Tuesday, June 21, 2011 We made one more stop as we headed out of Wyoming today (see Looking West photo above). Some of the teachers were concerned for our safety and relayed the tales they had heard of alien abductions in this area. As we ventured closer, we felt...
GEOS 898 – Wyoming
Big Horn Basin
Monday, June 20, 2011 Today’s investigation took us deep into the Big Horn Basin to locate a feasible site for an oil well. My teaching cohorts and I collected rock samples and observed the topography of the Big Horn Basin and will try to determine the best location to...
Welcome to Yellowstone
Sunday, June 19, 2011 Yellowstone greeted us today with colorful hot springs, blasting geysers, and vistas beyond the eye’s reach. It is difficult to describe the spectacular features we observed today, but I have developed two primary thoughts that lend credence to one phrase… awe-inspiring. First: What did...
A Day in Jackson Hole
Saturday, June 18, 2011 Our investigation of glaciers began in the crisp morning air surrounding Jackson Lake. The reflection of the Teton Mountain Range provided quite the distraction as we reviewed today’s guiding questions. We traveled around a large basin, referred to as Jackson Hole. We observed the...
Grand Just Doesn’t Seem Adequate
Friday, June 17, 2011 We ended our first week of the Geoscience Institute gazing across Jackson Lake at the Grand Teton Mountain Range. As the sun passed a few lingering beams across the peaks, the term “grand” just didn’t seem adequate enough to describe the grandeur that these...
A Big Day for Lil’ Lewis
Thursday, June 16, 2011 Today was Lil’ Lewis’s BIG DAY! I secured him in my backpack this morning and we hiked up the trail through geologic time. We left our campsite at the Triassic layer and hiked along the Dino Walk trail to the Jurassic layers above. We hiked...
Land of a Thousand Views
Wednesday, June 15, 2011 Wyoming offers a diverse landscape that is both pleasing to the eye and challenging to the cardiovascular system. This morning, I ran across active sand dunes, located at an elevation of 6595’ above sea level. The height of the dunes rivaled Jockey’s Ridge (Kill...
Windmills and oil wells… must be Wyoming
Tuesday, June 14, 2011 The terrain changed dramatically today as we ventured into Wyoming and headed for Medicine Bow. Along the way, we stopped by a rocky outcrop of granite known as Vedauwoo and had an opportunity to crawl and climb around the granite that covered the park. We...
Dancing to the Jail House Rock
Monday, June 13, 2011 Our journey continued across Nebraska today as the terrain began to rise beneath us. The outcropping shown in Looking West appears out of place when compared to the surrounding landscape. Our job is to figure out how it got here. Are these rocks the result...
Filling your Platte
Sunday, June 12, 2011 We left Lincoln, Nebraska this morning and began following the Platte River westward, just as many of our forefathers did centuries ago. The Platte River will play a vital role in our journey and we stopped several times today to view the river from various...