Brian made this for me!!
Slowly but surely! Here’s one of Eric and me from our first full day, and second hike of the trip. We did the whole Devil’s Garden loop. I think it took something like 4.5 hours.
Man, I miss that hat.
be sure to rollover ‘notes’ to see photo captions!
A month away from Boulder: back home to Illinois then San Diego Comic-Con, LA, Emma & Robbie’s wedding near Placerville, the Bay Area.
I was cleaning out my hard drive when I found all of the gorgeous waterfall/Mt. Hood/Timberline Lodge I took with my actual non-iPhone camera. Slowly getting them processed and posted over at Flickr, but here’s my favorite so far.
Basalt columns and mist at Latourell Falls
Already kind of blew healthy-eating today with that giant Red Robin burger, so why not go all out? I bought a can of cinnamon chip scones at Sprouts, and soon after jumping two feet off the ground and yelping like a puppy when the can popped open (haven’t I outgrown that yet??), I had eight AMAZING-smelling scones. I wish I could sent this smell out to all of you; it’s phenomenal.
mmmmmmmmmmm
This is the portable x-ray diffraction machine I’m using for my second research project with Brian. We’re analyzing rocks from volcanic environments.
This big tuning fork is used to shake the sample, since you can’t move the x-ray emitter around the sample, as you normally would, when you’re on Mars. In the top photo I’ve put the sample in the well, in the bottom photo I’ve turned on the external shaker, and the sample was moved into the tiny windowed area, ready to be analyzed.
This XRD is a duplicate of the XRD onboard the Mars Science Laboratory! See its sister ‘in action’ in this MSL animatic:
be sure to rollover ‘notes’ to see photo captions!
Ian and I checked out the mineral show (and fossil show) and had a great time geeking out over rare and beautiful minerals. There were some hand samples I really wanted to buy, but I didn’t have hundreds of dollars to spare (or tens of thousands as the case may be) but I got a few great samples that I’m really happy with!