We camped at the Furnace Creek Campground in Death Valley. It was a stunning site, bordered by mountains to the east and west. It is also located below sealevel, though it is not quite as low as Badwater Basin, the lowest point in North America. We did visit on one of our field trip days; the small salt formations on the ground were very cool. We worked on two projects here, the first was mapping the different deposits of an alluvial fan, as well as the faults that ran through it. The area is part of a large extensional system (the Basin and Range Province) but also experiences lateral movement due to strike-slip faults. For the second, we were in a nearby canyon. Here, we mapped metamorphosed rocks of different grades and ages, stacked one above the other due to faulting. Both projects offered unique challenges and were very interesting! On the field trip days, we visited the aforementioned Badwater Basin, Artist's Drive, some petroglyphs, Panamint Valley, and a bunch of different volcanoes! It was so great. One of the few issues I had here was the heat. After our first day of field work here, I realized that I had adopted a faked laugh; I had started just saying 'ha ha ha' because actually laughing was beyond me, it was so hot. Leading up to leaving for this field school, the weather in Halifax was consistently around 4-8 degrees, and only made it into the double digits a few times. One day about a week before I left, it was a full 11 degrees. I wore shorts. The day it hit 20, I felt like melting. Now, I pride myself on being tough in the cold; I enjoy being the last to layer up, and I relish winter camping. I also make sure to never complain about being cold, partially because it I don't often feel that way, but also so that I feel a little more entitled to it, and less like a hypocrite, when I complain about the heat. I do feel a little bad for my classmates because, despite the fact that I tried to limit it, and only said "it's hot" or "it's so hot" or "it's too hot" etc... about 1% of the time those thoughts came to mind, that was all I could think about.
Over the course of our stay here, things did get a little better, but I was very glad to move on to the next campsite! For locations of these, and all my other camping nights, check out the map I made here.
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I spent April 27th to the 30th staying at an incredible campsite in the Valley of Fire. After even just one night in Vegas, it was a welcome change! I was down there for the Honours Field School, so it wasn't a typical camping experience, but it was great in many other ways! We had a great kitchen set up, including two fridges, which was kind of weird, but necessary. We all had to help make meals everyday, either cooking or cleaning up after breakfast or supper everyday. That system worked out very well! We spent that first evening in Vegas taking strike and dip measurments in the Travelodge parking lot, which garnered us a few looks. The next day we went to Frenchman Mountain.
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AuthorCarmen has successfully camped for 100 nights out of 365. This blog is a record of those nights outside! Archives
July 2016
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