Goblin Valley is Weird

When I lived in Utah, my sister would often come and visit. We would make excursions to Southern or Eastern Utah, and she would always remark how weird some of the landscapes are. To me the epitome of weird Utah landscapes is Goblin Valley State Park, just North of Hanksville. My first trip to Goblin Valley was on Halloween, where a number of friends gathered to play hide and seek amongst the "goblins" that evening.

Goblin Valley was also my first introduction to the term "hoodoo" which remains one of my favorite geologic terms. To me, the sound of the word "hoodoo" perfectly describes the eerie shapes of Goblin Valley

Goblin Valley Panoramic Collage

This past spring break I came back to the hoodoos of Goblin Valley and got some pictures of Sam as she explored them.

Sam and Goblins

Spring Field Trip

This past week I took my Introduction to (Historical) Geology class on its annual field trip to the John Day Fossil Beds. We had a gorgeous day (in betwen days of heavy rain), plus his year I identified a couple of new stops that the students really liked, and I think added a lot to the trip.

The first new stop (for me) was a stop identified in the USGS field trip guide to the Geologic Setting of the John Day Country. Less than 1/2 mile down Fields Creek Road is a geologic marker and a road cut through some volcanic ash beds of the Mascall Formation. Students spent a good 45 minutes going through the ash beds looking for leaf fossils and nut impressions.

The other new stop was an outcropping just north of the Condon Visitors center on Highway 19. The Road and River cut through a large outcropping of Goose Rock Conglomerate. I often have a hard time getting students to recognize conglomerate because many of the hand samples I have in lab the clasts are gravel sized. But the Goose Rock conglomerate has cobble sized clasts that are nicely rounded (pencil for scale).

Not only is it an excellent example of conglomerate but it is a great rock to help tell the history of Oregon. The conglomerate itself is mid Cretaceous which makes it among the older rocks in Oregon. The clasts are largely comprised of greenstones, cherts, gabbros, and granite that are early Cretaceous age. The greenstone and granite really help because they represent the oceanic and terrestrial components of a volcanic island arc that accreted onto the margin of the continent and then weathered and deposited in the floodplains of a Mesozoic river.

 

Earth Day

Happy Earth Day

Devils Garden Campground and Skyline Arch, Arches National Park

Been a busy week, but I wanted to celebrate Earthday witih a picture from our Spring Break trip to Arches

Biology

In Science Class we are studying Biology and today we had a live lamb and a dead lamb brought in. We have a few class clowns and they wanted to name the live lamb Lamb Chops.


Oh and a fare warning if you do not like to see blood please do not look at the pictures. So as I said we brought in a live lamb and a dead one [Philip says - the science teacher's friend raises sheep, so the lamb brought in for dissection was one which did not survive the spring weather]. We also got to dissect the dead one. As we were dissecting the dead one we let the live lamb roam around the class room. But before we started dissecting we got to feed the live lamb.

Feeding the lamb

When we were done feeding we finally got to open up the dead lamb. After we opened it up we took out the heart then we took out the liver and gallbladder after that we got to feel around inside of it and I think some of my classmates went to extremes on that.

Lamb insides

Lamb Heart

After a while of letting people feel the lambs inside we cut open skull to see the brain. As we were cutting open the skull you could hear it crack every time we moved the knife. Then we let people feel the brain and after (almost) everyone felt it Mr. S asked what it felt like and if we could describe the difference between the brain and the intestines. They all answered that the brain was hard and not as "squishy."
Lamb's Brain
After people got to feel that we took out an eyeball. When I got to hold the eye I observed that it was hard and not as soft as the intestines or stomach. Which surprised me because I always thought an eye ball was softer than that.
Lamb's Eye

When we had to go clean up I decided to get a pic of my hands

My Bloody Hands

Science today was really fun and I hope that the sixth grades next year enjoy it to.
Sam