I have been to a rodeo.
It was quite an experience, and was really fun. I of course have to dress the part, so I got myself a hat and busted it out for the rodeo. A bunch of us dawned out western gear and headed to Greybull for their big summer celbration called “Day’s of 49”. At the rodeo we saw roping, bull riding, barrel racing, and wild horse saddling. Our group had a great time! We even got announced to from the press box to stand up and cheer! Ha!
Saturday we had to work for most of the day, that was not so much fun. We looked at cores from Colorado and analysed them from their lithologies to how they matched with gamma ray logs. We also completed a project about cores, linking them to sea levels and currents. There were a lot of projects to work on to keep us busy! Saturday night was supposed to be a street dance in Greybull as part of the festival, but it ended up getting rained out. I was sad too, because I was thinking that a western street dance would be really fun! Dancing with some cowboys! :) Instead, a group of us went to do our laundry. Lame, I know, but I chatted with mom and dad and got all my dirty clothes clean.
Sunday was a free day, so we slept in! Then all the girls in my cabin and three boys drove to Cody! Woo big town, ~8000 people! It had lots of stores! It was exciting to see these things again! We had dinner/lunch at Pizza Hut (us cool college kids missed our regular intake of pizza) then I went with Kelli to the Buffalo Bill Historical Center. It was really nice! We learned all about Yellowstone and even got to see things that we have been learning or doing! Great day!
Monday, we drove to an area near all the other area we have been to in the middle of no where called Sheep Mountian. We mapped all the formational contacts and then we were looking for faults (my fav!!) So Lisa and I partnered up and started our day with a nice summit of sheep mountain. It by far is the highest we have climbed, and of course on one of the hottest days! Whoopty doo! It got intense, but it was really amazing! So pretty! We ended up mapping all of the map from up there and even getting a major fault. I really enjoy imaging what this area looked like before it was eroded and folded, so todays purpose was interesting to me. We had lunch up there and then moved on to our next mountain to climb. I figured out all the crazy stuff that was happening (I even got right on the professors convo discussing what exactly was going on. They asked for my opinion and I seemed to be spot on with what they were thinking, YAY) Monday I saw GREAT anticline and a syncline! So cool! Later that night we chatted about oil and gas and got a new slue of instructors.
Posted by
Alyssa Howlett
9:19 PM
This week has been full of changes. We had a change in our instruction, the Nebraska professors left on Wednesday and the Iowa State Professors got here today. It is great having ISU people here I must say. I little bit of comfort knowing how they teach and stuff.
Monday was raining and the road we needed to drive on was too muddy, but we didn’t know that tell we drove there, and hour away, then we turned around to come back to camp….. two hours of driving…. I was driving….. others slept….. and they played lame music…. I was not so much of a happy camper. But then later in the day we climbed some mountains and saw some sweet views in a different place. It was a weird day since we had a quiz and didn’t follow our regular day pattern, but later that day Kelli (a girl at camp) and I, and some others went to the top of exercise hill. That is a tall hill next to camp, it is super steep and a for real “exercise” to get up there, but again the views were great! I even held a horn frog! He was cutie and we chilled for a while together.
The next day we went back to the location we drove an hour too and looked at ancient dirt called paleosols.. sounds lame, but they were really pretty colored. We had to scale a steep cliff side to see these and measure the bed (I almost slipped and fell down 3 times that day! Good thing we were not high up.) Later that day we got back to camp and had to construct a strat column with our groups and then after that take a quiz about what we saw and what kind of environment all the sediment was deposited in, was there and increase in sea level, how did the sediment end up the way it looked etc. Then, after dinner we had to construct a graph of the age of the formations here in Wyoming verses their thickness. Luckily that was easily done on excel and we were able to have the rest of the night free. A big group of us went to the top of exercise hill again to look at stars. I cannot describe how amazing it was. I had been looking forward to seeing the stars here for a while and it was perfect, a little cloudy around horizon, but overall AMAZING! I was such a nerd too! I brought up my star chart and was pointing constellations out to everyone! I saw 2 satellites, the milky way, and a couple of constellations that are usually really faint like the little dipper and draco! Loved it, and the company up there was not to shabby either, we had a great time.
Later that night, there was a battle. And we won. We had a mouse and after being very scared and creeped out we caught it! Kelli and I moved our beds to the middle of the room so we were not next to anything, but that didn’t help we couldn’t fall asleep because all we could hear was the mouse running around above us in the ceiling. Then at 4am.. SNAP!!!! We got it, but only its nose and arm. So, great it was still moving and being gross. Kelli and I started to make a commotion and the other girls in our room woke up, I was standing on my bed with the flashlight and Kelli was next to me. Kate, another girl in our came over to pick up the trap and through it outside into yard. So, we were kinda mean.. but we didn’t want to let it free incase it came back in. But we won. Now we have to deal with bats in the closet. I love nature.
