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Name: Matt
Country: United States
State: Utah
Metro: Salt Lake City
Birthday: 9/3/1980
Gender: Male
Interests: Music, listening and playing bass->Nirvana, NoFX, Muse, as well as other punk, grunge, psychobilly, alternative, electronica, classic rock, classical, bluegrass, R&B, ska (old and new), banda, nortena, ranchera, mariachi, folk, etc., sports (watching and playing; UCLA Bruins, Miami Dolphins, Anaheim Angels), hikes, video games, Mongolia, politics
Expertise: Geology, Teaching, Sports strategy, trivia, plus I'm a top Answerer on Yahoo! Answer's Earth Science and Geology section!
Occupation: Geologist
Industry: Education/Research
Message: message meEmail: email me
Website: visit my website
Member Since:
6/7/2002
 True  Lifetime
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| 7 National Parks, 6 daysFirst things first: Where is this?
It is Navajo Sandstone.... partially bleached..... Navajo is found in Zion, or Capitol Reef, or Canyonlands, or Bryce....
Check for answer later....
Mesa and Washer-Woman Arches, Canyonlands NP, thanks to Shawn for the photoshop!
This past week, I had one of my most epic trips ever, and I know that's saying something. Anthony (friend from SHS and UCLA) did his first camping and National Park Tour. On Sunday the 28th of June, we met at my home away from home, the Border Inn, and readied for the days ahead.
Monday
In the morning, we did Great Basin NP.
I did my second Lehman Cave tour, and this time I brought my camera. You can not believe how hard it is to take a good picture in there...
Here is Anthony modeling a flowing spring on the Bristlecone Pine trail. It was fun, but we left early to get to Cedar City and hang with Andrew.
Tuesday
On Tuesday morning, we headed to Zion, the middle step in the Grand Staircase.
We had a quick look at Kolob Canyons, which, as I've said before, is worth the stop if you are there.
We also did the Watchman trail, which was quite nice if you want a great view of the valley, down the valley.
I think this is the Watchman, but whatever it's called, it's an awesome mountain.
The best thing about this trip is I did so many more things that I had never done before, like the hike to Emerald Pools.
On the way out, we drove through the tunnel and out the eastern high country. I had never noticed the Carmel above the Navajo here before. In Capitol Reef, yeah, but not here.
Kanab was our next stop, and a place like this has gotta be crazy...
We were put at ease, though, by the Hitler cop mannequins. If you can believe it, we saw this in two cities along the way.
Wednesday
After camping in the Kaibab band of Paiute Indians' Reservation, and checking out Pipe Springs NM, we headed to the latest add to the itinerary: The Grand Canyon.
After stopping at some viewpoints to see, the Grand Staircase itself, we headed to the park.
It was a little hazy, but still great. This picture is cool because you can see how fault-controlled (i.e. straight) Bright Angel Canyon is.
We actually got there right when a geology talk was going on! During the talk, there were the usual oversimplifications that caused minor incorrect assumptions by the laymen, but this guy said some terrible things. He said "all the cliffs are from deep sea" and then would refer to the (eolian) Coconino sandstone in the same sentence.... huh? He skipped the Tappets sandstone all together, and he kept calling the Vishnu Schist igneous! He (and many diagrams/people in most of the parks) said uplift had occurred in the last 70 Ma, not emphasizing the main, significant, and really important 6 Ma to present pulse. Worst of all, by far, he said, "there are lots of faults here (relatively, no), and some people think that the faults have 'opened up' to form the main canyon itself and the side canyons" WHAT!!?!?!? What, no reference to California falling into the ocean? it would be so easy to say "the faults have weakened the rocks so that they get washed away easier and the canyon thus forms there." Is that so hard? Now, am I such an asshole, or am I right to be mad? He did point out the cool (above) 1991 landslide.
We did the main things, but then we went to the far northeast part of the main drive, and it was worth it. It's not the famous part, but it might be a better view, with more spires and fins.
It's also great because of the rare North-Rim view of the river, AND the proterozoic section! Hard to see in this pic, but it's behind the triangular knob.
These strange but beautiful flowers,
And a fancy new window chip were the best ways I could think to wrap the day. We stayed that night in Bryce.... nice and chilly.
Thursday
We did the main drag in Bryce... it was cloudy so it was a different look to it, probably better.
We had a very common theme that started this day: Ravens. They were everywhere, nevermore leaving us alone, but Anthony didn't care; he couldn't get enough of them. This is in the Grand Staircase-Escalante NM.
GSENM also had a very-hugable lizard statue. That evening, we stayed and got the last spot in the Capitol Reef campground.
Friday
In Capitol Reef, we woke early to do the Capitol Gorge drive. It had been a while at this point since a good hike, so we sought one out.
