Houston, We Have a Problem

I did not think this moving thing through very well. I am going to have to put Texas plates on my car. I don't know how I am going to break it to her. Maybe I can tell her it's protective camouflage...

I will also have to start wearing Big Girl clothes again. I wonder if I remember how.

The Day My Back Stood Still

But that didn't help it much, either.

My back has been bothering me off and on since I started this trip. Before, actually. It's been a whole week now. I hadn't quite been ignoring it, but neither had I let it stop me from doing at least some of the thing I wanted to do.

Today my back won the argument.

I had a nine-mile hike planned for today. I had water, Gatorade, pineapple, two Clif bars, and my book. What more could a girl want? Maybe a cooperative body. I got about a mile into planned hike, and had just started going uphill when my back announced that it was not playing this game any more. I took another Aleve and tried to go on. Nope.

Luckily, there is a lot to do in Big Bend that does not involve walking up vertical slopes. Or any walking at all, really. I went on the Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive. He was a geologist, and he designed this road for geologists. Nonetheless, I managed to take a picture of something that was not a rock. It's a very pretty prickly pear. Note lack of javelina tooth marks.

This is the Rio Grande. You can tell it's a river because green things grow near it. Like cottonwoods. And apparently algae.

Finally! Some nice sedimentary rocks. I am so sick of volcanics. Here's a bunch of limestone. The left side of the canyon in the picture is the Sierra Ponce. It's in Mexico. The right side is the Mesa de Anguilla. It's in the U.S. Amazingly enough, they look a lot alike. I hear it's fun to raft the Rio through the canyon. Maybe next time I will try it.

Hey, There's a Big Bend in This River

I made it to Big Bend!

I wasn't entirely certain I would be able to include it in this trip. When I left Fmtn, I hadn't realized it was spring break this past week. No wonder everything was so crowded! I called the park HQ before I left Pecos (lovely place, Pecos. Even their Wal-Mart is the size of my first apartment) friday morning to find out if there was any chance of getting a campsite, and the Nice Lady told me that it had been full all week, but as of that morning people were pouring out of there like mad. Yay, people. Out of my way.

I got a lovely site in the Chisos campground. Ok, it wasn't lovely. It didn't even have a picnic table. But it was a two-room site, with a small clearing next to the main campsite where I could pitch my tent surrounded by bushes. I don't know why it didn't have a picnic table, but I had a folding chair in the backseat, so I was set. I chose Chisos out of the three campgrounds on account of the big signs saying that there are hairpin turns on the road to the campground, and that RVs over 24' shouldn't go there. Now THAT'S my kind of campground!

I hiked up the Lost Mine Peak trail on friday. It was a nice trail. It was steep. There was no mine - apparently they lost it. There was, however, a fantastic view.

Here's a coarse conglomerate overlain by a much finer conglomerate. Applesauce for scale.

Here is a javelina peeking at me through the bushes. It's eating a prickly pear cactus. They do that. The whole thing, not just picking around the pointy bits. This behavior leads me to two possible conclusions: a) javelinas have evolved very tough mouths which are not damaged by the spines of the cactus, or b) javelinas are dumb. But they are kind of cute without tusks.

Here's the view from the top of Lost Mine Peak trail. It's the contact between a porphyritic rhyolite and a boring rhyolite. Used applesauce for scale.

Here is another view from the top. Note the pretty striped volcanic rocks. The technical term for these is Pretty Striped Rocks.

On the way back down, I noticed this great rock. Note the concentric crystalization pattern around the inclusion and the deformation along the fracture lines. Animal cracker (sheep) for scale.

Ok. Done boring most of you with pictures of rocks. I hiked back down the trail and had a lovely camp dinner of Whatever Is In the Car.

It's Cold and Damp in Here...

Carlsbad Caverns = Houston in winter? What am I getting myself into?

I think I've heard of this...

I believe it's called a "vacation." It's when you are not at home or at work, you are enjoying yourself, and you don't have a cell phone strapped to your forehead.

