July is for traveling!

Well, its been about a month, so I figured I should update. I actually spent almost half of July outside the state of Florida which was wonderful because its miserably hot and humid here.

First, the weekend of July 4th, I drove up to Alabama to visit Patience and her family. Her parents have a house on a lake. The weekend was much fun. It reminded me of family trips to Lake Tippecanoe: they had a pontoon boat, we went tubing, lots of sitting down by the water and swimming off the dock. Of course her family's house was much nicer than any of the cabins on the lake...

As Patience hasn't related this story to anyone yet, I think I should share it. The second afternoon I was there patience's mom took us tubing. We had two tubes tied to the back off the back of the pontoon. Patience and I were each on one. Somehow Patience managed to maneuver her tube over to mine. She then asked me if she could get on mine. I stared at her (mind you, we are being pulled by a speeding boat and bumped all over the place) and said sure and SHE DID IT! She jumped from her tube onto mine and didn't tip us! I was impressed. Of course then we hit some rough water and she ended up sitting on top of me (which is of course when her friends took pictures).

The week after my adventures in Alabama, I headed off to the southwest. I spent about a week and a half in New Mexico visiting friends. I traveled all over the state spending a few days in each of the towns my friends have dispersed to (Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Coyote, Socorro, and of course Jemez Springs). I had a really great time seeing folks again and catching up. I also got to go to my favorite used bookstore, eat at many of my favorite restaurants, see superman (very good!), go to a Greek bar (listened to a Greek band and tried ouzo- very yummy!)

One of the highlights of the trip (other than seeing people) was finding my first New Mexican Spadefoot Toad. When I was visiting Kav in Coyote her boyfriend told me there were toads calling outside. I decided to follow them to their source. I walked down the road until I thought I pinpointed where the purr like calls were coming from. I crawled under a couple of barbed wire fences (I was prepared to lie and pretend I thought I was on public land) and followed noise to its source: a small arroyo filled with water and many many toads! Several males were floating on the surface of the water with their heads tilted back by their hugely inflated throats. These were the guys calling. The toads were a dusty brown with tiny golden flecks that matched their gorgeous gold eyes (same color as the eastern spadefoot eye's!). There were also several mating pairs of toads swimming around the pond. I was very happy to get a chance to see these guys. They are explosive breeders- meaning their breeding season is very short, so the chance of seeing them is very slim. I really lucked out.

Okay, that was your boring nature moment, brought to you by Sarah.

I am now back in Florida, of course. Ive been back for about two weeks, but I've only got two weeks left before freedom! Tomorrow night is my last night of calling surveys. I've got mixed feelings about that. I am sort of bored with it (having done it for 3 months now), but I will miss hearing the frogs. Sadly, it is being replaced by the unpleasant task of vegetations surveys. So far I have done a half day of practice survey and it sucks. Its hot and vegetation just isn't that exciting to me. But it has to be done!