Team IV

Team IV arrived on August 19. We were mostly British: Annabel, Julia, Sophia, Diane, Andrew, James, Melissa, and Gill were all from "over the pond." We had one woman from Japan - Mina - and 3 from the USA: Elisa, Ann, and Pat. We were divided up with 8 women in the green house; Andrew and Mina each had single rooms in the yellow house and James & Melissa had their own room there. 'Twas a great Team. and we spoiled Lycos a lot!

This is just a quick post to get us started; I won't attempt to cover it all, and I don't have any photos ready to post. I hope others will contribute, too.

We ate too much - cereal and toast or waffles and optional eggs and bacon every morning; tuna and/or egg salad for lunch, with cheese and/or tomatoes and cucumbers. Who knew there were so many flavors of potato chips! and then every evening, after the delicious suppers Chris prepared, we had choices of ice cream! it's hard to break those habits now that I'm back home sitting in the office instead of tramping thru woods and bogs all day.... to my immense surprise I didn't gain weight.

We had mostly sunny weather - only rained both Fridays of our Expedition - a bit too hot for most of our preferences, I think - 26 - 28 most days, I think. (see - even Americans can learn to think in Centigrade! - that's about 79 - 83 F - but we were often in the sun.)

We caught red backed voles and bog lemmings in the areas that had been cut 15 years ago; red backed voles and a few chipmunks - they are exciting when released from the trap into the capture bag! - in the woods. No mice. Which continues the trend this season - a very dramatic shortage of mice. Everyone got to hold at least one little critter while it was examined to see what sex it was and, if female, whether she was pregnant or nursing or had recently nursed ...

On our "day off" we went to Lunenberg, which is delightful. Most of the Team went whale watching; I didn't - I preferred to wander into the stores and galleries in Lunenberg. Saw lots of things it would have been nice to be able to afford to buy - especially in the gallery selling Inuit sculpture! and the Fisheries Museum is great.

We also went to see the national park, Kejimkujik (Keji for short). We saw fascinating Native American petroglyphs marked in rocks along the lake (the ranger is a member of the tribe), but had to put up with one of the worst-behaved children any of us had experienced (some Canadians need Super Nanny as much as those families on TV in the US). My favorite part was the ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS old growth hemlock forest; I've been in lots of hemlock forests, and some old growth forests, but never an old growth hemlock forest before. It's magical - trees and moss and filtered light.

Enough from me, for now at least!

Elisa