We saw several sikriks today. They're cute, bold little critters, with long fluffy tails and spotted beige backs; otherwise, they look like slender prairie dogs. They run down the bluffs and across the beach and sniff for food and knock small rocks down on us. Roland and Dave don't like them much, but I think they're charming.

Saturday, July 27 -- the rain stopped during the night but the clouds remained, and it was 42° this morning and I don't think it warmed up all day. At least it didn't rain. I need all my warm clothes now. I had on my leotard, my long underwear, my fleece pullover, my down vest, and my Gore-tex parka -- and was just comfortable. I also needed my stocking cap. Rounding out my quarry attire were sweats under my Gore-tex pants, and socks under my rubber boots. We need the rubber boots for wading to/from the boats or for crossing the mud flats if walking. I'm glad I invested in the Gore-tex: it's wind- as well as rainproof, and perfectly suited to this weather. The upside to the cold is that the mosquitoes weren't out. I had three cups of coffee for breakfast. This is camp coffee: muddy Colville River water, boiled for ten minutes to kill any organisms, then reboiled with some ground coffee thrown in. You strain it through a sieve into your cup, and it's still a little crunchy at the bottom. It's nice and strong and thanks to Gary and Stu, we still have milk -- most people use it on cereal but I dump my ration in my coffee. Having milk for my coffee is heavenly. Ed is still having trouble in that he can't stand to drink the muddy water, so is rationing juice drinks he brought from home. I don't like it plain, but Gary covers the mud up with Crystal Light each day, which makes it quite palatable.

I excavated the north quadrant of our quarry pit today and found two more caudal centra. You can tell the caudal centra from the dorsals and the cervicals because the caudals are amphicoelous whereas the others are procoelous. Judy worked on a radius and Ed worked on his humerus. The next quarry pit over from ours is that of Erica, Barb, and George; they have been working on excavating a very nice tibia.

Gary brought hot tortellinis for lunch, which really hit the spot on a cold day. At least it hasn't been windy. I leave the recording to Ed and Judy because my fingers are too stiff from the cold for me to write legibly, despite my goatskin work gloves. My fingers are cold, as are my toes, but not terribly uncomfortably so. I'm actually quite comfy under the circumstances. Erica and Jonathan are talking about building a "river sauna" tonight -- some sort of fire and hot rock bake followed by a dunk in the muddy Colville slough. I think I'll pass. I might be up for that sort of thing if the air temperature were warmer, but not when it's 42°.

After lunch I found a beautifully preserved neural arch, complete with neural spine and zygapophyses, from a caudal vertebra, lying just above a nearly complete scapula. The coracoid end has turned to punky powder but the rest of the bone should be recoverable. I can't go far enough to jacket either one until Judy's radius and humerus are removed. Ed covers the radius with toilet paper, then dampens it with water and a paintbrush; the next step is to plaster it with presoaked surgical bandages. The paper layer will allow the jacket to cleanly separate from the bone in the lab. I've never used preplastered bandages before, only burlap strips dipped in plaster of Paris. The bandages are easier to use but are more expensive. They were a donation to the expedition by a veterinarian over a year ago, and apparently, some of them have gone stale: they absorbed some moisture through the packaging and the plaster has partially set up, so they're crunchy and grainy when soaked rather than muddy and fluid. Bummer, because the extra plaster got accidentally left behind in Fairbanks. We can only hope we have enough good ones to do the job. In this cold, the plaster must be allowed to set up overnight before the blocks can be pedestaled and overturned in preparation for completing the jackets. Around 4 pm Jonathan brings the big boat back from camp with the makings of an afternoon tea. Dave has taken the little boat downriver to the Eskimo hamlet of Nuiqsut to visit friends. A fire of willow branches and peat clods on the beach serves to heat the water, and we have hot chocolate and herbal teas -- it's really wonderful. I can't get over the little luxuries we have in this remote spot. Tonight they're going to smoke the caribou ribs. It's threatening to rain again as I crawl into my tent to write in my journal.

Sunday, July 28 -- it was cool today, with high clouds, not cold like yesterday but cool enough to keep the bugs down -- 53° at 6 pm which is still midday here. We finished jacketing the radius and neural arch this morning and removed them from the quarry so we could do some more work on the humerus and scapula. Ed found a hadrosaur tooth and a nice, nearly complete rib near the middle of the quarry, but we spent most of the time working on bones we'd previously discovered. Our meter-square pit is deep enough that you must be in it to work now, you can't just lean over the edge, and its confines are only sufficient for one or two of us to work at a time now, which slows us down. The work is slow anyway, jacketing first one side, then allowing it to set up, pedestaling, flipping, and jacketing the remaining side. Fun, though. Neither Ed nor Judy had done any jacketing before so they were excited.

