rissy stories

Utah Trip (Days 11 & 12)

Thursday & Friday, 5/12/16 & 5/13/16: Desert in Ferron, Utah & Colorado 🙂

Hey guys! Here are days 11 and 12 – we’re getting closer to the end of the Utah trip! 😦

I got up at 6:00 to help make pancakes for breakfast, and then we went out to the quarry around 7:30ish after Rocky spoke with all of us (MY class specifically, not Janet’s) about when we leave the desert on Friday.

Once we got to the quarry, I started working on uncovering that rib that I found on Wednesday:

But then Janet came over and told me to working on chipping away at the rib to my left that was broken and unsalvageable:

She wanted me to take it out completely because it was connected to the huge dorsal chunk that Janet really wanted to uncover from the ground (mostly to get it over with). She basically just wanted this broken rib out of the way – which somewhat upset at first because…

1. I wanted to work on uncovering a rib I had actually discovered.
2. I thought that this one might actually be salvageable.

However, I ended up doing what she asked of me without complaint.

She also wanted me to work towards Mike (one of her students who was working on the opposite side of me). There was a huge chunk of limestone matrix that needed to be removed in order for the large dorsal chunk to be taken out completely – so she wanted the two of us to work at taking it out together.

We also discovered that there was another bone in that chunk, but we ended up having to sacrifice that one too.

At this point, my arms, shoulders, wrists, and fingers were really sore and in a lot of pain because I had been using the hammer and chisel for days. Limestone is really hard. So, I started taking things a bit slower.

And after awhile, Janet noticed that Mike was making more progress opposite me, so she had me start to dig out the chunk that I had been sitting on so that her class could start to take out the large dorsal chunk.

I was beginning to not feel as useful anymore – I was mostly just chipping away at matrix, trying to prepare for the boys to completely unearth the dorsal chunk. So, I wasn’t exactly in the best of spirits.

After we had lunch at 1:00 – sandwiches – we all decided to go to the Jasper Field and collect rocks. Janet took everyone on her truck while Mitch, Jesse, Brent, Colby, and I walked there. (I didn’t want to get carsick).

On the walk there, Mitch took us on a slight detour and showed us the blue bone that was stuck inside a rock (the blue bone that I mentioned in one of the previous travel entries):

This blue bone has been there for forever (and obviously people have tried to remove it from the rock – if you can tell by the ring around it), but the rock proved to be too hard – so they eventually decided to leave it.

Then we started to walk the rest of the way there and it was at least 1,000 degrees outside (Actually it was 90 degrees, but we were in the middle of the desert, and you catch my drift), so I ended up feeling pretty sick on this trip even though I didn’t ride in the truck.

However, the walk was worth it in the end (as it usually was with this entire trip). The Jasper Field was beautiful and I found sooooo many cool rocks!

I was drinking water throughout the whole time we walked there and back, but I was really fading at this point. We’d been walking around for a long time and I had a lot of rocks in my backpack. Like…a lot.

But right as I was about to speak up (a half hour after we got there), everyone decided to leave and head back to camp. So those who went with Janet hopped back into the truck and they drove back. Meanwhile, the rest of us who walked started to walk back.

Eventually, Gene, Coleman, and Randy hopped off of the truck and met up with all of us (I don’t remember why), and they ended up finding this large tree-like thing that they really wanted to burn at the bonfire that night.

The three of them and Mitch started to carry this thing all the way back to camp and it looked heavy. I followed close behind them and they were pretty out-of-breath and exhausted by the time we reached camp – but they made it.

And the Kentucky students were sitting by the kitchen tent in the shade, looking at them haul this thing into the fire pit, saying: “Are they seriously going to burn that thing? Man, they’re crazy.”

(I wish I had gotten a picture of it, but I didn’t think about it at the time).

After we got back, around 4:00 – we went back to work at the quarry for two more hours.

I went back to work at the same spot that I was working at before, but at one point, Mitch looked over at me as I hammer and chiseled at the matrix surrounding the dorsal bone and he asked me if I wanted to switch places with him.

He was working on uncovering a bone right next to me for the past week, but he was using a tiny air tool and dentist tool to expose more of the bone – in short – he was bored with what he was working on, and he wanted to hammer at the matrix.

I originally told him that I didn’t want to switch, but after about 5 minutes, the joints in my arms and hands were screaming – so I agreed to switch.

So, I spent the rest of our time in the quarry beside Casey again (who was gluing together broken bone fragments for the past several days instead of doing manual labor or casting like most of us were doing – she had taken Rocky’s dinosaur course that past semester, so she was really interested in gluing broken bone fragments back together.) and working to uncover the vertebrae towards the south side. (I’m pretty sure it was a neck – but I never got a definite answer on what that bone or dinosaur it actually was or belonged to).

Here’s what the casted dorsal vertebrae looked like on my class’s last day at the quarry (we made a lot of headway, and I’m pretty sure the Kentucky kids took the whole thing out after we left):

Jesse and I actually found another bone when we were working next to each other towards the end of this day (never did find out what it was – probably another rib).

