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Week Eight: The Calm Before the Storm

This week was, for the most part, pretty uneventful.  We started a new experiment last week, so most of the beginning of this week just involved testing nitrate/nitrite concentrations each day.

On Thursday, we collected our day 7 sediment and extracted DNA.  We also tested the day 7 nitrate/nitrite levels.

On Friday, the interns got to go to Bonneville Dam.  We stopped at the Vista House overlooking the gorge on the way there.  There was a spectacular panoramic view from the house, which looked across the gorge into Washington.  After that, we went to the fish hatchery at Bonneville Dam.  Some of the girls and I fed the rainbow trout and we got to see Herman the Sturgeon.  These fish really are remarkable.  Plus, they look like they have whiskers :)
After playing with the fish, we went to the dam itself.  The architecture and interior design was something I really was not expecting.  The designers must have just thought there was no reason to NOT make it pretty!
Finally, on the way home we stopped at Multnomah Falls.  There were all kinds of people there, but it was a nice place to relax before the drive home.

Like my title suggests, this week was the calm before the storm.  With only two weeks to go, theres a lot of data to analyze, RNA to purify, PCRs to run, and presentations to prepare, so I'm expecting these next two weeks to just fly by!  Until next time, H.