So, so tired.

Today was part one of my geology field trip. I have no idea how I'm going to exist through part two. I'm SO tired.

I got up at 6:30 am after going to bed at 1 am (phone call from a friend that kept me up - we were talking about our careers and how crazy it is that they're really STARTING now) and threw together my sandwiches while I shoveled waffles into my face and rushed around trying to pack everything I needed.

I left my apartment fully equipped at 7:17 am and made my way to the Foundation building parking lot, arriving there at about 7:40. I was the only one there and was freaking out a little bit until Carlos arrived three minutes later and assured me everyone was incredibly late for these things. The dew made the tables all wet, so we sat on the curb waiting for everyone else to turn up.

Everyone got there by 8, and after a rather boring ten minute lecture we packed ourselves into the two geology vans and drove off.

Stop one was a really beautiful mountain trail (in Bedford Canyon) that we had to schlepp up for a hundred yards or so and examine the Jurassic sediments - sandstone and shale. The place was covered with poison oak, and there was an extremely noisy motorcycle gang down the mountain, but I managed to block most of it out and focus on what Dr. Behl was dictating as well as taking some notes of my own.
For the record: breaking rocks with my super awesome Estwing rock hammer is SO much fun!

After that we went back down the mountain a ways and parked in this sketch driveway so we could walk UP the road (a small, winding mountain road that huge redneck trucks and motorcycle gangs were rumbling up and down) to stand on a 3-inch shoulder so we could examine the unusual rock formations. It was argillite, and so much of it you couldn't see the sandstone till you examined it carefully.

Then we did another roadside stop (we were all getting annoyed, these road stops were both scary and unplanned and we girls did not like having to get out of the car and inch along the roadside praying we didn't end up as strawberry jam) and examined a particularly boring gravel conglomerate outcropping. Fun thing though: it had a kind of rock known as gray wache, that is pronounced as "gray wacky". It makes me giggle every time I say (or think) it.

Next stop was the Tribuco Formation (Dr. Behl doesn't spell anything unless we specifically ask ten times, and he talks so fast we don't often have time to ask such inconsequential things as spelling when we can be asking if our deductions about the rocks are correct) which is the oldest and lowest formation of Californian late Cretaceous sediment. I collected a couple of samples, one is a piece of sandstone with sparkly bits, and the other is argillite and has some really pretty conchoidal fractures.

Then we went to another conglomerate from another canyon, found some really cute little fossil shells in the rocks, which proved that that area had been underwater sometime several million years before.

After that we FINALLY got to stop for lunch and went to this nice little community center that had a BATHROOM with toilet paper AND soap AND paper towels! It was lovely. We ate our bag lunches at picnic tables under some big shade trees, and then swung on the swings for awhile. At least a few of us girls did, and at one point one of the girls and I were having a swinging contest and I was laughing so hard I could barely swing. It was so much fun!
I drank a whole water bottle with lunch, I was so thirsty! I was comfortable in my conviction that I wouldn't finish my second water bottle or the two juice boxes I had packed as well...bad idea...I finished all of them and was totally dying of thirst before the last couple of stops.

After a lovely lunch we packed up again and headed to a dried up riverbed that had a shale hillside on one side and a flat floodplain, perfect farmland, on the other. I and one of the guys immediately tried to scale the shale hill, he got halfway up and got distracted digging a hole looking for fossils and I got a quarter of the way up and gave up because my super-expensive hiking boots weren't getting traction and my toes were KILLING me because I hadn't worn them since I was in Ethiopia. I found some seriously cute little fossils and collected three: two fossilized clam shells in hunks of mudstone, and a beautiful clamshell cast. I found a second clamshell cast, but gave it to one of my classmates since she hadn't found any nice fossils.

The next stop was further down the riverbed and we had to precipitate ourselves seven feet down from the edge of the dried up bed to the bottom, and had to scramble down the rocks, which really hurt my feet even more. The strange thing was that there was this thick blond matting on the rocks. We realized that it was algae! There was so much of it that when the river dried up the chlorophyll disappeared and left a soft, tough mat that hid the gravel track and was home to dozens of little black ants.

At this site was a really rare kind of rock - a pisolite - that only forms under extraordinarily hot and humid conditions. It was interesting to see a rock that's rare, but it looked pretty boring (no sparkles) and I was getting seriously dehydrated and burnt despite my hat, sunglasses and sunscreen. My shoulders are pretty bad, I'm going to have to wear a t-shirt tomorrow. We found another rare formation - mud-brown-red shale that's some sort of fluvial (made by water) deposit. I believe it's miocene, but I don't really remember. I should type up my notes, they're pretty messy.

The second to last site of the day we didn't actually get to go to - we had to park outside the fence of this national park and look from a distance at these huge red and white sandstone formations. They were pretty, but the best part about that stop was we got to stand in the shade during the lecture.

The last site was "in civilization" as we called it - we parked in a hoity toity subdivision and walked up to a gate where the road cut through a hill. The rocks were very pink and very crumbly, with lots of little green crystals everywhere. We went to look at the other side of the road and found a lava pipe, which was pretty cool. I was sitting on a hunk of sandstone and noticed some patches and veins of reddish crystals, and tried to hammer off a chunk of sandstone. To my surprise I found that the crystals came off in a mat - the sandstone didn't chip at all. I managed to get two decent patches of it (about 2 cm in diameter) and showed it to Dr. Behl. He stopped and stared and said that he had absolutely no idea what it was, but it was totally cool and I had to bring it in to lab on Tuesday so we can figure out what it is. So that was pretty awesome.

But the most awesome part was piling in the car and going home. We got back to campus just before 5 and I walked in my front door at 5:30. After taking off my shoes and chugging some water I walked to CVS and bought an aluminum water bottle and a freeze brick for $2 (I LOVE their clearance rack), then to a nearby restaurant and got a beef bowl for takeout. The L&L has the yummiest food - this bowl had beef, rice, green onion, veggies, and this amazing Asian glaze sauce and I practically inhaled it. And just $5!

After dinner I called Mom and Dad, did the dishes, and now I'm cuddled up in my armchair watching football and poking my sunburn to see it go from white to pink. I'm still pretty lonely here - I've met a bunch of people but none I'm very close with (so many of my classmates are a little older and I'm shy about approaching them to hang out) yet, so it's still an all-by-myself act right now. It was easier as an undergrad...I was going to parties my first week there. But that's UF, the party school of the nation. This is CSULB, the chill university of the nation.

I think it's time for some potato chips - I didn't make it to the anthropology barbecue (it was 3 pm - 7 pm today, and I just couldn't bring myself to drive out there after the long, exhausting day I had) and I'm not going to that concert I won tickets to (didn't want to drive to LA, watch a whole show, drive back, and then get up at 6:30 am) so I figure I can reward myself with cheez doodles.

P.S. Pictures will be posted later.

P.P.S. Much later. Like, on Monday. :)