Drifting Along Splendidly

Things have been continuing at a fine pace, and the weather has cooled down a lot. Here are some new photos of the workers at their worksite.

(Mis)Adventures in the Desert

Things don't always go as planned when you're living in the middle of nowhere. Yes, our campsite is beautifully desolate, and the only sounds we hear at night are the wind rustling through the juniper trees and the ground squirrels trying to eat our dried oatmeal, and we are most definitely in the back country, but we are also 15 miles from the nearest highway and 60 miles from town. This means, of course, that when your car breaks down, you are completely stranded.

This happened to us last Monday. We'd put a full day of work in and were prepared for a nice evening of letter writing, scrabble and star gazing. We drove back to camp and parked the car in its usual spot. I decided it was time to wash my hair (probably for the first time in a week, I was so excited!) so I went to the tent to change out of my field clothes. While I was in the tent, I heard a giant explosion, so loud that I though the propane tank may have exploded! I ran out to see what happened. One of the tires on the car had blown. I guess we had punctured it on the road and it didn't actually pop until we got back to camp.

I started changing the tire, loosened all the lugs and started taking them off. Things were going fine until I got to the very last lug. I started turning it and it froze. I put all my weight behind it and the lug started bending. I knew there was no way I was going to get it off, so we moved on to plan B.

The only thing for us to do was hike to the highway. We packed supplies (water, food, flashlights, clothes) and started walking. We started our hike at 4:30 in the afternoon and didn't reach the highway until after dark. I was trying to make good time because I knew that once we reached the highway, we'd have to hitchhike into town and I was worried about trying to catch a ride in the dark.

It was surprisingly easy for us to catch a ride. After a few cars drove by, a hippie and his 7 year old daughter picked us up. He told us some crazy stories and when I thanked him for the ride, he said he was glad to pick us up because we refreshed his hitchhiking karma. Apparently he'd be having trouble catching rides lately.

Eventually everything got sorted out. We got the tire fixed and things have returned to normal.

Running Scared

Ants do like oatmeal. They don't like Roy Orbison.

Adventures in Ibex!

Work has progressed rather slowly this week. Excessive heat and afternoon thunderstorms have limited our work time to the mornings, and much of our chalking at Hintze's section L was washed away. Frustration runs high but I've re-evaluated my plans and I think I've figured a way around the problems. We can into Delta a day earlier than planned to get new supplies, including flagging, which won't be washed away by rain.

We had some more adventures with wildlife this week. While playing scrabble one evening, I noticed a little snakey peeking out at us from beneath a juniper tree. At first we thought it was a rattlesnake, but we discovered that he had no rattle! I know now that he was a gopher snake. Here's a video of him making his way slowly through our camp:



When packing up our tent to head into town, I discovered a scorpion hiding in the corner! This was probably the most terrifying event of the week, as scorpions are the only creature I'm actually nervous about. I have no idea how it got in our tent or how long it had been there, but I'm glad neither of us got stung. Here's a photo:



A golden eagle followed us down the road for a couple of minutes one morning. It was huge and glorious! We also saw a couple of packs of pronghorn antelope. Katherine got a picture of some of them:



Today is Pioneer Day, a glorious Mormon holiday that celebrates the arrival of Brigham Young and the original Mormon settlers to the Salt Lake Region. I realized yesterday that this holiday also marks the 1 year anniversary of my move from Ohio to Riverside. Here's a photo of Katherine looking a little bit like a pioneer:

Journey Through the Past - Pt. 2

The Confusion Range is incredibly beautiful. This photo was taken on the hillside above our campsite the first day we arrived.

Things are going really well. Katherine and I have managed to not go completely insane from the isolation, and in fact, I've been enjoying the remoteness of the region.

We spent most of the week at one locality, "CAMP." All of the localities that I will be collecting at were established in the 50's and 60's by an old time geologist named Lehi Hintze. He measured and marked each section. Here's a photo of me at the start of his CAMP section, measured in 1965.



So far we've measured and described the CAMP section. Collecting and sampling won't begin until we've measured and described all of the localities we'll be studying.

There's actually been some excitement out here, despite the fact that we're totally isolated. I've encountered two rattlesnakes, both while I was trying to find a place to pee. I startled the first one and he slithered into the bushes and rattled angrily at me. We documented him:



And here's the second snake I ran into. He's snoozing under a juniper branch.



We've seen tons of cute lizards and hear coyotes howling every night. There stars have been so beautiful every night. I love it out here.

Today was our first day in town since last weekend. We desperately needed showers and contact with other humans has been good for us. Unfortunately we're deep in Mormon country and I can't help but feel creeped out by most of the people here in Delta, UT. Deseret, UT is only a couple of miles from here.

Here are some more photos from the field:


Katherine "Snakeface" Steelman hanging out in camp.


These are some of clams that I'm studying.

Katherine and I signed up for PO Box in Delta so that we can receive mail. It would be awesome to get letters! Here's our address:

P.O. Box #119
Delta, UT 84624

Journey Through the Past - Pt. 1

Field work is about to begin!

Yesterday my field assistant Katherine and I began our Ordovician adventure. We left Riverside and headed up to Ely, NV - a wild west town if there ever was one. On our way, we passed through Sin City and skirted the NV-375, the Extraterrestrial Highway, which runs through central Nevada and past Area51. Here's some documentation:



I'm excited to begin the actual field work, which will take place out in the Ibex region of the Great Basin, in Utah. I'm going to be studying aspects of the Ordovician Radiation by examining the diversity of gastropods and bivalves through a Middle Ordovician succession of rocks.

Here's the non-paleontologist description: Life in the oceans experienced a major radiation during the Ordovician period (roughly 480-440 million years ago). I'm going to study this radiation event by collecting fossils of ancient snails and clams preserved in rocks in Utah, which was equatorial beachfront property during the Ordovician. I'm also going to try to reconstruct what the overall environments and ecosystems that these clams and snails looked like, in order to better understand how marine ecosystems have changed through time. The ocean looked a lot different back then but understand the ancient systems can help us better understand modern ocean ecosystems.

Here are some more photos!



This is Katherine checking out the menu of a surprisingly good Chinese restaurant in Ely, NV.


This is the wonderful Hotel Nevada, where we stayed last night.


We're going to be camping way out in the middle of nowhere by the outcrops so we won't have an cell phone or internet service, but we'll be heading into town once a week for showers and resupplies. I'll update the blog and my flickr photos as often as possible. You can check out the flickr photos here.

I also made a google map of the field localities, which you can check out here.

I know you can't watch the video here, but you can go to the youtube page and see it!