My Rock GeoJournal

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...

 The Bible teaches us that the earth was created over the span of six days. However, we learn from science that the Earth is 4.6 billion years old. This is a large discrepancy between what we are taught by the Bible and Prophets and Apostles.  I have learned something through my study of the gospel and this class. We as humans perceive time differently than what time perception is for Heavenly Father and the creator of the Earth, his son Jesus Christ. We are taught that one day in heaven is 1 thousand years to us, that still does not match up with how old the Earth is estimated to be, but that calculation could be off or was lost in when the Bible was compiled. As we know the Bible is true as long as it's been translated correctly. Many things were left out of the Bible and that's where many plain and precious truth's were lost when King James ordered the Bible be wrote by the scholars he commissioned to write it. Could 1 day really be 1 million years? Possibly, I don't...

 This week we are learning about metamorphic rocks, especially those used in construction. I'm still dealing with my ongoing hip problem, but I have progressed to the next stage, so I'm getting better. I am not able to get around that well so I thought I'd do some research and found a couple of pictures of metamorphic rocks that are used in construction. (All these photos were found on various website through a google search.) In the first photo we see how the sedimentary rocks, in this case chalk and limestone are changed by heat and pressure to become marble, which is used a lot in construction of higher end homes as well as hotel and business lobbies. In the picture below we can see marble tile which lines the walls of this bathroom shower I thought this picture was a great representation of Metamorphic rock transformations. I'll quickly go through how each one of these are used in construction. Marble as we know is used a lot in construction to tile walls, and floor...