Kananaskis Field Station

Some of you may be wondering what kind of facilities we have here. Details are readily available on the University of Calgary website for the field station. There are in fact two stations; we are located at the Barrier Lake one. Here is a map for you to check out:

Our trailer is the first one in the bottom right corner. There are three bedrooms; two of them have bunk beds, and the other one has two twin beds. We have a reasonably sized washroom. Water is always hot when you need it unless someone is doing dishes. Water pressure is variably but usually on the low side. Sometimes two flushes are not enough. Our kitchen has everything we need, and our living room is spacious with a couch and an arm chair and a book shelf with enough books to keep us entertained all summer. Crisia brought a small T.V., and we have a DVD player and a CD player. I brought Eliott’s Gamecube. For pictures, see my photos in the Drive to Alberta album.

The laboratory is where we spend most of our time when not in the field. There we keep everything needed to trap animals in the field, while we also have everything we need to keep animals in the lab. We are the only researchers here to have our own office. The entire building has a wireless network, but we can also plug in using an Ethernet cable. There is a computer lab for anyone else who doesn’t have a laptop. We can also print using these computers. Mail sent to any of us goes to the University of Calgary, where it is driven out here maybe once a week and put into our box. There is also a box for us to put any of our outgoing mail. The offices of the permanent staff of the field station are also located in this building. We can also buy souvenirs of the field station from the main office such as hoodies, sweatshirts, t-shirts, and mugs. Crisia and I have already bought mugs so that we can carry our coffee around. See pictures here.

Speaking of coffee, we can get free coffee and tea at the main lodge. Other researchers and sometimes visiting students stay in dorms there and eat there. We are one of the few researchers who stay outside of the lodge. At the lodge they have cooks year round. Unfortunately we don’t really get to take advantage of this, but we are on good terms with the head cook who sometimes brings us leftovers. I am told that when the field station gets busier, we often have get-togethers in the lodge at night. There is a picture of the lodge, as well as the duplexes that can be rented out, in my Ground squirrels album.

I’ve also take a couple pictures of the deer that we see everywhere around here. There is also a picture of Crisia with the awesome matching deer antlers that she found.