 1/2 hour when Jay announced his sighting of our first morel! I was so excited I think I took a million photos of one little mushroom. Yipee!

Here is Jay with a bunch of morels! All those tiny dots are morels. They are small, but bigger than they look here.

After a not-so-hard tramp through the woods, we found this awesome lake to camp on. The view sucked.

Dinner was grand for campers. Morels with potatoes, shallots, and sheep cheese. Not bad for not planning on a dinner involving morels.

We went back to the same spot the next day and found more! Here I am with what I think is a white morel (everything else we found was "black")

The drive back to Seattle (and then north) was awesome. We were blown away by the cool geological formations along the road between Rainier and Yakima. Gorgeous!

Our last morel dinner was tonight. We stuffed the big morels with shallots, garlic, pecans, and goat cheese. The garlic and shallots were tossed in a sherry while we cooked them to make things even more tasty. All of that was served on top of really good pasta that was also tossed with smaller morels and good olive oil. Happy Julie and Jay.

Details on the Barber visit!

Jay is still in Belize and I'm having a rainy weekend here in WA on my own. I've got tons of plans of things I want to do, as usual. And one of those things was to update this blog! I'll tell stories through our photographs (some of these pictures are my mom and dad's). If you just want to see pictures, here is the link to my album with all the photos: https://picasaweb.google.com/julie.barber1/April2011PortlandMomAndDadVisit# All the Barber family visit photos will be below the Portland, OR photos, just scroll down.

The tulips were in bloom along with the daffodils. I had to work some of the days my parents were visiting so they spent two days visiting the gorgeous tulip fields without me or Jay. When we finished working though, we went out together in the evening and froze our butts off to get some great shots of the flowers.


Happy Dad! What a trooper! Despite dealing with a never-ending broken leg, my father had a great attitude and still got out and around to see the flowers. We did a lot of driving this week to keep him off his leg, but at least he was still able to see the sights!

Sunset over Mt.Erie from the Skagit Valley

The first weekend my parents were here we headed over the Cascades to Leavenworth. It is always warmer and dryer on the eastern side and we were happily looking for the sun! We found it! The views of the mountains were awesome and it was relatively warm! This is the little cabin we rented for two nights. The outdoor hot tub was grand after each day and we had some great shooting star sightings! We may have even seen the space station (you may think I am nutty, but I had just heard on NPR that the space station would be visible as the second brightest thing in the night sky that weekend). We saw a really bright light, traveling quickly across the sky, and it didn't blink (like a plane). WOW!

We went to a great place for dinner called Pavz Cafe Bistro that specialized in crepes. I had a great crepe dinner, but check out the dessert! Chocolate gelato wrapped in a crepe with a warm berry sauce and ohhhh the whip cream!

One day we took a boat all the way up Lake Chelan. This involved virtually no walking for my Dad and yet it gave all of us great views of this huge, narrow, lake and all the big Cascades surrounding the lake. Here we all are in the small town of Stehekin at the northern end of the lake.


On our way home we passed a farming field in the Skagit Valley that was loaded with snow geese. I know I already posted one photo of this, but here is another! This was a real treat because the snow geese are usually gone from the Skagit Valley by this time of year. However, we have had such a cold spring, the poor geese are confused and have not left yet for their summer stomping grounds up north.

I had to work again after our weekend trip to Leavenworth. I was walking along a beach mapping the upper clam boundary (to run a beach survey the following week) and this river otter walked right past me. That was a real treat! I could even smell it!

My second weekend with my parents was spent without Jay because he had already left for Belize. So we drove down to Whidbey Island and checked out Coupeville and Admiralty Head Lighthouse. Another day we took the ferry over to Orcas Island and drove around to a bunch of places I had never been to before on the island, including the cute little town of Deer Harbor.

It was a bit lonely at first to have my parents leave and Jay in Belize....but I've kept busy! I had a totally crazy week at work (fun, but nutty), I'm teaching a course online that keeps me busy at night, and I'm cooking, cleaning, gardening, making soap, knitting, reading, you name it. Each night I tackle a different project. Today I've got big plans to analyze more photograph data from Antarctica for Paul Dayton. I'll be heading down south at the end of the month to CA for an Antarctic diver/science reunion. I think we will be building a database for all the data that the team has collected over decades. I can't wait to see the crew again! But I want to get more data from Paul's photos before I head down. Lucky for me - all it does is rain here. I have little incentive to be out riding my bike or playing in the backyard. I will go for a jog, make a giant cup of tea, and collect sponge and broyzoan data for the most amazing scientist around, Paul Dayton. Sounds like a plan right!?

Jay is in Belize!

I will write a long post about our great 10 days with my parents soon!

But in the meantime, you may be interested in knowing that Jay is in Belize right now as we speak. Yup! Our friend Randi needed an extra diver at Carrie Bow Caye at the last minute and Jay was able to fill the spot. He has worked a number of times with Randi in Belize and I am so glad that he was able to make this happen. Not only does he get to do some cool science, but he gets some quality time in with Randi (who is a dear friend as well as a colleague). Randi is a research scientist at the New England Aquarium and has a blog that she updates on her work. This means you can follow what Jay is up to....I keep hoping she will post a picture of him on the blog....but not yet. =)

Here is the link: http://explorers.neaq.org/search/label/Belize2011

In a few days I'll post more photos and stories of the Barber visit!