I'm surrounded!

OK, I'll admit it. I was expecting a smaller town than Price turned out to be. But I did still find a small town attitude, a living space without internet (although I am within walking distance of a few places, including the community college), and a healthy local interest in dinosaurs.

A very healthy, thriving interest, in fact. I visited the local high school today with Mike (my boss for the summer). It turns out that their mascot is the dinosaurs. There are statues and paintings of allosaurs everywhere. Plus, their science club put together a really cool geology exhibit for the quarry. More on that later.

In addition.... there are just dinosaurs everywhere in town. EVERYWHERE. In the park, outside the museum as you drive into town, on the tire place...

Now, that said, I noticed that the last time my family was in Utah. Actually, a dinosaur greeted us on the highway welcoming us to Utah.

I can't blame them, actually. In addition to Cleveland-Lloyd and Dinosaur National Monument, Utah is crawling with museums, paleontologists, tourist traps, and dinosaur tracks along the hiking trails. Hopefully I can make it to another place in the near future, but today my boss decided after we were done at the quarry that I needed to be able to answer people's questions about where everything in the surrounding area is.

Huh.

If you don't know me, my sense of direction from a car isn't very good. At all. Stick me in the woods or the field on foot and I'll get back where I'm going every time. But driving? Let's just say the GPS lives in my car. I'm working on it though. 

Despite this, I can more or less explain how to get to the valley we went to today, which had an ornithopod track, rock art, and some cool geology. Plus the signature of a famous outlaw from around here that, apparently, I should know from the movies. Seriously, he signed the rock face near his escape route.

There is also a place to go bouldering (Cretaceous rocks that a guy decided to call the "Triassic..."), a site where one can find ammonites and another for plant fossils (in "reasonable quantities"), and one that we send people to who want to look for fossils with their kids that has invertebrates in the Carmel Formation (older than the Morrison.)

Today and yesterday were also days for learning names, how to drive the truck that the site uses, and some geology. And let's just say that its complicated. For example, the Dakota Formation, originally representing nearshore environments from the inland sea that formed in the Cretaceous, was recently renamed on this side of the ancient sea, as technically the source rocks here and on the east side are different.

Way to make it confusing guys...

Anyway, as a way to deal with my poor sense of direction, I went exploring yesterday on foot. That's not too hard to do, seeing as I can get from where I live to just about anything in Price by walking two miles or less. Not bad. One thing that I came across was Pioneer Park, the current site of the oldest cabin that was built by settlers in the local valley, by Gordon Creek. It's a nice little park, and the cabin has an interesting story behind it. It wasn't long ago that the family that owned it stopped living in it, actually, and only slightly more recently that it was renovated to its original condition for display in the park. Outhouse and all out back, though I'm sure that would've originally been a little further away.

At least, I hope it was...

Fun fact, the day before I made some friends and went hiking on Gordon Creek Trail, and I can't blame the settlers for stopping there. It's absolutely beautiful, and again, the geology is really cool. There are ancient ripples, grading, load and flame structures, everything you would expect for the area cut out of the rock by the creek over a long period of time.

Photo Credit Christi Jensen (middle) (actually, credit her camera set on automatic!!)

...I'm sure the geology isn't what made them stop in the valley. That's just me enjoying being able to recognize things I learned about last semester in my stratigraphy class. But if they didn't at least notice, I would argue they were missing out. Knowing where the colors in the mountains here come from only adds another layer to their beauty.

Heh. Layers? Stratigraphy? ...so begin my attempts at bad puns for the summer.

Tomorrow is a big community service day across the state, meaning we get to direct about 80 college students around the quarry so that they can learn about dinosaurs and help us mark the trail better. Today involved putting out markers for them to put the rocks at, so hopefully those ended up in the right place (climbing the hill to the short cut was rough on my lungs, which are still used to sea level air. You really don't notice a major difference until you start doing something that takes a fair amount of energy, like following someone way taller than you up a steep, rocky slope.) Hopefully that will make everything run smoothly tomorrow. Hopefully.

Whether its smooth or not, my job tomorrow is hang out down at the quarry so that someone is in there when volunteers helping mark the paths need a break and come there. After tackling the hill today, I'm okay with this. Very much so.