After finishing up my first year of grad school, I took a week off to visit friends and family in New England. I was very excited to see my pet axolotls, Thing 1 and Lil Guy. Lil Guy is about 6 months old, and Will and I have been charting his growth every few months. Axolotls are fully aquatic salamanders and they don’t like being out of the water for long, so we have to be quick.

Not surprisingly, it was still cold and rainy in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Maine. I still managed to go on some outdoor adventures. My favorite excursion was a canoe trip on the Ossipee and Saco Rivers in Maine. It was a leisurely trip, we covered about 15 miles with light rapids over two days before ending early to get out of a torrential downpour!

 

Now, I’m back at the lab in Port Aransas, TX where we are gearing up for another summer of fieldwork in arctic Alaska!