Barb, Erica, and George have reached the bottom of the bone layer in their quarry. Then it's just clay again. Their pit is only 2 meters northeast of ours, and they've found the bone layer to be only half a meter thick; we must be nearing the bottom of it, then. After another tea at the "Peregrine Quarry" (that of Bill, Margaret, Jonathan, Matt, and Ron; so named for the birds nesting above) we jacket the top sides of the humerus and scapula, then close up the quarry for the day. The plaster is setting up a little faster with the somewhat warmer temperatures today. It's been fine fun, dry and pleasant, though the mosquitoes are beginning to come out. The caribou ribs are smoked and they plan another meal of meat and fresh fish.

I washed my hair in the river before dinner and it felt good. Being able to keep clean contributes immensely to my comfort. Gary has made pasta al fiorno and carrot stix to supplement the meat. During dinner the wind shifts to the north and it begins to get cold. They are planning another river sauna for tonight, but again, I'd rather skip it with this cold air.

Monday, July 29 -- a cold night, but I put on my down booties and vest and snuggled into my down sleeping bag and I was toasty warm. I didn't want to get up this morning. Jonathan, Erica, Bill, and Margaret had another sauna last night and then went up on the tundra to watch the first sunset. The sun sets behind the bluffs now for an hour or so but it still doesn't get dark at night. I'm pretty used to it now and sleeping well.

It was 42° again at breakfast, but then the wind swung around to the north, coming in off the Arctic Ocean (only 41 miles away by river), and it grew quite perceptibly colder -- though whether it was actually a temperature drop, or just a wind chill, I couldn't tell. It alternated between spitting on us and sprinkling all day, never really reaching a drizzle but enough to keep things wet. This was to be our last day of digging, and between that and the weather, I couldn't really get into it today. Neither could Ed, Erica, or Judy; we flipped some jackets and mapped some small bones, but the pace was distinctly slower than it has been. Judy found a nice fourth phalanx and I found another rib underneath where my scapula was removed, and I also found another hadrosaur tooth. The teeth are found in isolation here, not as part of the large dental battery they formed in life.

The lunch boat brought the supplies for tea, complete with blueberry muffin mix to be cooked in a small rusted wood stove/oven that Bill found on the tundra and hauled down to the quarry. We buttoned up our pit around 3 pm due to the rain, and headed down the beach to Peregrine Quarry. I was tired of the cold and rain and decided to skip the tea and walk back to camp early, rather than spend another two or three hours outside until the boat came. No one else wanted to come so I walked alone, and it was a pleasant walk since I could go at my own pace. The mud flats between the quarries and Poverty Bar are crisscrossed with ever so many footprints -- caribou, heron, sandhill crane, bear, and sikrik, as well as others I couldn't identify. In places they are covered with mats of the prostrate, filamentous stems of creeping horsetails (Equisetum), which color the mud flats green. We saw a musk ox today on the far side of the river, but it was too far away to see very well and no one had binoculars with them. Once we got back to camp, Jonathan got out his spotting scope and then we could see the musk ox very well. Magnificent animal.

As a celebration of our last day of quarrying, Gary smoked and roasted two turkeys and prepared a full "Thanksgiving" dinner -- stuffing, green beans, cranberry sauce, and cheesecake. It was wonderful. I had noodles instead of turkey, but partook of all the trimmings. I sure didn't expect such great food when I signed up for this expedition.

Tuesday, July 30 -- the day broke cool again, 41° but dry. After a leisurely breakfast of French toast and coffee, Roland called a meeting to wrap up. The ribs and phalanx we left in our quarry will remain for the second crew to remove. This morning we are to stay in camp, finish the labeling of bones and our paperwork, and clean up the camp. Gary and Ron are staying here to provide continuity between us and the next crew, but the rest of us will be leaving tomorrow. Tonight we'll take a picnic to Kikiakorak up the river a little ways. With some time to kill in camp, Ed, Judy, and I climbed the bluff and took a walk on the tundra. We saw birds, sikriks, and the ubiquitous trenches that form the patterned ground. There were some kind of dwarf bushes prolific with red berries, many short herbs, and some beautiful clubmosses. From the top of the bluffs we could see far to the east, where the land is lower, over the marshy tundra bedecked with dozens of shining jeweled lakes. As we came back to camp, dragging willow limbs, the clouds came over the sun and it began to sprinkle.

