Top grade Baby!

Posted by Alyssa Howlett , Wednesday, June 2, 2010 9:01 AM

I have been really busy over the past couple of days! We had a project due on Saturday and then anther due this morning. The projects include writing a description on the formations we are seeing, drawing a stratigraphic sequence of all the units we have seen, having a topo map that includes all the formation contact lines, and a cross section that is drawn to scale! Woah baby, it has been a lot of tedious work. No worries, jamming to Miley Cyrus kept me working away! It even helped me get the highest grade in the class for the first project! Yay! :) I am showing up all the geologists, go teachers!

This last project was a cross section as well, but with apparent dips and curving beds that we had to draw in under the topography. It wasn’t to bad, but still we had to work on it all night which is not as fun as hanging by the campfire, but we make it fun with music and everyone talking in the big dinning room.

We have moved locations, and have been working on Devil’s Kitchen and Poverty Flats. Google Earth it, it looks really cool. It is a Syncline and an Anticline formation where the earth bends and looks like a U then the other looks like an A. We got new groups, but Joe and I were still grouped together so “Team Awesome” as we like to refer to ourselves took strikes and dips all over Poverty Flats trying to see how the syncline is bent. We owned it basically and took over 20 strikes and dips, woo. But it was no easy task, let me tell you. An ant decided to hang out on my neck, a angry ant. I felt an itch and a sharp pain, so I itched and felt a little, nothing, then it moved to the front of my neck, same feeling, AHH, then I was freaking out a little and I felt it on my ring finger, dang ant was there! I got bitten by a dumb ant! I had little red dots for a bit. Then I thought live was good until…I almost stepped on a Rattle snake. It was right behind me, Joe reached out and grabbed my arm very slowly and I knew there had to be something behind me, I looked then it rattled, so I ran. I am all good, but I have been a bit extra cautious of sage brush. While looking for snakes I saw a ton of horned frogs! (go TCU) We named one Budda (he was a fat one) and another Whipper-snapper (he was fast). But…. then I had another friend visit me, Mr Bee. He decided that he wanted to hurt me for playing with the horned frogs instead of him and he stung me! OWW! I had some little yells and Oh my gosh, again partner Joe got eh bee out of my shirt, (yes it loved me that much it had to stay a tad longer) and then we used my handy tweezers in my pink Swiss army knife to get out the stinger. I then put a band aide on it, and hey back to mapping. As much as the dumb Poverty Flat seemed to own me, I really think we owned it. Joe and I had to meet up with my partners over at Devils Kitchen, so we hiked through gullies and up and down cliffs around 4 miles!

This past weekend was SO much fun! I did my laundry, which was an event, at the local laundry mat in Greybull (about 30-40 min away). We also went to the super market and got smores things, and we went to a Chinese restaurant that I don’t think had ever seen 20 people at once. We also had a great time Saturday night. Our group bonded so much! I think I am one of the guys now! Haha. The boys let me in on all there guys talks and told me I was cool, so hey since there are about 4x as many guys here, I think that is cool. We hung out at camp for bit then made our way to a Greybull bar were we hung out with the locals. Again, I am not sure if they were ready for us. There was one bartender who made made bank on us, but I think was overwhelmed when we walked in. We had so much fun! We danced and made up songs about field camp. It was great!

With on month to go, things have been going great. I am having fun and really loving everyone here! Of course I cannot wait to take a nice shower and put on nice clothes again, but for now, this is pretty cool.