Today we decided to do something a little different and went up into Montana to visit some old mining towns. It wasn’t too exciting, other than the really good homemade ice cream and the two story outhouse in NV City. We also went into West Yellowstone and saw Guys and Dolls at the Playmill Theatre. Most of the actors come from BYU and BYU-I so there were a couple jokes geared toward a LDS audience that were pretty funny. Overall it was a good performance.

On Wednesday we drove the upper loop and saw alot more animals. We saw a black bear and then saw a bull moose that got scared out by the bear. We wouldn’t have known it was there if the bear hadn’t scared it out. We also saw a couple large bull elk (as well as many more elk), a big horn sheep, antelope, and 3 wolves. The wolves we could only see well with a spotting scope so we didn’t get any pictures. You’ll just have to take our word for it.  We also went to Mammoth Hot Springs. There was a park ranger there explaining why the hot springs were there and she started out by saying “we have to go back 500 billion years ago…” I had to laugh. (the age of earth is ~4.5 billion years old) Here are the pictures:

Here are just some of the pictures we took today. We drove arond the lower loop and visited Midway Geyser Basin, Old Faithful, and the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone.

 (click on a picture twice to view it full size)

Last Saturday I realized that both Larissa and I had a week off (kinda), and we lucked out with a last minute deal on a time share in Island Park, so here we are in Yellowstone!

We didn’t get here until pretty late last night so we only got to see the west end of the park up to Norris Geyser Basin. So far we have seen 1 deer, 2 elk, a small herd of bison, and a bald eagle. We also saw a really awesome rainbow.

Today we split into groups and my group did Regional Reconnaissance (located 8 springs using a UGS Topo Map with township and range coordinates), well monitoring (taking data on existing wells that have been made), and well construction.

Here are some pictures from today. I got stranded out on the Playa, (Pilot Valley) which is really flat and actually looks really cool. The others are springs that we had to find, one of them is appropriately named Truck Springs.

Tomorrow I’ll be doing some geophysical work and surveying.

Larissa and I celebrated my Birthday on Saturday. We were planning on going golfing but it rained for most of the day. It was still a great day though. Larissa made my favorite food for dinner, lasagna, and we went out to lunch at Zupas. She also made me an Angel Food cake, which was really good, especially since it was her first time making it.

Larissa gave me Lego Indiana Jones, the game. I’ve already played through the first movie, it’s a lot of fun.

Spring Break Field camp ‘09!

So today was the first day of my geology field methods course which is a 6 week long field studies class over Spring semester. Each week we are with a different professor doing some apsect of geology: mapping, groundwater flow, volcanic risk analysis, measuring sections, sedimentology and stratigraphy, etc…

We’ll be working around Utah and for most of the time I’ll be able to come back to Provo every day. Right now we are in West Wendover. Here is a picture of the Bonneville Salt Flats Race Track:

While here we will be doing geophysical work and research to understand groundwater flow in Pilot Valley. No one has done any gambling yet, but the night is still young….

I found out this week that I have been accepted to help out with the research that we are going to do in India on the Himalayas in August. If you didn’t catch the post, Read It Here. I’m really excited about the work we will be doing there. I’m going to have to hike Timp a few times to get trained for it.

It is going to cost a somewhat large sum of money, so, in an effort to raise some funds, I added a “Donate” button on the sidebar.  Please Don’t feel obligated to donate anything, but if you feel the urge to help out, you can! It uses paypal to donate, so you might have to create an account if you don’t already have one (it’s free), but you can donate using a credit or debit card. Thanks!

So for Valentine’s day, we didn’t really do anything too special. In fact, we actually did our taxes which wasn’t too bad since we have a tax guy in the family in Larissa’s uncle. The night before though we did go out to dinner to Applebees. We originally went to P.F. Changs, but we didn’t feel like waiting for 90 minutes for a table. We actually went all the way up to American Fork since all of Orem was packed.  In the morning we exchanged our valentines gifts. Larissa didn’t know what to get me and claimed that it is easy for me to pick something out for her, just get the usual (teddy bear, flowers, chocolate) and I somewhat jokingly said that she could just get that for me, and she did! Well the flowers were hers but she did get me a teddy bear and some chocolate.

Needless to say I’ve kind of had a minor stomach ache because of all the sweets I have been eating. The cookies she made were just amazing though! (Thanks Amy L. for the recipe) Larissa didn’t even eat one of them, after she gave them too me (as far as I know). I’d like to say I did the same with the cherries in dark chocolate I gave her, but I can’t…