Buffalo Day

This happened a few days ago but i wasnt able to post it. Basically we spent the day butchering a bison using stone tools that we made ourselves. Then we ate the bison meat for dinner. The we got hit by a tornado. What fun!

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Taylor is short

Taylor standing inside a giant dumptruck wheel at the Thunder Basin coal mine. Some of the machines were litterally the size of mansions.

Goin to he largest open pit coal mine in the US. Wearing white might not have been a good idea.

Yay got mail! Thanks everyone!

Close Encounters

Got to see an outdoor screening of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" at night in front of Devils Tower. Pretty cool!

Telescopes: the Veiwing Tubes of the 21st century

Devils Tower

Not actually the devil's tower, but a subdivision of Devil Incorperated.

View of the Red Beds valley

Just arriving at Devils Tower and it's still raining, auuugh.

Just went to the Vore Buffalo Jump. Fotunetly there were no buffalo jumping today.

Yeah... So we all almost died

Yesterday was Buffalo day (more on that later) and we were literrally almost hit by a tornado. During dinner we saw some cloud rotation right above us and minutes later 70+ mph winds (not exagerating) swept in and ripped our group tents down. The winds were so strong that some people hanging on to the tent bars were lifted off the ground with the tent. There was 1/2 inch hail but we all ran to a nearby house and hunkered down. Many of our personal tents got torn down. The winds were so strong that they ripped four of the six spikes (which i pounded into the ground with a rock hammer) out of the ground and stripped my rainfly almost clean off. Nothing was lost or broken but all of my stuff is wet. We stayed in a cabin last night. We never saw the tornado but if it did touch down Jim estimated that it landed 1/2 mile away. In the picture you might be able to see the scalloped
clouds, which is a sign that a tornado was near.

Back into no-service land!

Dead Sheep

Need clipart of a dead sheep? Just use clipart of a livng sheep and stick it upsidedown!

Lame Jonny

Sitting in the Nugget bar in Deadwood listening to local music. One of the lyrics was, ''Look out Lame Jonny... Them chickens be after you...'' Another was, ''Now Jonny decided to stop stealing from black folks and start stealing from white folks... Now as you might have guessed, that just wont do.'' How classy!

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At our first wallmart stop of the trip and bought some bug spray. Im gonna need it.

Paneramic?

Just found out that my phone can take and stitch paneramic photos. Not sure how this will look...

Leaving Ranch A.

Got done with the test. I am very confident that i got above a 40%! Now we are on our way to spearfish to do laundry, thank god.

Ranch A

Sorry there has been no service for the last few days so i havent been able to update. I had to climb a big hill just to get a signal to send this! We are sleeping indoors for the next few days and doing lots of studying. I know most of the Geo stuff already so its a breeze. On Saturday we have a test and the day off in Deadwood. I cant wait to buy overpriced touristy crap!

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At Ranch A, No service!

Goodbye badlands

Was cold this morning and we heard coyotes in the night!

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The Badlands

Exploring the Badlands has been very fun. Some little boy wandered into camp today and turned out to be the most fearless 7-year old boy ever. He has caught and skinned a live rattlesnake before and has been attacked by a coyote (he had the scars to prove it!) Tomorrow is the Black Hills.

Almost to the badlands, cellphone service might cut off soon...

The Jolly Green Midget

We're in the West!

We just crossed the Mississippi River so we are technically in ''the west''. So far it looks remarkably like the east.

Early morning fog

4AM is worse than 6

On our way to the badlands today, named so becaue they look pretty badass. Im not sure how long the drive is but hopefully it will be less than 20 hours. We were assigned movies to watch and they really helped us all fall asleep almost instantly.

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First night in camp

Well we didnt get any complementary cheeses, but after our 22 hour ride we were just happy to finally get out of the van. Our first job was to get bitten by as many misquitos as possible. Then we unloaded the van and ate dinner. After dinner, some of students decided to go swimming in a putrid brown lake on account of them being complete morons. Me and some other students decided to hike to the top of a large bluff, just in case there were some misquitos in the woods that hadn't gotten a chance to bite us yet. The view was good but i forgot my phone. Tomorrow morning I have to be up at FOUR AM... I'm going to set all five of my alarms.

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And we're off!

Just left campus in the cool Geojourney vans. I think i made a good first impression by violently cracking my neck and biting my fingenails in front of everyone. First impressions are always important! We have a long ride ahead of us but at least we are not going through Kansas. If you ever travel into Kanas you quickly find out that the only thing you are interested in are finding out which roads travel the hell OUT of Kansas. Instead we are going to Wisconson, and im not entirely certain but Im pretty sure that residents of WI are required by law to serve cheese platters to guests. Cant wait!

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The only other time I've been awake at 6AM is when i pull an all-nighter

On my way to Toledo now to spend the night near Bowling Green. We have to be up by 6:00, which is well known for being an awful time to be awake. And for the rest of the trip, we have to get up even EARLIER! 5:00-5:30 on most days. With my watch, my clock, and my phone put together I have a total of five alarms. I think they will be getting a lot of use.

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GeoJourney

Since my GeoJourney trip starts tomorrow, i might as well explain some stuff about it.


GeoJourney is a nine-week geology-focused trip around most of the United States.  We will be camping every night and will not have any computer access for most, if not all of the trip.  We will be going to Badlands, Mt. St. Helens, Yellowstone, Yosemite, The Great Smokey Mountains, and many more locations.  About 22 people are going on the trip and we get a few days off in New Orleans, Las Vegas, and San Fransisco.

Although some areas probably aren't going to have any phone service, I'll try to update this blog at least one or two times a day, so stay tuned to see pictures of my trip and info on what I'm doing.  I'll also let you know exactly how long it takes for camping every day and waking up at 5:30 AM to start getting annoying!


Thanks for reading!

More tests

Still testing my new phone to make sur everything will work out in the field. Im also applying for a USGS job in columbus; hopefully they wont mind that i cant do an interview for nine weeks. Its a level-4 hydrology job with a minimum yearly salary of 31k a year! That would be nice.

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New phone, new verizon charges

Posting this from my new phone, the Alias 2. So far its great except the main keyboard doesnt have a comma button, forcing me to click through a menu to use it. I can deal with that though, since the keyboard was apparently designed by alchemist-magicians and can change its orientation and layout at will, thus reaching a new level of awesome that has not yet been described by words. More on this later.

Rowsdower saves us and saves all the world

I just learned that the guys behind Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Rifftrax are going to show a riffing of the old PSA short, "Reefer Madness" in Columbus tonight.  I've been a fan of Mystery Science Theater since the mid-90's, when it was on TV.

I'm really busy preparing for my trip but I hope I'll be able to find some time to go tonight.  The show is at 8:00 at various places around town.

Check out Rifftrax if you were a MST3K fan!

Wonderful, it only took me two posts to screw everything up. Apparently i cant send messages over 160 characters long or my blog has some sort of seizure.

Here is a cat!

Well that worked nicely. Now to try it with pictures. I couldn't think of a good one to send so i decided to send a picture of my cat Momo, who for some reason is nervous of normal household objects such as this phone.

This is my first post so I'm going to try to make it as short and unhumorous as possible.