All Over the West

Hey everybody!!! I know that it has been at least a million years since I have entered cyberspace via blog, but fear not I have returned.

Here are a few things that have happened in the Harris World in the past few months *warning, this may be long-ish:

To be honest, over the summer we went on so many trips that they all just blur together… so I’ll just highlight some awesomeness. We took a trip to Canyonlands and Arches National Parks in Utah. It was so fantastic because I had never been over in that area. It was a strangely strong yet delicate place, and even as an Earth Science student the process and structure of the arches absolutely amazed me.

We also went to some very close geologic wonders like the Tetons and Yellowstone. We went to each several times because that’s how cool they are. Anyway, We also ventured out a bit to go to Thompson Creek Mine in central Idaho(they mine Molybdenite and we got to touch it…and it was gooey, slippery, and looked silver-ish). Craters of the Moon was yet another amazing stop along the way, and guess what… it looked like we were on the moon. Surprising? Apparently the person who named it thought so too.

Lastly (as far as the fieldtrips) was an awesome excursion to the Grand Canyon. I had been before, but not quite like this, this was completely off the beaten track. Just to give you an idea, the nearest real toilet was about 3 hours north. Yeah. We were roughing it in 110 degree weather. But on the plus side, we got to see the Grand Canyon without the landscape being marred by fences, or boatloads of tourists. It was a great communion with nature.

Another fun non-field-trip related occurrence was my parents coming up for my birthday. It was so much fun! We got to show them around a bit and visit a bunch.

Well, that covers most things up until the end of July.

Menan Buttes

Field Trip number 2:

We went to the Menan Buttes on our second field trip. We were going to go to the North Butte (the one that is open to the public), but there were like a million school kids there, so that was a no-go. Luckily our resident-veteran-retired geology teacher lives on the other butte and you can only go on that one if you live there.

So, we learned about cool stuff and hiked around (which was so exhausting) and collected samples.

*Yes, I know that my hat is kinda dorky... but you have to understand that this is "standard" gear for a geologist :)*

At the Dunes and in a cave

First of all, let me apologize to Breck for not having more of him in some of these entries. As I mentioned before, I am taking a field-trip class that he is not in. That being said, here are some of my adventures!

On our first field trip we went to the Sand Dunes just north of Rexburg. It was windy and yucky, but still cool since I had never been there. We learned about stuff, but I will spare you guys the lecture :)

After that we went to the Civil Defense Caves, which are some pretty awesome lava tubes. It was a little bit too dark for a picture, but it was pretty awesome. The only downside to the cave was that there was so much trash in it! We even found a couch... yeah... that's random. Anyway, so our class did our civil duty and picked up the garbage that was in there. It will probably get filthy again during the next teenage rave (curse those kids :), but at least we got the warm fuzzies of doing it.

I almost forgot: So my professor, Brother Gahn, is a rediculously fast hiker and is notorious for leaving people in the dust. Well on the way out of the cave I caught up with him and we (along with a guy from my class, Brad) left everybody way behind. When we got out of the cave we went to the van and moved it out of sight so that the people coming out would be like, "Oh no, where's the van? THEY LEFT US!!!" Ha ha ha. It was so funny. We finally drove the van out of our hiding spot, much to the relief of the rest of the class.

I'm a slacker-face

Oh wow, it has been a rediculously long time since I have written anything. I freely admit that I am a complete slacker-face *sigh*. So to catch everybody up, I'm going to just give a breif review of our lives for the past few months.

We finished winter semester which was a relief. During the semester break we went to Jackson Hole to celebrate our 1 year anniversary (a little bit early). It was so nice, winter season was over, but summer had not started yet, so we were the only ones there (we only saw 10 other people in the resort town where we were staying).

Let's see, oh... Breck and I got RC cars that are beasts. Boo-yah. I'll have to take some pictures one of these days.

I started a new semester in April and am taking an awesome field trip class (more on that later).

A few weeks ago Breck and I went to Lagoon and had loads of fun.

Well, that's it for now... sorry that was lame-ish, but I will really try to be better!

Back to school

Well, for the past two weeks Breck and I have been back to school. This semester is pretty much ridiculous for me because I have four geography classes (Cultural geography, geography of developing nations, geography and world affairs, and advanced GIS), a technical writing class, and I work about 14 hours a week (which is the most I have ever done during school). Wow... I just noticed that I used a lot of parentheses in the previous sentence (sorry about that (there I go again (wow I need to work on my sentence structure :) (which is what technical writing is for(hopefully)))))!!!

Just as a random note, all of my classes have a lot of students in them except for my advanced GIS class, which has a grand total of 4 people. Wowzers.

Breck has a pretty full plate this semester as well. He is taking two very difficult math classes, technical writing (unfortunately not in the same class), and Old testament. He is a grader for the physics department and will start working with that pretty soon.

Well, that's about it for the Harris family.
I hope that everyone has a great day!

Parties!

Whew, I haven't had a moment to spare for quite a while. So to catch everybody up with the Harris family I will have to back up a few weeks.

We did make it to Utah safely for the parties... woot... and had a great time with my family. It was really fun to see everybody and have a good laugh about how cute my nephew and niece are. So anyway, here are the pictures that I promised:

Wow, here is the whole family! This is the picture that turned out nice, for me (because Breck tickled me and I squealed for the other one... grr... :)



This is us opening a nice present from Nicole and Marc. It was a book and a gift card to Applebees (which disappeared very quickly).

The following pictures were taken the next day at the Parker party (the big family party)



(^^^^ I'm not sure what's up with that face... Breck must have said something odd :)

We both had a great time in Utah. Yay for families!