22 December 2010
Travels near and far: 2010
Posted by Jessica Ball
It’s my 3-year Blogiversary (for the next few minutes, anyway)! I almost can’t believe I’ve been writing so long – and that I’ve gone through so many changes since the whole thing started. Quite a ride, indeed.
This post is becoming a bit of a tradition – a continuation of a post I did at the end of last year, and one that’s been picked up by lots of other geobloggers. It’s a neat way of looking back on all the traveling I’ve done in the last twelve months, and to get me thinking about what I might do in the future. This year has been a mixture of the local and the not-so-local:
In January, I braved the cold and went north to see Niagara Falls in winter.
In February, my advisor and I and several other UB grads visited Guatemala – mainly to get back to my field area at the Santiaguito lava dome complex, but also to see a little of the rest of the country.
In March, I took another winter field trip to see a dissected drumlin at Chimney Bluffs State Park in New York.
In April, I went fossil (trilobite!) hunting at Eighteen Mile Creek, south of Buffalo.
In May, I took a walk on the beaches of Sanibel Island on the Gulf Coast of Florida. (I don’t have a good photo of my own, since beaches and cameras don’t mix all that well, but here’s a picture from Wikipedia of my favorite beach.)
In June, I spent time working on my dissertation research at Los Alamos, New Mexico, and took a weekend off to see the Valles Caldera.
In July, my advisor led a trip to the island of Montserrat in the Antilles Volcanic Arc, where we visited pyroclastic deposits of the Soufrière Hills volcano.
In August, I took time off from geology for a bit of reenacting in Pennsylvania…
September gave me some time to recover from dashing around all summer, and to get back into the grad school groove.
In October, I joined UB’s sedimentology class on their field trip to Letchworth State Park near Castile, New York.
November was a bit of a breather…
And, of course, in December I braved the horrors of bad-weather air travel to attend my first Fall AGU meeting.
And now I’m taking a well-deserved rest from traveling, research and blogging. I’ll be back with some new posts after New Year’s Day. Until then, Happy Holidays & Happy Belated Solstice to those of you celebrating them!
Would you believe that in more than 25 years of playing that game I’ve never been to Pennsylvania in August? But I got to attend a dance event in a castle this summer!
This year was my first, after all of college within a day’s drive of the event. You’ll get there eventually! But a castle dance event is certainly up there on the scale of coolness (hopefully I don’t sound too much like a teenager there).
I was in Guate, the months of March and April this past year, put 2000 miles on the rental car. I’m a ruin hound.
Eighteen Mile Creek is a great place to hunt Devonian fossils. Late August when the lake is bathwater warm, the mudline gone due to a week of calm weather, snorkel gear and a mesh bag-the best collecting you’ll ever have. The wave action cleans off the clay matrix and leaves the carbon in bold dark color. We take the kids there every ten years or so as they get old enough to make the walk in and out.
Thanks for the fossiling advice – I’ll have to try and get out there in August next time! (It will certainly be warmer than the last two trips I’ve made to that beach…)
lol! I don’t feel so bad about not having made it from Alaska, Arizona, California, Oregon, British Columbia, Tasmania, or Europe!
And yes, dancing in a castle is way cool! I strongly recommend it. If you get a chance for a conference or field work in Europe consult the event calender to see if you can attend something on your way to or from…
The field guides tell us that collecting right after winter is the best time for 18 mile but then you have to clean and polish your finds. I’m a lazy man, I’ll let the waves do the work for me.
[…] travel meme time! Following the example Silver Fox, Garry Hayes, Callan Bentley and Jess Ball, here’s a summary of my travels this year. If nothing else, it’s a good chance to […]