rissy stories

Utah Trip Day 6

Saturday, 5/7/16, Utah 🙂

Hey guys, so this day was the last day of the driving trip to the desert. (Day 7 was when we actually drove INTO the desert, and we stayed there for about a week). So, this one will probably be a bit shorter, but believe me… it’s action-packed.

We woke up around 7 and packed up camp – as per usual. It was a sunny, hot, and sticky day. We ate breakfast and then tried to figure out where to go hiking for a while (because we had actually camped in Arches National Park, and the guys wanted to see more than just the Delicate Arch).

But I, unfortunately, started this day off pretty badly – and here’s why:

To preface, I’m currently taking a certain type of medication that helps me fall/stay sleep, and it increases my appetite – so I take it at night. And if I don’t fall asleep within 20 minutes of taking this pill, I will get dizzy, drowsy, and very hungry. (I’ll basically act really out-of-it and I will eat everything.)

However, I’m ALSO taking medication that I’m supposed to take in the morning/early afternoon, as well as with food.

You can probably guess where I went wrong here.

Because all of my pills were mixed together in one container (because I was on a trip and couldn’t bring separate ones), and because I was talking to Casey while I was taking my morning/afternoon pills… I obviously accidentally took the one that I’m supposed to take at night.

And I may have panicked…a bit.

I’d never taken my night medication in the morning before – I’m usually very good about taking the right medication at the right time.

So, I didn’t know what to do – should I call 911 and get my stomach pumped (because I was worried that the medication I took the night before wasn’t completely out of my system yet) or force myself to vomit the pill?

I obviously didn’t want to do either one, so who are you going to call when you don’t know what to do?

Your mother.

 She’s usually pretty good about calming me down. She told me not to worry about it, that I might get a little sleepy, but that it was no big deal – just don’t take the morning/afternoon medication that day and don’t take the night-time medication again that night.

So, I wrote myself a reminder and I didn’t take any more medication that day… but her prediction about the after-effects during the day was slightly off.

I ended up feeling extremely tired and hungry – but no one else knew what was happening except for Casey. So, when we finally decided on where to hike, I tried my best to ignore the dizziness and the drowsiness, and Casey kept an eye on me.

And to my dismay, the guys ended up wanting to hike to 3 different sites:

1. Pine Tree Arch:

2. Tunnel Arch:

3. Landscape Arch:

And here are some more pictures I took on that long hike:

Everything was beautiful, and I loved visiting the Arches – I still had a really good time, but this hike was probably my least favorite for obvious reasons.

After the hike was over, we all started heading back to the vans. And all I wanted at this point was to fall asleep in air conditioning….but again… there was one teeny tiny problem.

We’d lost Brent.

Now, usually on hikes, everyone goes at their own pace – but the rule was that we always had to have a buddy or group of people around us. We weren’t allowed to wander off on our own, and we assumed that Brent (a guy who just graduated from college the weekend before) knew this – so naturally, no one paid attention to where he was.

He liked to trail WAY behind and gaze at everything while everyone else moved at a faster pace. Now, we will still stop to gaze at everything, talk, and take pictures – but Brent liked to do this at a much slower, and solo, pace. Obviously, Brent gave us the most problems on this trip and he made Rocky mad on many occasions.

(And because I’d never met Brent before this trip, and haven’t seen or talked to him since, I’m not friends with him on Facebook, I don’t follow him on any other form of social media, and he officially graduated after this class was over – I feel comfortable saying this:

He made it VERY clear from the very beginning that he was only on this trip because he needed it to graduate – so he wasn’t very cooperative with anyone because he simply didn’t want to be on this trip.)

All in all, we didn’t know where the hell he was for a solid 15-20 minutes or so.

Rocky was starting to slightly panic, so we tried to call his phone, but since he had an older phone and he was sitting in the very back of the van (where there were no outlets for chargers) – he couldn’t charge his phone very often.

So, therefore, he liked to have his phone turned off to conserve battery power.

We waited by the vehicles and figured that he would come around soon enough, but when he didn’t, Rocky sent out search parties for him. Thankfully, she sent some of the guys, and I got to relax in the van for a bit until they found him.

And when they did, his excuse was that he trailed too far behind and lost sight of us. So, he decided to go on his own hike. He forgot about the rule and he thought that it was okay. He thought that he’d find his way back on his own and maybe cross paths with us, but obviously, he got lost.

Rocky explained to him that that was exactly why she had the rule of “No one goes anywhere alone,” but he still replied with: “Everyone is allowed to do whatever they want on this trip and I’m not.”

Either way, everyone was slightly more annoyed and tired. We hopped into the van and truck, stopped to get gas, and then hit the road again.

I naturally fell asleep for a good couple of hours before we stopped again and got out at the San Rafael Swell:

 

Here is some info on the San Rafael Swell taken directly from my notes as well as the research one of my classmates did for a paper (and the definitions of some geologic terms came from Google):

From paper:

–The San Rafael Swell is a geologic phenomenon which occurred when a series of geologic uplifts around 5 million years ago – Laramide Orogeny (explained later), Late Cretaceous/Early Tertiary – pushed the Capitol Reef and the San Rafael Reef, and they were uplifted – exposing it to weathering and erosion.

-A swell is a breached asymmetric anticline (breach = bare rock exposed with no layers accompanying it) – the swell is part of a fold in the rock layers in which the rock strata take on a rolling shape.

-The fold that rises into the air is the anticline (explained later) and the fold that pushes toward the table is the syncline (explained later).