I missed the boats to the picnic and caught a ride a little later with Just, the friend of Dave's who lives in Nuiqsut with his wife Inge-lise. They're both teachers and seem really nice. I appreciated Just giving me a personal ride in his boat so that I wouldn't have to forego the picnic. Apparently all I missed was a very cold boat ride in the rain, so it was all for the best. I had a late dinner topped off with a few roasted marshmallows, and Roland broke out the Scotch which the film crew had given us. We had a wonderful big campfire, a fitting end to a delightful expedition.

They finally convinced me to try the sauna. I still wasn't keen on jumping in the river so we took the sun shower into the teepee for me to rinse off with. Bill, Margaret, Erica, and Jonathan built a big fire and heated up some rocks in it. Then they shoveled them into a stainless steel salad bowl and brought it inside the teepee, and spritzed water on the rocks. It made a wonderful steam bath and we all sweated and lathered up our hair. Then the four of them ran out and jumped in the slough while I stayed inside and showered off. It was really fun and nice to be clean. Then we all warmed up by the fire and sipped cognac while we dressed. I'm glad I finally did it, even if I didn't jump in the river.

Wednesday, July 31 -- another cold, cloudy, but dry day. Just and Inge-lise are going back downriver and have invited us to spend the day in Nuiqsut. Jonathan, George, Ed, and I take them up on their hospitality; the others aren't as interested in seeing an Eskimo village, so they opt to stay on the bar in hopes of getting an earlier flight out and a hot shower in Deadhorse.

We stopped at a pingo on the way. Pingoes are small hills formed when the waterlogged soil of an old lakebed freezes, forming an ice lens which humps up the tundra soil. It's pretty interesting from a geological standpoint, and is also pretty, sporting as it does a mantle of yellow Indian paintbrushes.

Nuiqsut is a rather drab little settlement, population 350, but interesting nevertheless. The houses are all on pilings to keep them from melting the permafrost and sinking into the resulting muck. At the general store Jonathan inquired about purchasing some baleen, and we were directed to the red house, where an old Eskimo woman, the wife of a whaling captain, sold him an 8' plate for $50. Just and Inge-lise's house is very comfortable and we are all glad we came, both to see the village and to enjoy the comforts of civilization after all this time (warmth and a hot shower). The temperature has been dropping all day, and after dinner it's 38° with a stiff breeze and a light sprinkling -- I'm glad not to be spending the night on the bar, and feel for those who are still there. Dave and Jonathan talked to the pilot, Stu, on the phone, and found out he just got into Deadhorse today from a maintenance trip to Fairbanks; he got back too late to pick up the crew on the bar before tomorrow, delaying us a day.

Just showed us their ice cellar, which is a cold storage room dug into the permafrost. We climbed down a ladder past ice stalactites into a small cavelike chamber lined with beautiful, huge ice crystals on the ceiling and walls. It's a beautiful but foul-smelling hole with a floor made of frozen blood. They store fish and whale meat down there. I find the blood and chunks of meat a macabre sight, but am glad to have had the chance to see this unique storage system.

Thursday, August 1 -- the water has risen above the landing strip on Poverty Bar, so Stu can't pick the others up. They all pile into the remaining boat and come down to Nuiqsut, which has an airfield. We all fly to Deadhorse where we have dinner and then hit the road about 8:30 pm.

Friday, August 2 -- it was raining when we got to Coldfoot around 3 am, and no one wanted to set up our tents, so we drove straight through to Fairbanks, getting in around noon. Erica and I had all sorts of deep philosophical conversations as I made sure she stayed awake to drive, so I didn't get any sleep either. Barb invited us all to her cabin at Chena Hot Springs, so we (all but Judy and Roland) went up there this afternoon. Soaking in the hot springs was wonderful, then we all went back to the cabin to drink beer, play hearts, and talk. Bill and I stayed up until almost midnight, and after 40 sleepless hours, I was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

Saturday, August 3 -- more soaking in the hot springs before packing up to go back to Fairbanks. Gary's mother invited us all to spend the night at their house, so I had another nice bed to sleep in. We sent out for pizza and rented a movie. The past two days made a great grand finale to one of the best vacations I've ever had.

Sunday, August 4 -- fly home to Denver. I'm sad it's over but glad to get home to my husband, Chris, and my two daughters, Allison and Mattie.