I started my vacation/moving with a stop at White Sands today. Here they are. They're white. And they are made of sand. I walked the 5-mile "trail" out to the alkali flats. The trail consists of a bunch of markers telling you which way to go, and you can follow them if you want... if you want to make it back, that is. I did not do a lot of adventuring off the wind-swept, mostly invisible path.


I did, however, see some excellent evidence of rapid dune migration.

I walked part of it barefoot, since everyone else who was doing so seemed to be having rather a bit of fun.

I got a blister on the bottom of my big toe for my troubles. Definitely a smart move on Day 1 of a five-day hiking/biking excursion. Go me.

Here's a picture of some nice ripple marks exposed on the leeside of a dune, for Robin.

The weather was wonderful today; I can't imagine trying to enjoy this place in the summer, though.

Day 1 sunburn level: minor.

This is where I camped this night. Most of my fellow campers missed this, because they were in their RVs watching TV.

Why bother?

To Humidity and Beyond!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!
I would also like to wish everyone a belated Happy St. Urho's Day!
Today is my last day in Farmington.
It's snowing.
The plan for today was to get together everything I want to take to Houston for the next three weeks. I will spend the next five days meandering my way down to Houston (currently planned stopping points are White Mesa Trails, White Sands Park, Carlsbad Cavern, and Bid Bend National Park). I must take with me all of the camping/traveling items I will need for the trip, and enough work clothes and living-in-an- empty-apartment stuffs to get me through about three weeks.
So far today, I have managed to have my mail forwarded, do laundry, get a car charger for my cell phone, return a pair of jeans that didn't fit, and stare at the pile of stuff in my living room in utter despair, trying to figure out how it's all getting in my car.
Meanwhile, it's snowing. This fact sure is motivating me to go outside and start loading up the car (where is the button for the sarcasm font on this thing?).
For those of you who have been following my quest to purchase a digital camera, the latest update is: no one in town can seem to keep in stock the cameras to which I had narrowed down my choices. Perhaps I will draw pictures of the places I visit and scan them into the computer...

Things I Will Miss... and Not

This was Robin's office today. This was taken from the wellpad at which she was working, looking down Canyon Largo (the shiny bit in the middle is Largo Wash). Add this to the list of things I will miss about this job.

The list of things I will NOT miss about this job include: filling up the company truck on an almost-daily basis; getting calls from clients who don't understand why cleaning up a [insert petroleum product] spill is so expensive (hey, don't spill your stuff and we won't have this problem...); getting calls from clients who want their lab results two hours after the sample is turned in to the lab; inch-thick layers of gummy clay mud on my truck; inch-thick layers of gummy clay mud deciding to let go of my truck on my driveway; sitting in line at the truck wash for an hour to avoid that driveway problem; driving oilfield roads (well, I'll miss that once in a while... some of them are a lot of fun); filling out a Form for everything we do, say, or touch; sitting in the back of my truck writing reports on my laptop while overseeing another job because we are shorthanded; and dust in the field equipment.

Where Did All This Stuff Come From?

The packing process has officially begun. I packed a few symbolic boxes earlier this week, but today I put some actual effort into it. The backyard has been divested of all traces of my occupation, apart from the birdfeeders (still weaning the little guys off this place as a food source), but the inside of the house... There is a disappointingly large amount of stuff in my house... I am not sure where it all came from, but I do wish the Stuff Fairy would stop visiting. Rather a bit of the clutter consists of items which I replaced as outdated, but for which I had hoped to find a final disposition other than the landfill. Doesn't look like that will happen now, for a lot of it. The Christmas tree, for instance, was hacked into pieces and shoved in the dumpster today. So much for my hope that I would discover a place around here that took trees for mulch or some such. I have given up on finding someone who wants my old computer, as well, and that will soon find itself at Best Buy, who at least will recycle what they can.