Morning makes for interesting lighting here...
By the way, the sandstone tablets for signs here are great!
We did a hike at the end of the drive to these potholes, full of tadpoles.
If you don't know why it's called capitol reef, then look at these great rounded domes of Navajo sandstone!
By the way, 'reef' is a geographic barrier that is cliffy, and the slight dip from this 100-mile-long monocline is the source of the cliffs. A little tectonism in the Colorado Plateau goes a long, long way.
Though, you have to think a better name could have been chosen...
Too bad Grand Teton is taken....
We then traveled toward Moab, passing through Glen Canyon. Look at this awesome stratigraphy: bulbous tan Navajo, thin-bedded red Kayenta, cliffy brighter/lighter red Wingate, slope-forming mixed oxidized (red) and reduced (grey/blue) Chinle, and red Moenkopi in the foreground.
We also did the tour at Natural Bridges. Did you know that Teddy made this the first federally-protected land in the state! Before all the current National Parks and Monuments, how 'bout that!
Saturday
Even though we were tired and beat, we still filled our last day with the most stuff: the Moab pair of Parks.
We started out with Wall Street, a place in Arches I'd never been... very cool!
The a trip to various rocks and arches around the park, including Double Arch above.
Then we did the famous arches, like Landscape (by the way... in the visitor center, they have a video of a section of this arch falling on video.... holy shit! It is so cool!)
and Delicate.
The end of the day was Canyonlands.
It was rainy and lightning-y! It made some of the pics better, some worse, as you shall see.
After failed attempts of taking a lightning strike picture, we saw a rainbow! We chased it as we walked toward Mesa Arch. Any hiking before that was rain-shortened.
The sun did eventually break through...
This is Mesa Arch, with Washer-Woman Arch in the background.
If you don't see the reason it is called that, here I am modeling.
This was such a great spot... and only a 0.5 mile hike... You gotta go!
Oh, and bring your fish-eye lens! The only time in my life when I needed one...
So, back to the quiz:
Again, here it is. Some hints: it is Navajo sandstone, capped with a little Carmel marl...
Here's the wide shot....
Any guesses?
Well...
It is Canyonlands, my favorite park in Utah.
This was quite the trip, though I am still not recovered. I have another few hours before my next trip starts, SFWIII in Sequoia, with a side trip to my Dad's in Ridgecrest and Fernando at an AV In-N-Out. And let me restate: this is an open invite to do this with you, that's right, you! If there's a place you wanna go, and you need a geologic guide, let me know! Even though I had been to each of these parks, I still saw so much new and still have so much left to see.
P.S. Bad news.... no Lulu for the summer.... I miss her so much!
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| Matt of the WebWell, I'm a Xanga lifer now. Thanks, Kelly....
I want to encourage everyone to vote on my campaign to give the option to turn off auto-play music. I HATE it, and with your help, we can get rid of it.
My main thing I'm working on at work is the Snake Valley data website. Check it out! It's not done yet, but it's coming along. Tthe main thing I am doing is the data page and a really cool interactive Google Earth file (not done yet). When it's all done, I'll let you know. I wish I knew HTML so I could do it all myself...
Starting Sunday is a big trip with Anthony... if things go right, we'll hit Great Basin, Zion, Grand Canyon, Bryce, Capitol Reef, Natural Bridges, Arches, and Canyonlands in about 7 days (with major music exchange mixed in). BIG blog to come! And the week after that, SFWIII, Ridgecrest, and Sequoia!
And seriously, thanks, Kelly. You made me start this, and as much as I resisted at first, I'm so glad now that I did!
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| Eight is EnoughSo, I was a starry-eyed senior at UCLA when I bought my first computer by myself. It was the most expensive thing I had ever bought at the time... almost 2 grand for a top of the line computer with, get this.... 60 GB of hard drive space (Wow!!!) and an actual DVD burner! What a fantastic world that was...
Fast-forward 8 years, and my G4 swivel lampshade iMac is really showing it's age. The disk drive is sketchy, the video card can't handle most video (online or off), and the hard drive is perpetually near the precipice of filling.
Also, I don't have cable, and my lack of Daily Show and the like, because I can't watch it online, is tortuous. So, I either start getting cable or....
Get a brand new iMac! Pretty fancy, eh? 24" screen, an order of magnitude of hard drive upgrade, a video card that can handle anything, and actually a few hundred dollars cheaper! The hardest part of the purchase was my insistence to walk the 0.5 miles to and from the apple store... I'm still quite sore...
My old iMac has already found a home with Ian. Will my new computer last 8 years? I doubt it, but I am ecstatic to have it now!
So, don't be sad... think of the good times... | | |
| Lulu, Don't cry!