Wednesday, to sum up: had a pop essay test on basically everything we had learned and then got dropped of in the middle of the desert, and had to map. I am for real. The professors left us (only 2 TA’s were there) to map a 2 square mile area and said meet back at the vans at 4. Go. So that was a treat. I worked with Kelli, and we actually had great time talking about stuff, then talking about rocks. Ha. We found an antler, that was cool and had a cute date for lunch on a rock in the middle of the desert! :) we walked and hiked around finding faults and taking strikes and dips and mapping contacts of formations. We finished and turned in our maps right away. After that we were done for the night! Score! We played football catch and a ton of other outdoor games with everyone. It was really fun.
Today we got to see dinosaur tracks! Of my camera was in the van :( but other people got pictures! They were cool footprints on the ancient beach. They called it the “ballroom” because there were so many prints it looked like they were dancing. I was really cool and walked in ones foot prints. It was so awesome. I just walked exactly on real dinosaur prints, it is just so wild to me! As we drove to the mapping site, we had to drive through a grazing land, cattle were everywhere and we had to make some move off the road! Once at our spot, we mapped and measure a 50-foot section of limestones and mudstones. On the way home the Iowa State professor bought us all ice cream! YAY! And ever since we got back it has been raining and storming.
I cannot believe that I am at the half way point! Everything seems to have blurred together and not seem like I have been here that long. As much as I am ready to get back to regular Alyssa life, I am liking it out here and am kinda sad that it is going to end soon, and I more than likely will not be coming back here. It is really nice to have one thing to worry about, that it. At school life gets crazy and busy with everything I am involved in. Here, everything is laid back and chill, all I have to worry about is rocks and having fun.
My internet was being slow, so here are some pics/ a video! :0)
This past week (week 2) has been a busy one. We started a new project, and finished it turning in a topo map and a cross section of the area. We had a hydro project on Wednesday that was really nice. We got to head up into the mountains and into a more wooded area. We got into the stream and found out how fast it is flowing, looked at the pebbles and surveyed the land. We had a great time. It was so much more relaxed and full of life than us in the field. There was a stream and plants and trees, so nice! We came back that day and worked on equations showing us how important water is to Wyoming and how they use it for irrigation. Nifty info!
The past two days we have been working in a place called “Goose Egg” or “Alkali”. We had to map all the formation contacts and take strikes and dips of the beds to determine the structure of the beds (if they were folded or plunging). The area we had to cover was 4 square miles of cliffs, valleys, ridges, and gullies (aka A LOT OF CLIMBING AND WALKING) it was nuts! I am totally going to have some kickin’ legs when I get back! Woo baby! I keep telling that to my self when I am hiking up those steep sides, ha. We got a new group for this assignment, and I got lucky and got paired with Lisa, one of my good girl friends here at camp. It took us a bit to get started but after we figured out where we were and what formation we were standing on we rocked it! We ended up having lunch at the top of a cliff and then spent most of the day in the valley. Since 4 square miles is so big we rarely saw anyone all day, so Lisa and I bonded hard core. We got a little loopy after 2 pm. We were hot and tiered and ready to go. We ended up laughing at everything, so it was actually a lot of fun. Ha! We saw a badger too, but no one believes us! We ended up hiking to the top of a huge stepp cliff that is at the elevation of ~4500 feet! Woah, I felt like I was touching the clouds! We then had to find the vans, we laughed so hard about our day, just how crazy it was for the whole 30 minute walk to the vans!
The next day we attacked the same location finishing up our map. Lisa and I started the morning at 9am with a vertical hike to summit the one of the ridges. We walked along that ridge for about 2 hours and tried tanning while we are up there too! Hey, why not right? We got all our info down, since we are mapping rock stars, and headed back to the van. Creature of the day Friday June 4th: a Black Widow Spider! It was eating a fly! Cool!
We finished our map like pros and turned it in. We then all hung out and played games last night then made another trip to the Greybull bars to try our luck at Karaoke. We had a great time. About 20 of us went and were we go, we bring the party! ☺
Today I did my laundry and and going to have a chill night by the campfire and make smores!!!!! ☺
ON to week 3! I can’t believe how fast this is going! And Happy Birthday Brother! You are the coolest brother ever! Love you!!!!!!
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.
