The weary researchers trudged through the edge of town to the turquoise house, mentally bracing themselves for the impact. They had been warned that morning of the imminent arrival of five more persons and fully expected all the chaos that would entail.  Should the five terrible strangers somehow not have made it to the little town, the Village Children were sure to be camped out in wait.  Either circumstance was sure to be a hindrance to the the dinner the four team members felt they truly deserved. After all, that day’s field work had taken a whopping four-point-five hours, and nothing short of utter comfort would do.

In any case, today was 200 day and yesterday was halfway day, and celebrations were demanded. Last night the team was treated to a lovely instant cheesecake that was NOT designated for sharing, sorry Kids.  We managed to fit in some work to placate Bob (our PI), but he is at a hospital in MI with what is hopefully by now his new daughter instead of his very pregnant wife, so he’d hardly have noticed anyway.

Jean and Rob cooked every gosh-darn box of pasta in the entire house in an effort to lull the newcomers into a false sense of security. We rather expected that one of the four people who did indeed show up sometime between noon and five to be named Ben, as we’d been receiving phone calls for “Ben” since the moment we entered the house on Wednesday. Alas, our logic was thwarted, and though I didn’t bother to remember any of the names of these people, none of them were called Ben. A bit sad, really, as he seemed to be missing, perhaps permanently. We’d imagined several scenarios that would account for his absence and his empty orange sleeping bed that has been occupying Bedroom Two this week, and we were slightly anxious that he be found, stranger though he was. (Not to worry, he’s here now and he was never really lost. We saw the tiny plane fly in from Fairbanks and met him and the pilot trying to usurp our truck when we got back. I kind of hate to ruin the suspense, but this story is getting dreadfully dull and I honestly don’t see myself bothering to wrap up the Ben storyline in the next few paragraphs.)

As the dinner hour ended the team used their incredibly efficient dynamic and admirably effortless intuition to signal to each other to make their escape. The most effective bit was when Jeremy said, “We will be leaving in five minutes.” The newcomers, false sense of security established, were washing up the dishes, just like we planned, and we stole out of the house like a team of cat burglars. There is no use keeping up the cat burglar metaphor either, as we did not plan to take any of their things. We didn’t even want to touch any of their things. They probably have cooties.

Seriously though, you can’t imagine the amount of stuff piled in the living room. We can’t even sit on the couches, much less see the TV, much LESS watch one of the five VHS tapes that are the only source of video entertainment.

But never mind that, watching videos hardly counts as a 200 day celebration. Instead we lightened our packs, shed a bit of field gear, and wandered away to enjoy the weather that was much nearer to that which Jeremy promised. The fishing hole proved a fruitless and fishless diversion, so we instead walked along the Meade River.

Jeremy had prepared for just such an occasion by replacing his field notebooks with hammers. The banks of the river were dripping with broken rocks, some of which yielded mildly interesting fossils. Jenny had unwittingly prepared for just such an occasion by nearly emptying her usually full and heavy backpack.

Long story longer, the team celebrated 200 day by bringing 200 rocks back to the house. Maybe 200 pounds or rocks. Certainly 200 fossils, as some rocks helpfully contained more than one leaf picture.  Mostly though, they are just rocks. Dozens of rocks. It is doubtful we can get even half of them back to Barrow, much less to Michigan. Finding the fossils was a strange and fast-acting addiction. We hope that we will be cured by tomorrow- both of the addiction and of the sore backs we sustained lugging all that junk back to the house.