This weekend, I had an eerily familiar experience with my beautiful Lulu. Meet the ex at a public place, drop off the offspring, part ways. It reminded me of the times my brother and I were dropped off in Acton, CA when my Mom and Dad did the switch. This time, it was Aly and I at a Sinclair gas station in Cedar City.
Lulu and I decided that we would stay in the San Frans east of Wah Wah Valley. It was EYE-SO-LATE-TED.
Lulu was so happy, she was jumping for jerky, I mean, joy!
The idea was to look at the local geology, but it was closed-off mine property, so hiking was a minimum.
Lulu had better ideas than hiking...
The desert flowers were certainly out, in all kinds of colors. They all seemed to be the same species, but the colors were very varied. Lulu appreciated one barb a little too much (in her paw), but she handled it like a breeze!
Lulu, the Conjurer of Storms, decided the day was not fun enough, and a storm needed to brew, even though this type of weather is common for August, not May.
A small one in the Wah Wah hardpan fizzled...
...but some cool looking sandstorms were kicked up.
The next storm from the east was much more potent, so we hid in our tent... er... the back of my truck...
...and the Gods slept.
It was a fun little trip. We hiked a little (when Lulu was not too tired), saw an Antelope pretty close, a sleepy snake, and several bunnies that I had a better chance of catching than Lulu.
And now, the best picture I ever took of Lulu, and dare I say, the best pic of her ever.
How I got her to do that, I'll never know.
Now, time to ready for tomorrow... leave for (what could be the last time at my current job) the field for the week tomorrow.
P.S. My newest music obsession: Lily Allen... I know what you're thinking; not what I usually listen to... but she's more musically inclined than you're average Diva AND she writes her own music (at least in part) AND she is self-made AND she sings about dirty things AND she has a tat of Homer Simpson AND she hates dubya and the like (re:the song Fuck You) AND she has a third nipple. What more could you want in a singer? | | |
| Will he ever stop talking?Whew. A crazy bit of time lately.
First off, the infamous Rollover incident was appealed. After giving a detailed power point, pleading my case, showing beyond a shadow of a doubt that the tire, not anything else, caused the accident. After an hour of testimony (w/ Q&A) and and hour of deliberation, I lost 4-3. I heard that the main reasons I lost were 1) I did not check the spare tire pressure before I left (Are you kidding me? There is no one that ever, EVER does this) and 2) I had cruise control set, even though it was set BELOW the speed limit on a good dirt road. I can not imagine an independent panel finding me negligent. And I want the MythBusters to check the cruise control scientifically; at the very least, I was never trained to drive any differently with the state, let alone any training regarding dirt roads or cruise control, so how can I be at fault?
As a 'reward' for my appeal, (well, I can not prove these things are related, but within 30 minutes of my verdict,) my driving privileges were revoked indefinitely. So, I am officially looking for a new job. SLC prospects are pretty good, thankfully. Also thankfully is my (relatively, I think) secure spot with my current job, but I hope to leave before I can find out if I can drive again.
Last weekend, I had to be in Fish Springs, and I was not even allowed to drive MY OWN TRUCK. I had to get a coworker to drive me out there (Thanks Rebecca!). This is one of those 'gov gone wild' stories: She gets paid for hours of unnecessary work, wasting the tax payer's money, to drive me to work on roads and conditions that she is less trained and less familiar with then I am. Great...
The weekend itself was great! I taught 2 three hour field trip classes, and got a lot of good feedback, as we checked out the Ordovician transgressive sequence of the Eureka-Ely Springs (including trace fossils and a cool slickenside) and some Provo Level (lake Bonneville) Tufa deposits.
The trip ended with some unexpected herpetology... I felt so bad because I told Rebecca 'there's no snakes out here' so many times because of her fear of them. This was the first (live) rattler I've seen in my two years with the survey.
The first three days of this week were taken up by Rocky Mt section GSA, highlighted by the talk by yours truly. It was my first ever talk at GSA, and it went better than I thought it would. At least no produce was thrown on stage and no one found out that I'm not really a hydrologist. The one question I got was from the yBu group that does not like the main interbasin flow idea, but instead of asking me questions on that, they asked me, "Did the fact that the drawdown from the aquifer test had such a long time interval of recovery surprise you?" Uhhh... yes?
The best slide was this above, with the caption, "Snake Valley Traffic Jam." Well, I know you must first be asking about the swag, but this was a small meeting, so I only got a few pens and stickers. The best stickers I got were "Warning: Geologist at Work" and "Don't Worry, I'm a Geologist" stickers in spanish. But, I did not leave empty handed...
If you had "5 lbs of cookies" in the Matt's GSA Swag office pool, then collect your winnings.
All in all, a busy but good few days. Now, I just hope to rest my voice, do something fun this weekend, and lay low. | | |
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You must be really wasting time...
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