I am also making plans for the initial trip to Houston, which will begin on March 18th with a Badger Alumni dinner in Abq. There are several places between here and Abq that have caught my eye, but there never seemed to be time or excuse to visit them. I plan to hit one or two on my way this time. After Abq, I will most likely visit White Sands, then Carlsbad Caverns, and then spend whatever time I can in Big Bend National Park before arriving in Houston on sunday... just in time to start my new job on monday, March 23rd. I am either very excited or thoroughly terrified - will let you know if I figure it out.

Yes, Green Things Do Grow Here

I didn't spend very much time here in the Four Corners, and most of you didn't get to visit me here, so I thought I'd share some pictures of my home.

This is Mesa Verde as seen from the pasture of one of our clients in Mancos, Colorado. I spent a gorgeous spring day in this field - one of the bonuses of my job. I will spare you the photos of the lake we made when someone played a accidental game of "underground utility locater" with the backhoe and the client's irrigation line...

Sadly, the only time I have visited Mesa Verde in the past not-quite-two years was to clean up an asphalt spill at a construction site in the park. That has fairly well been the story of my life recently!

This is Sleeping Ute Mountain, near Cortez, Colorado. The Ute legend tells that he was a great warrior chief who helped fight against evil ones, and during the battle his feet formed the mountains and valleys. The chief was wounded and while resting he fell into a deep sleep. He wears a different colored blanket for each season - white in winter, green in summer, red in the fall, and six inches of thick clay mud in the spring. No, wait, the last one is my truck, not the mountain. The highest point, towards the left, is the chief's crossed arms over his chest. His head is to the left of that, not terribly visible in this photo.

This is a photo of ruins at Hovenweep, in Utah. I was standing down in a shallow part of the wash when I took it. Hovenweep is a very nice place to see southwest ruins - good preservation, a relatively short hike (2 miles to do the entire trail), not much elevation change, and a nice visitor center - but my favorite part is the drive on Montezuma County Road G (otherwise known as a McRoad) from Cortez to Aneth, Utah. The scenery is gorgeous, and it's a beautiful road to travel by motorcycle.



This is our Snoopy Rock. There are a lot of Snoopy Rocks (or Snoopies Rock) in this time zone, but I think ours is a particularly good one. This one's near Shiprock. Rumor has it that the little bump on his head is Woodstock, but I am pretty sure that it is just a wart, and that Woodstock has gone off to find some water.

This is an important landmark when one is driving back to Farmington from Gallup after a long day of installing monitoring wells or replacing the vacuum pump on a diesel recovery system, because it lets one know that it is time to start paying attention, so as not to miss the turn onto N36, which is the shortcut to Farmington that takes you around Shiprock instead of through it. Not that there's anything wrong with Shiprock, but when one is trying to escape the deep, sucking vortex that is Gallup, the last thing one wants to do is slow down for a town...


This is Molas Lake... at least, we were pretty sure it was the lake. Molas Lake was somewhere around there, according to the sign, and this was the only flat, tree-less area nearby. Molas Lake is at the top of Molas Pass in the San Juan Mountains, north of Durango, Colorado. There's a great Indian-Tibetan- Himalyayan restaurant in Durango, on Main and 10th... um, right, we went up to Molas to go snowshoeing. It was rather a lot of fun. And the lunch buffet at the Indian restaurant was delicious, as always.

Go, Go, Gadget Blog!

It's official - I am moving to Houston!

I gave my notice at Envirotech today, and in two weeks I will begin the process of schlepping my stuff back into the central time zone. I am not particularly looking forward to moving (where did all the STUFF in this house come from? I must not have been home the day it showed up), but I can't wait to start my new job at Berger Geoscience.

My job will be conducting shallow off-shore geohazard assessments - read: we will look at data from the Gulf floor and subsurface and tell oil companies where sinking a well would be a really bad idea. I haven't decided whether I want to be the person who goes out on the boats and off-shore drill rigs... it sounds very exciting (the first time, at least) but I am not sure I want to commit to spending that much time away from home. Maybe come my first July in Houston it will sound more appealing...