4,300 miles and 39 lakes in 12 days!

Most of the lakes we sampled are marked with red dots.

USGS image

Lots of cows on the Great Plains of Canada

Chase ducks a barbed wire fence in order to test the salinity of this fine looking target in Saskatchewan.

No shortage of cows on the range lands of western Canada.

Outrageous pink water of Gunnison Bay (Great Salt Lake-North)

Late nights sampling briny, stinky lakes were the norm. Here Jeff and Chase ride the Boanoe (our trusty research vessel) trailer as the sun sets (at 10 pm in the evening!) and we head off to find a campsite for dinner and some zzzz's.

The filters were a deep orange color in the North part of the Great Salt Lake (Gunnison Bay). The color comes from the pigments in the bacteria that inhabit the highly saline (270 ppt) water.

The salt content (mostly sodium chloride, NaCl) of the northern basin of the Great Salt Lake is so high that mineral companies, including those that make table salt, evaporate the remaining water in controlled evaporation ponds and harvest the precipitated salts. Water flows from one evaporation pond to the next through weirs like this one. Icicle-like structures, or saltcicles, form from the brine that leaks through the cracks.

Deep mud and muck was the norm at most of the saline lakes we visited. Here Chase battles the mud at a Saskatchewan lake to test the salinity.