Sunday = Little Yosemite in Sunol East Bay Regional Park. The goal set forth by Adam was to go up Alameda creek to the waterfalls without getting wet. We did not succeed:
Reasons for not staying dry- tight rock canyons that you "had to" climb
Beautifully clear water - probably due to the high mercury content from local mineral deposits...extra bonus for falling in the water
Well tortured beech tree roots
Then on the way home I could see a fire from Oakland, so of course we had to check it out. It was the old hospital on Alameda island burning down. Me and Adam had let ourselves into it a couple years ago...super creepy. We were caught and asked to leave. The fire department just let the building burn all the way to the ground. Can you smell the lead paint? I can.
Monday: Mt Diablo
somehow dragged my ass out of bed early enough to join Linda, Katie and Scott for a 3pm hike at Mt Diablo. We did the waterfall trail and the water was barely going, but the wildflowers were in full bloom:
Blue Dicks and Scorpion Flowers looking North
The hiking Gang:
And of course the California Poppies are going well:
Tuesday: Serious lab time picking nuclei out of fungal spores that associate with roots (glomus). Hoping to take one of these nuclei out of the spore amplify the DNA up enough that we can sequence the bugger...ultimately to figure out why these fungus helps so many plants grow really well.
My first cracking of a spore with a glass capillary (500x magninfication):
Syto11 stained spore and hyphae. The green dots in the hyphae are also nuclei. All the ones in the spore have already leaked out.
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