My Rock GeoJournal

 This week we are learning about sedimentary rocks. I again couldn't get out to find a sedimentary rock around my house because of my current medical condition.....and the amount of snow we have received lately makes it a challenge as well. I live in the small town of Glenrock Wyoming. Just outside of town is a place called Rock in the Glen, where early frontiersmen like Kit Carson and pioneers including Brigham Young would pass along a trappers trail which then became the Oregon-California-Mormon Trail. Many pioneers who crossed by Rock in the Glen carved their names into the rock and they are still visible to this day. Glenrock Wyoming was known as Deer Creek Station back then. However, when the town applied to get a post office they needed an official town name and the postmaster put down Glenrock. Rock in the Glen is a sedimentary rock formation. You can see the weathering patterns of erosion and possibly some spheroidal weathering. Other changes in Rock in the Glen include som...

 VOLCANOES!!!!! This week we are learning about volcanoes. I have a friend who's absolutely obsessed with volcanoes. For this weeks GeoJournal I decided to interview her and with her permission I'm sharing her video and pictures.  My friend's husband was stationed in Hawaii for four years in the Navy, so she was able to go see the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park and see live lava flowing from Mount Kilauea. She told me this particular volcano has been flowing for several years and it's a shield volcano. In 2016 they took a 90 minute guided boat ride from the boat harbor to where the lava was flowing into the ocean from Mount Kilauea. Upon arrival to the site they were able to get about 985 feet to where the lava was flowing into the ocean. She said from the boat they could feel the heat and the tour boat guide grabbed a bucket of water from the spot they were at and she said the water from the bucket was very hot. She showed me some pictures of the boat harbor and it...

 This week we've been learning about minerals and how to identify them. I guess I'm a little bit naïve and never had given much thought to what minerals make up our rocks. I'm pretty much home-bound right now so I can't get out and do a lot of looking around, plus we've been getting quite a bit of snow in my area of Wyoming lately. I found out a lady in my ward is a Geologist, and so I decided to call her and ask her what the most common mineral in our immediate area is, and her response was Quartz. We then talked about all sorts of things related to geology for several minutes. Since I can't get out I am going to post a picture of some quartz pieces that were found at Split Rock Mountain which is about and hour and a half from here. Some of the ways to identify Quartz is by it's glass like luster. It's also very hard and typically rates at around a 7 on the Mohs scale and is typically like a hexagonal shape, especially that which comes from Split Rock M...

       Hello my friends! My name is Brandon Mitchell and I live in the small town of Glenrock, Wyoming. The town of Glenrock is so small we don't have any stop lights and mail isn't delivered to houses so everybody has a P.O. Box. Glenrock is about 20 miles from Casper, Wyoming where a temple is currently being constructed and we're very excited to have a temple so close to us soon. My wife and I have been married for 20 years and have 4 kids, 2 boys and 2 girls that range in age from 19 to 12.     I'm currently in my senior year and hopefully this will be my last semester. I was scheduled to graduate in July but I'm going to be home for a few month's healing up from a couple of hip surgeries, so I figured I'd try to knock it out while I'm home, so I don't go stir crazy. I hope to graduate in April with my Bachelors degree in Applied Business Management.     I'm constantly dealing with Geology because  I work in the oil and gas industry in th...