1 Laura gets her oatmeal and coffee ready on our old jetboil. This was our first trip with our new Marmot Limestone 4 person tent and Kelty PVC-free queen air bed. Both were great.
2 Having been warned by park staff that winds may exceed 60mph, some folks chose to break down their tents and secure them with… downed branches from a previous windstorm.
3 Steve barely escaped.
4 Stop One of Day 2 – Somewhere on the way to Shoshone for fossil collecting. These cholla (choi-ya) cacti have a reputation for jumping out and getting those who get near them.
5 A view of Bat Mountain, part of the Funeral Mountains along HWY 190. The limestone-rich beds are very fossiliferous.
6 Garry gives the students the lowdown on what kind of critters can be found here.
7 I found a nice crinoid stem with a branching segment.
8 Steve found evidence of an ancient "c" amongst the limestone.
9 Laura found some cool crinoid poker chips that had been differentially eroded.
10 My heart isn't as prickly as this one.
11 I had never noticed the Funeral Mountains Wilderness Boundary in the past. What an interesting place to explore... I wonder if there's any water to allow for backpacking?
12 To finish the cactus theme of the morning, here's a barrel cactus.
13 Next stop - Charlie Brown Outcrop.
14 The Charlie Brown outcrop has a lot going on. It’s a great place to practice the principles of original horizontality, cross-cutting relationships and faulting. Oh, and it provides an interesting seam of obsidian created by extremely hot welded tuff (the black stuff).
15 Close-up of normal faulting at the outcrop. (Yes, it IS normal faulting).
16 A view of the large crew at Charlie Brown.
17 The weather was great at Charlie Brown.
18 The students try to decipher the relationships of the rocks.
19 Laura took sime time out to practice some Yoga.
20 Hi-ya!
Day 3