The last time we went up to Yost Lake was the third Thursday of the month, our last real day in the classroom for the whole month. This trip went much better than the last two: nothing broke down, we had everything, and it wasn’t below freezing at 6 am.

We went up to do our last measurements: a third set of GLX water quality readings, collect our total atmosphere deposition bulk sampler, and to collect our atmospheric particulate matter. Will and Reid wandered around the lake, taking the GLX readings, while I babysat the particulate air matter collector. Now, I was expecting the thing to last for about 20 minutes like we had been warned (theoretically, you can leave it on its own for an hour, just come back and turn it off and leave) but it didn’t even last 30 seconds, and so I sat there turning thing off and then back on, about 120 times before we felt like we had about an hour’s worth.

Once we finished with all that, we booked it back down the mountain, because we had a book signing we were trying to make. We got down early enough that we decided to stop for dinner first however, at a tiny little thai place called Thai’d Up. It was quite good. Then we rushed back to SNARL, I unloaded all the lab equipment, cleaned up and hurried back over to the lab to listen to David and Janet Carle talk about their book Traveling the 38^th Parallel. The book is about their decision to travel full circle around the world, constantly staying as close to the 38^th parallel (referring to latitude) as possible.

Coincidentally, they kept finding very unusual bodies of water that kept popping up, right on the 38^th parallel. Their travels took them through Asia (Japan and South Korea and China (I believe), Europe (so many countries I won’t try to name) and across the United States, ending back up in California, where they started.

After hearing their stories (with lots of photos), we all stood around enjoying dessert (cookies, ice cream and fruit: grapes and strawberries) and we told them a little bit about our class, what we were doing, and what it all really meant. They were such wonderful people, and it was a really fun night.

Until Next Time,

Joe