-The Swell’s vast expanse of over 2,000 square miles houses the Cleveland Lloyd Quarry and Aaron Scott Site (which is where we worked out in the desert), along its outer margins.

-The reef, or dipping rocks, are known to house gastropods (From Google: snails, slugs, conches, whelks, and limpets), ammonites (From Google: widely known fossil, cephalopods in the form of a straight shelled creature: Bacrites), sponges, and fish fossils.

-It’s not part of the National Park System, but it has been proposed a few times.

-Eastern Flank – The Grassy Trail Oil Field, produced 620,000 barrels of oil from the Moenkopi Formation (From Google: across New Mexico, northern Arizona, Nevada, southeastern California, eastern Utah, and western Colorado.)

-The Navajo Sandstone contained carbon-dioxide gas that fueled a dry ice plant in Wellington Utah.

From MY notes:

-All of the sedimentary rocks here are not horizontal (they usually are), which means that the sediments accumulated and followed gravity.

-So we know that something happened to make them crooked.

–Late Cretaceous – formed anticlines and synclines (From Google: anticlines – each half of the fold dips away from the crest / synclines – each half of the fold dips toward the trough of the fold… all in all, anticlines form an “A” and synclines form the bottom of an “S”).

–Orogenies (From Google: a process in which a section of the earth’s crust is folded and deformed by lateral compression to form a mountain range) formed flatirons (From Google: part of the Fountain Formation – sedimentary rocks that have been formed by broken fragments of older rock. It’s basically a steeply sloping triangular landform) to slope.

-Second orogeny occurred 5 million years ago

-These were all marine and transgressional (Wikipedia: when sea level rises relative to the land and the shoreline moves toward higher ground, resulting in flooding – transgressions can be caused by land sinking or ocean basins filling with water) deposits.

–Unconformity (From Google: gaps in the geologic record due to crustal deformation, erosion, and sea level variations) between the Triassic and Jurassic.

–Jurassic Rocks – Summerville Formation, Entrada Sandstone (sitting on it right now – same rocks on Arches), Carmel Formation, Navajo Sandstone (very resistant – white rock that Entrada lies on in Arches Park).

-It’s not a symmetrical anticline – which is unusual because in the Colorado Plateau, all of the rocks are going to be horizontal, except for these.

-But the main reason that these rocks are slanted is due to the orogeny that formed the Rocky Mountains – The Laramide Orogeny (From Google: occurred in a series of pulses, and the San Rafael Swell formed during one of the last pulses of the orogeny. It’s an orogeny caused by subduction of a tectonic plate at a shallow angle).

-This occurred during the Tertiary (late Cretaceous), and the Cretaceous rocks have eroded away.

After we made this stop, walked around, collected rocks, and had a lecture – we hopped back into the van and kept driving. Meanwhile, I was starting to feel a bit less tired – but I was still starving. So, I inhaled snacks.

Then shortly after, we stopped at an outcrop that had petroglyphs: (From Google: images created by removing part of rock surface by incising, picking, carving, or abrading – it’s a form of rock art).

And Casey went NUTS.

 

So, she ran around – frantically looking for more, while the rest of us walked around and collected rocks:

Once everyone was finished exploring, we hopped back into the van…only to stop again shortly after and view the reef (Navajo Sandstone – looked like a canyon)

Then finally – we hopped back into the van and headed straight for our campsite in Ferron, Utah: Mills Site. And when we got there, one of the first things I did was take pictures because it was beautiful:

And the second thing I did was take a shower because none of us had taken one since Day 4 – and it was glorious.

Then I set up camp while some of the guys slept in their tents and others took showers. Rocky had gone out into town to see if the laundry building was still open, so the rest of us were just chilling until she came back. Casey took a shower right after me, and then we gathered up all of our dirty clothes.

Once Rocky came back, we all hopped back into the vehicles and drove to the laundry building – where we spent the next hour or so doing laundry.

While we waited, we briefly touched upon everywhere we visited as well as the important information to remember and study. Rocky then informed us that instead of having one huge test at the end – she was going to split it up into two tests – one test for each week.

So that meant – we had a test the next day.

I immediately panicked (because anyone who knows me knows that I panic over EVERY test), and I jotted notes down furiously during this study-type session. (I’m not going to reiterate them because I’ve already posted detailed information on them in previous travel entries).

Once the session ended and our laundry was done, we gathered up our clothes again and visited the grocery store – because we needed to stock up on a lot of things before heading into the desert.

After that, we drove back to the campsite, and at this point – I was emotionally and physically drained. I had been living inside a van with 5 other people for six days, I was really missing one of my best friends on this day, my anxiety skyrocketed (mostly because the nighttime medication was wearing off and I didn’t take my morning/afternoon medication that day), and I was physically tired from all of the hiking and exploring that we did the past two days.

So, I needed some TLC and alone time really badly. The guys who were on duty that night cooked hamburgers, so I took one and then hid away in my tent for the rest of the night. I listened to music, read my book, enjoyed the strong cell phone reception, and fell asleep early – probably around 9:30-10ish.

And that’s the end of day 6 – I hope you enjoyed it! The next several travel entries will now include what we really went on this trip for – life/working in the desert!!! I’m going to be getting more into paleontology rather than geology because we dug up dinosaur bones this next week – so for those who are more interested in dinosaurs than rocks, you’re in luck!

I’ll hopefully have another entry out soon – and I’ll catch you later!