My Rock GeoJournal

This week we're focusing on Mid-Oceanic ridges. I'm just learning about mid-oceanic ridges, so I'm not sure if I'm completely off base here, or if I'm remotely close. In this week's learning I'm not sure if I found it more fascinating that people actually have discovered this part of the world or if I was fascinated more by wondering if there was a way to watch the formation of mid-oceanic ridges and trenches in real time, with a time lapse. I looked at plate tectonics over by the Philippines and found it pretty interest. Here's a screenshot from Google Earth and what I hope I was able to identify.

 We're looking at Plate Tectonics in the News! In this article I found, it talks about the Snowy Range Mountains that are south of Laramie Wyoming and have phenomenal fishing. This article explains that there were two convergent plate collisions over two billion years in what we know in Wyoming as the Snowy Range. One collision happened and then another happened in the same area that lifted the range again. I personally found the article very interesting and I hope you do too! https://www.wyomingnews.com/laramieboomerang/news/the-story-of-the-snowy-range-2-collisions-and-2-billion-years/article_c5041b52-2805-5b04-b95e-af520b1082c0.html

 This week we are studying Earthquakes! I find this subject pretty interesting and was surprised to see we had an earthquake 146 miles from my house within the last 30 days. It was so surprising I had my wife come look at the map. I was not expecting an earthquake so close to where I live. I did expect to see some in Yellowstone National Park and so this did not surprise me as there were 5 in the last 30 days. Here are some screenshots (I'm sorry if they aren't very clear) to show where this earthquake happened. I live in Glenrock, Wyoming. This earthquake was 32 miles south of the town of Ten Sleep. It registered at a 3.7 magnitude earthquake. Ten sleep is 146 miles or 3 hours from my town. (In Wyoming because it's so many miles from town to town, we usually quote distances in hours it takes to get there. For example from my house if somebody asks me how far Cheyenne is we just say 2 hours.) Given this new information, I still feel relatively safe where I live. I remember ...

This week we're studying sediment transport in deserts and shorelines. I'm not able to get out to go explore due to my ongoing medical situation, so I took a screenshot of some sand dunes we have just outside of our town of Glenrock Wyoming, in a more rural area called Rolling Hills. This is a place called the Sand Dunes Recreation Area, although it isn't used very much anymore. These appear to be for the most part barchan sand dunes, which may have been more uniform without the destruction from  ATV's. This is sand and the sorting of these sand dunes are well sorted and well rounded. This is a high energy area due to the vast amounts of wind and I think if this area were immediately compacted into a rock it would be sandstone and then through time and the metamorphic process become quartz, which is also abundant in my area.

 This week we are learning about groundwater and glaciation. We're also supposed to write a fictional narrative, so here it goes and I hope you enjoy reading it. Ed was riding horseback, through the forest trying to outrun the lawmen who were hot on his trail. He was hoping he could put some distance between them before sundown. It was hot and he knew he and his horse both needed some water, so he was hoping and praying they'd be able to find a spring soon. As Ed made his way north, he could hear a loud sound and could feel the ground shake slightly. As they made their way over the ridge they saw a geyser , erupting high into the sky. "Come on Trigger, lets go see if we can find a hot spring down by that geyser to soak in and bed down for the night and hope for some water along the way." Ed said. Ed and Trigger were awakened often in the night by the eruption of the geyser, Ed figured he could make up some ground in the middle of the night and put quite a bit of dis...

 This week we are learning about landslides! I live in Big Wonderful Wyoming! It seems like we have landslides every year, typically on the western side of the state where there's more mountainous regions. They seem to occur frequently in the areas by Yellowstone. On August 24th 2022, a landslide occurred just outside of Cody Wyoming about 5 miles from the Yellowstone National Park east entrance. This happened just after massive flooding throughout Yellowstone destroyed major roadways, which will take three to five years to repair and rebuild. This landslide was actually a mudslide and happened due to the the significant rain fall the area had received prior to the mudslide as well as the steep slope of the hillside. The best way to prevent this type of occurrence from happening again would be to put a retaining wall in, as well as maybe some sort of drainage. However, this could be very expensive or not justifiable due to the budget of the area since it's a relatively small to...