And here’s what Mitch had been working on (and what I worked on at the end of the trip):

Around 6, we headed back to camp and had pizza skillets for dinner. I started packing up my stuff since we were leaving the next day, and then I hung out with Casey in the van for a bit.

I had been video-chatting one of my friends who I met at college (but he moved to China in March) almost every night while we were out in the desert (because we surprisingly had very good reception), so I would usually go into the van for privacy – like most people would do when making a phone call.

Casey joined me that night and that’s when we realized that we had all killed the car battery because we had been charging our phones on it for almost an entire week without actually turning the van on. So, we informed Rocky, and we ended up having to jump-start it the next day.

I went to bed pretty early that night because we were supposed to get up at 6 the next morning – we were going to work in the quarry from 7 to noon the next day. I was very excited to get a shower and to actually leave the desert, but I overall loved the experience.

I pushed myself to do things that I never thought I could do – like climbing the mountain and actually making it up to the Delicate Arch in Arches National Park. I learned more about the west, especially since it was my first time out there. I also brushed up on a lot of my Geology on this trip – and I overall had fun digging up dinosaur bones and learning more about the history of the area.

But…I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t looking forward to a little break from the manual labor and desert climate.

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Day 12:

I woke up at 6:00 am again to get breakfast set up and then we headed out to the quarry around 7, and we actually ended up working until 1 instead of 12.

I worked next to Casey and across from Jesse again – we worked on digging a trench around the vertebrae (neck?) that Mitch & I had worked on during this past week (preparing to cast and dig out the entire thing in one piece – like the dorsal vertebrae). I was also trying to expose more of the bone using air tools.

We left to go get lunch set up around 12:30-12:45ish. We had packed up all of the tools and supplies that were ours before we left. And those of us who left around that time also started packing up our stuff to head on out of the desert.

Once we all ate lunch, I helped put all of the lunch stuff away as well as whatever else needed to be put away. Once we packed up the trailer and vehicles, we officially left the desert around 3:30 (after we jump-started the van). Janet and the Kentucky students were going to stay for the majority of that next week.

Thankfully, I was sitting in the passenger seat of the van and we made it out of the desert successfully (without me feeling too car sick). Rocky ended up driving the van the rest of the way home while Coleman drove the truck (again, much to everyone in the van’s dismay).

This was one of the first views that we had of Ferron, Utah post-desert:

We first drove into town to drop off our trash, get gas, and FINALLY get some ice cream (which Casey and I had been jonesing for THE ENTIRE TRIP.)

Casey and I ended up walking over to the pavilion as we ate our ice cream because Brent was beginning to complain about Rocky and the two of us were really tired of hearing him complain about everything and everyone on this trip.

So we had our first (yes, we eventually had another) ranting session about him, but then we felt MUCH better afterwards. We then admired the town around us – and I really liked Ferron. It’s a very small, pretty place.

Afterwards, we left around 5:00ish and drove for a bit before we stopped at Spotted Wolf Canyon: The San Rafael Reef.

(taken from the information boards shown above that I didn’t actually take good pictures of, so here is the gist of what they say – what I wrote in my notes):

The layers of the San Rafael Swell dip to the east.

The great cliff-capped hills are the inward side or underbelly of the huge rock flat irons that make up the jagged stone of the San Rafael Reef.

The Reef forms the steep eastern edge of the swell anticline. 

The solidly cemented, hard-to-erode Navajo Sandstone crowns the flat-irons with cliffs over 200 feet high.

The underlying Kayenta Formation (made of stream channel sandstones and less solidly cemented shales and siltstones is much easier to erode) forms a slope rather than a cliff. 

The dark red cliffs below it mark the presence of the well-cemented Wingate Sandstone. 

(The information board also said that the layers were deposited during the Triassic, but all of those layers were Jurassic – Wingate, Kayenta, Navajo, etc. The entire San Rafael Group was Jurassic.)

The red color is due to the presence of iron oxide in the sands – an extent of oxidation.

The water from the river sized and sculpted stunning narrow canyons and formations in the sandstone – a paradise for hikers and rock climbers. 

Coleman and Brent walked out to one edge of the canyon and threw rocks while the rest of us walked all the way out to a different ledge. (But Mitch and I only went about halfway since the path looked slightly unstable.) Everyone took pictures and videos.

Afterwards, we went back to the van & truck and drove to the Island Acres campsite. We arrived around 8:56, and Casey, Rocky, & I cooked ramen and corn for dinner while the guys set up their tents and got showers.

Casey and I decided to wait and take our showers in the morning (We were originally planning on taking one at night AND in the morning since we hadn’t showered in weeks and we knew that it would take FOREVER to get all of the dirt out of our hair), and we just spent another night in the van.

So there you guys go, that’s all I have for you today. I’ll have another entry posted shortly, and until then, I’ll catch you later!