The highlight of this weekend was taking a trip to Marquette, which is just over an hour away from Escanaba. Marquette is college town, home to Northern Michigan University. I wish I had pictures of the town. I'll try to take some when we go there next. This place is smaller than Flagstaff, where I went to college, but has that same feel of small city with its own unique identity. Dawn and I were thrilled about the food co-op, where I spent too much money at. I was able to find organic milk from the Midwest that is non-homogenized. Yay!!! I hugged the glass bottle. That might have been a bit over-the-top, but I type without shame! I love my organic, non-homogenized milk! I also got a little self-indulgent and bought some dark chocolate that is mixed with dried orange peels. I feel this was a very wise decision.
Anyways, as excited as one must feel while reading about my grocery shopping list, I should probably move on. Our first stop was a dive bar while waiting for Thai food that we ordered from a small local restaurant across the street. This bar was really interesting. There were wood chips all over the floor, which I had never seen before, but apparently a few places have this. There were various signs all over the place with an intimidating picture of Clint Eastwood (from "The Outlaw Josey Wales") that indicated the men's bathroom. The women's bathroom had a beautiful picture of Marilyn Monroe on the door.
Hard to tell, but I thought it was really neat that The Wooden Nickel served all their draft beers in glass jars. We played two games of pool; the second game Nate and I got our asses kicked by a local woman (and her partner) who had her own pool stick made of titanium.
That was followed by a local brewery and restaurant, which has blueberry wheat beer. Yum! The beer is served with actual blueberries in the glass. At one point I separated from the rest of the crew in search of a lip ring because mine came out while eating mediocre pad thai. I walked to two tattoo parlors, both to my surprise were closed. I guess that place is not like Chicago, where within a few blocks you can find a parlor that is open till 4am. On my adventure, I came across a house that was turned into a bar and a man outside playing the didgeridoo! I was pleasantly surprised to see someone playing this instrument. Up until then, I had only witnessed this music in Australia. This guy also happens to be a biologist and does work with plants and two endemic bird species (specific names of the species I unfortunately can't recall) within the Northern Michigan area. After meeting back up with the crew, we ended up at a dance club that played mostly over-played terrible hit pop songs. I was really craving to dance, so luckily the music had enough of a beat that I was able to do so. I can't wait to go back there!
Earlier this week we had an intense day of deer trapping since we caught six total deer, two them being pregnant does. I finally had my first try at taking blood under the great instruction of Caitlin. She has had years of experience having worked as veterinary technician in the past. Unfortunately, my attempts were unsuccessful, but I can't wait to try again! Dawn has gotten quite good at taking blood and is able to do it by herself now. We didn't get home that day till after sundown. There was still more work to be done, however. Josh was working on his hair snares with Alec, so I helped them. The wire gets cut in several places, and I was instructed to use a dremel to make bits of wire "stand up" along the cuts. This got a little painful as I worked my way down the wire. I was so slow at it that I only ended up doing one, which worked out in my favor since Josh told me after awhile you lose your sense of depth perception.
Josh in the middle of boiling hair snares. This is done to eliminate any shine, thus making them less visible to bobcats.
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