A few summers ago, I went on a field trip to Utah, where we looked at sequence stratigraphy of sands. Basically, we were in an area that used to be in a shallow marine setting during the Cretaceous. There was a giant seaway in the west, and all the rocks recorded marine setting deposition. We stayed at a great hotel, and we explored in Capitol Reef National Park. The geology is amazing, and there are world class sedimentary structure outcrops, where you can see ripples, cross beds and other shallow marine depositional features.
Where we stayed was right next to a very nice restaurant, right outside the park. We had a wonderful view of the red rocks, and enjoyed some drinks while we waited on the rest of the field trip participants to join us.
We spent all of our days hiking around the field to different spots, and definitely got our exercise in each day. We packed our lunches in the mornings, and would head out from the SUV's for the majority of the day. We did a lot of off-roading (really, I've never been on a geology field trip where there wasn't a risk of getting stuck or flat tires). The biggest challenge this time was rain in the washes - some of the erosion made pretty steep gorges for us to drive through. We found the best thing to do was to go through one SUV at a time, really fast. Here is a photo of all of us climbing around the rocks one day, as we make our way up to the top.
We also hiked a looonnnggg way across the canyons. I took this photo when we were halfway back from our field area that day, so you can see how far we were from the SUVs. Can you spot them in the photo?
The SUVs are on the left hand side of the photo, near the skyline. It was a long hike back!
I love my job.
