Night 9, Day 10, and Night 10

 June 24th of 2025

Night 9

    After a long day of looking for plants and stopping by at the library to post our blogs, we finally got back to our campsite. Once we arrived, we instantly got off and went to get our clothes so that we could take our showers. We got back into the suburban and drove off to take our two minute showers. What really sucks is that the water will first come out freezing cold, then scorching hot. This time, I had to balance the temperatures together. Once we got out, we waited inside the suburbans so we could go back to the campsite. Afterwards, Monet started to cook dinner. Tonight's dinner was butter Chicken, rice, and naan which came out so very very delicious! Monet's cooking never fails to impress!!! The fun part was that it was my first time ever trying Indian food and I must say that the first experience did not fail to please me! Once dinner was over,  everyone started doing their stuff and Raquel and I were on pick up duty. The stuff inside the coolers weren't really organized so Jessica labeled them for us so we could keep track of what was in each cooler! Once everyone was done with their duties, James, Kyal, Jessica, Raquel, Lis, and I headed to the lake to chill out for the day. Jessica left a while later while the rest of us stay for a great while! We were looking at the constellations and also tried to take selfies but it was way too dark for the selfies. We all looked like creatures that lurked around at night or something..... Once we were done, we headed back to our tents and Lis called my mom so we could talk to her! As always, we were laughing it up in the tent and they kept teaming up on me telling me stuff. I finally threatened both of them that I was gonna get my grandma to come defend me and we just kept laughing! We talked with my mom for about 20 minutes and then finally said goodnight and fell asleep.

Day 10

    We got up at 6:00am for breakfast and all had breakfast! It was really cold in the morning and I feel that this campsite has been the coldest one of all. The hot chocolate I prepared myself in the morning really helped! We got into the suburbans at around 7:30am and left to go to our destination at the Sisters Ranger Station. We went to a gift shop there and met 3 wonderful people in a conference room as they would introduce themselves and tell us what we would help them with today.

Alex Enna, who graduated from Colorado State University, studied in biology, and had worked a variety of things. One being that he worked with fire! 

Liz Day, who has been working with the district for 2 years, graduated from University of Delaware, studied in biology, spent 4 years as a Fisheries Technician, and worked with landscape and stream restoration!

Christine Meyers, who is an Assistant Coordinator in the Dechutes Forest, has worked with the agency for 19 years, has done forestry, soil science, botany, and has also done multiple jobs within her work area.

    I had a good time working with them! They were very nice and friendly and made sure that we weren't too burnt out whenever we got tired. After we got done introducing ourselves in the conference room, Liz showed us a presentation and explained how a goal we were trying to complete was to get beaver back to a certain swamp. That is the Lower Black Bewt Swamp. She even passed around pictures of the progress being done around that area and even had pictures of a bob cat crossing on the stakes to prevent itself from falling into the water. Another thing we learned was that the Lower Black Bewt Swamp is in progress of restoration meanwhile the Upper Black Bewt Swamp has had no restoration. Once we collected more info and wrote more notes, we all went back to the suburbans. We arrived to a little warehouse to get some waders to get in the water. Afterwards, we headed to the swamp and hiked for about 10 to 15 minutes, On our way there, we stopped to eat lunch. I just had some trail mix with some string cheese. After lunch was done, we went to go do our work. We hiked just a bit further and finally got to the areas where we would be doing some more dam restorations. Since I didn't have any waders, I went to go cut willows for the people who would be working in the water. It was fun but also very tiring. We were out there for at least an hour to an hour and a half. We only had to do two dams today so we finished up quickly. After we all finished, we hiked back up to the suburbans which took like another 15 minutes. I felt so long though since we were going upwards a lot. Once we got the suburbans, we headed to a nearby Starbucks to celebrate Corbin passing a test. And a big thanks to Jessica for paying our drinks! As I finish today's blog, Corbin comes in and gave Lis, Raquel, and I a mini bottle of Tajin which is the cutest thing ever! So thanks to him as well and a big congrats on his success!!!

Night 10

When we got back to the camping area, we started on dinner. We finally had the Korean dinner. While we were helping Monet, she was teaching us a bit of Korean. For dinner, we had kimchi, galbi, rice, fried tofu, beansprouts, and pickled cucumber. Everything was so delicious and I even went in for seconds! After the Korean dinner, we all cleaned up and did another lab. We did our gram stains and wrote down some more info on the bacteria. We finished at about almost 11:00 pm and we were so tired. Once we finished, we cleaned up and disinfected everything with alcohol spray. Lis and I finally went into our tents and talked for a bit and dozed off to sleep!