Boxes and boxes of equipment, supplies, and samples in a hotel room in Muscat, Sultanate of Oman, 2009.

Have you ever stayed in a hotel room and packed it to the brim with camping gear and scientific equipment and samples? Then chances are you’re a field geologist!

I took the above picture at a hotel in Muscat, Sultanate of Oman after 4 weeks of fieldwork in the Samail Ophiolite back in 2009. Our hotel room was packed full of camping gear, boxes of rocks and water samples, and various scientific instruments, such as pH meters. My favorite piece of scientific equipment was the light tan plastic box in the foreground on the right-hand side of the picture; that light tan box contained a storage container that was filled with liquid nitrogen in order to keep biological samples cold. We nick-named that storage container “R2 D2”, and we gave it a special place in one of the Land Cruisers. We even buckled it in with a seatbelt to keep it from tipping over!

Does anyone else have similar pictures of hotel rooms containing field gear?