Shannon and Lisa's Excellent Adventure

Day 1-5 of the trip. Norman, Ok, to Salt Lake City, Ut. Day 1 we drove to Albuquerque and spent the night with Tom and Ivy, then on to Durango, Colorado. This might be my favorite(and is Lisa's favorite) town anywhere. Let me tell you, it is now John Milo's favorite town too! We camped in this private campground (okay, it's not backcountry, but swimming pools keep the kiddos entertained). Running right through the middle of the campground was the Durango-Silverton Line. Three steamies (steam engines for all you non-Thomas the Tank Engine people) went by when we were there. John Milo was actually shaking with excitement. He cried when we left and is still talking about it. Then on to Moab. I'm a geologist, so I can appreciate all Utah has to offer, but god I hate dust! The campground (okay, it was a tent site at an RV Park in the middle of town) was so dusty and disgusting. But anyway, we went to Arches and Canyonlands National Parks. They are amazing. I'd been to both of these, but it was during field camp ten years ago. Obviously the rocks hadn't changed much, but it was certainly awesome to take Lily and John Milo there.We went on two pretty big hikes (~1 mile) in Arches both yesterday and this morning before leaving Moab. They did great. John Milo ran up one of the trails yelling "I'm a geologist". Made me nearly cry! Then this morning we hung out at Sanddune Arch, it was pretty spectacular. They are travelling pretty well, in case anyone was wondering, bickering away like siblings. JM was a little scared of the whole "camping" thing at first, even though he's been before. But he is pretty good. We are in Salt Lake City at a hotel (ah...comforts!) tonight and then on to Jackson Hole and Grand Teton and Yellowstone. I hope my bear anxiety isn't passed on to my kiddo. He told me he was worried about lions, so I guess it is genetic. Enjoy! Note:I'm having some trouble uploading pictures...as you can imagine the wi-fi in national parks isn't that great...so here's one and I'll add more later!

April...er, June in Paris

Some photos from Paris, where I am going to be presenting some of my research and John is along to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary as well :)

It's been awhile...

I'm sure my readership will plummet since I pulled the plug on my Facebook, but I've certainly been getting a lot more done! For those of you left that check the blog, here are some more recent pics of the kiddo and such. Also, went to New Mexico (visiting the Harding Pegmatite Mine) for a field trip over spring break, where we had a dust storm that shut down the interstate followed by a blizzard that did the same! Ahhh...springtime!

Birthday party in the gym!

John Milo went to his first birthday party last weekend:) We were very excited because it was at Bart Conner's gym, and we've been talking about maybe taking some gymnastics lessons. As always it took him awhile to warm up to everything, but he eventually did and had a great time!! Especially in the pit, where he and his buddies just jumped all over the place, it was pretty hilarious.

Merry Christmas...and more dinosaurs :)

If you haven't been to the "From Wolf to Woof" exhibit at the Sam Noble Museum of Natural History...you certainly need to go, it's pretty amazing and is over in mid-January!! Here are some pics of our recent visit. Man, JM looooves the "dinosaur museum" so much!

OK Earthquakes!!

On Wednesday I was lucky enough to be able to go to the field and deploy seismometers to monitor the earthquake activity. Seems like everything has been tapering off, so that's good news, but I did feel another one last night at 1130. Yikes! Here are some pictures of the seismometers, they are little canisters that we were burying, and then all the electronics sit outside the hole in a pelican box with a solar panel that is used to recharge the marine battery that runs the stuff. These are telemetry, they (the geologic survey and my other colleagues at the school of geology) have to come back out to the field and download the data manually. These will probably sit out in the field for three months or so, barring no more earthquakes!

We were driving trying to find a particular location, and we drove over a ground rupture in a road along the fault! We know it was due to the fault because along the margins of the fault there were little "mud volcanoes", which form during the quake when mud is forced up through the rupture.

This particular deployment was with equipment from PASSCAL, which is an NSF funded endeavor at New Mexico Tech. You can essentially "rent" all kinds of geophysical equipment from them, a really awesome place. So they sent OU 10 seismometers to put out along the fault. Some students and a prof from OSU also came out to help us. We also were helped out by some local critters, as you'll see in the pics. One tried to hitch a ride back with us...let me tell you, I think she would work harder than some of the people around here :)

All in all its been a pretty exciting/scary week. This fault system was last active over 300 million years ago, and looks like the most recent activity is starting to taper off. Earthquakes are not unusual here in OK, and lots of research will be ongoing from this latest 'swarm' of events.

Day Out with Thomas!

So John Milo is a huge Thomas the Tank Engine fan (as are most of his friends at school). The actual real-life Thomas was coming through OKC to the Railway Museum. I thought this would blow his mind and he would be so excited. Turns out I was the only one super excited and JM was terrified of Thomas, as you can see in the pictures. With about 5 minutes left in the ride, JM perks up, looks out the window and exclaims "Yea! We're riding Thomas' caboose!". Ohhhh kiddo. The railway museum was very very cool, and we'll definitely be headed back there. They have both a Halloween and a Christmas train (which he may not be ready for based on this experience). Hopefully he'll still love Thomas next year. We did get a book of the original stories, of which he is a huge fan, and a new train toy, so it wasn't a total wash! Plus, John and I had a ton of fun :)