Drilling for Oil

Posted by Alyssa Howlett , Thursday, June 17, 2010 1:43 AM

We started working on oil prospecting on Tuesday and I was Geology Barbie this day. I wore a pink tank top, jean shorts, my boots, a pink bandanda headband, and my hair in a high pony. It was great! Ha yeah for Geology Barbie in Wyoming! :) We practiced by looking at Greybull Sandstone and finding channel flows. Teams were picked for this project and I ended up with two other girls from my cabin and one guy, Jim. We have to have a oil company name, we picked “Jimmy’s Angels”. are working great and finding everything we needed to. We climb and found where the channel pinched out and then moved around more to find the other side. We also took paleocurrents, that tell us what way the river was flowing. We did this for two channels and charted them on our maps. We found a great place for lunch, it was perfect! We ate under this ridge so our tops were in the shade and reclined and our legs were still getting sun (I wore shorts so I could finally give my pale pale legs some color!) It was really hot Tuesday. Upper 80’s and we are outside from 9-4. It gets intense climbing and hiking. We then climbed to the top of Fox Mesa and took more paleocurrents moving south along the sandstone channel. We ended up seeing Indian “church” types of places were Indian went to think. It was kinda neat to still see these intact. We then took a billion mile (ok just 2, but it seemed like forever) hike back to the vans. I needed a sugar pick me up, I was lagging! But we got back to the vans and ended up having a water fight. We brought squirt guns and were shooting at the boys and each other. Too bad the boys didn’t have guns, instead they all decided to through their water bottle water at me. Great. It actually felt perfect, but still, dang boys!

I have been driving the vans all the time, but the past couple of days I have had some muddy, dusty, bumpy roads to deal with. But I want to let you all know, I am a pro. Some boys have even complimented me on my good driving skills and how I can keep up with the men in my driving. I guess that is good. I also have been awarded “baller” points from two boys Kyle and Josh, for taking my van through a very big dip like a champ. I did not flip it or get it stuck, yay me!

We also have been watching movies in our room the past couple of nights. We use the projector from lecture, and watched The Proposal and Dear John. We have bonded as a room, it is so fun!

Today, we went searching for oil. We drove to the same location we have been hanging out at for the past month. (it is actually really neat, if you get high enough on a mountain, you can see four places we have worked) But we drove forever to find out outcrop of Greybull Sandstone. Today was my day. I climbed like it was no ones business multiple times and just kicked butt and took names going up the mountains today! It was sweet! Once we climbed to the top mountain, we mapped currents. It was a really pretty view and we did a good job of figuring out how the channel was flowing. After, we took a group picture and finished out that outcrop. Then we got back in the vans to drive to the other side of the mountain to check the flow direction there. We drove by everything we had mapped before; it was like a little trip down memory lane. We also rocked out big time in the van. The Dance Marathon Morale Dance was played as well as other sweet jams. I had to drive through some mud… that was not so fun, but again, pro driver in the house, and I drove through with no problem! Once we stopped to get out, we were told the agile people in the group were to scale the mountain, get paleocurrent directions and get back to the vans… rain was coming! WE cannot be on the road when it rains, since they will turn instantly to mud and driving over them guarantee a stuck van. So Jordan and I booked it up to the cliff and we took measurements. It was really neat, I felt like a goat climbing to the top. There were a lot of big boulders, so climbing was fun!

Once back at the van we haled butt to get on to the main road, we made it fine and ended up getting ice cream from the professors and seeing really sweet lightning. We have to work on our projects tonight and determine where we are going to drill for oil and create a presentation. Wish me luck! :)