Accretionary Wedge #50- fun moments in field camp

Evelyn is hosting Accretionary Wedge # 50 over at geornerys  . 

Here’s the topic:

Share a fun moment from geology field camp or a geology field trip. You can share a story, a picture, a song, a slogan, a page from your field notebook– anything you like!

It's been quite awhile since I've been on a field trip.
But there is one trip I will never forget - The Geomorphology Field trip of Oct 1979.  It seemed like anything that could go wrong went wrong.  I was suppose to be a simple leave Friday afternoon, camp out at a state park and return the next day and we would eat at restaurants around where we were stop.  Pretty simple and easy.

From the moment we all heard about it  we had a bad feeling about it- none of us wanted to go on this trip since it was right in the middle of midterms.  But it was a mandatory one & if you wanted to stay in the good graces of the department you went - I think having the Department Chairman planning it & leading it  might have been a contributing factor to influencing our decisions to go.
   We all met at the schedule time in the scheduled place - raring to go. Only problem was there was no van. The van was being used by the geography department and they they were no where to be seen. Our departure time came but still no vans to go in.   So we sat and waited, and waited, and waited.  Finally after dark they showed up - (this was before cell phones and no one knew were they were).  They didn't realize the van  was going to be used after they got back and had stopped to get some food and a few brews by the smell of them.They half hardily apologized and took their sweet time unloading.  Then we noticed that the van was on empty so we had to find a gas station that was open- it took a couple of stops before we found one that had the right type of gas we needed.   Needless to say we didn't make it to our first planned stop that night.
   We went to the state park instead and set up our tents.  It was no fun setting up the tents in the dark, especially in a place were you have never been to before.  We finally go them up or thought we did.
    Then we went looking for some food.  By then the restaurant that previous trips had gone to was already closed.  So we had to ask around and realize that we were in the middle of no-where Southern Ohio and there just wasn't any other place to eat.  We finally found a 7/11 open and swarmed in on them like a plague of locus. It was everyone for themselves and you were lucky to get a bag of chips and a drink. Needless to say the owner was very happy with all that we bought and told us to be sure to come back. 
    We went back to our camp site and decided we would be on the road at the crack of dawn so that we could make up some of the lost time due to the missing vans.  Instead of staying up and drinking like some of the guys were my tent mate and I decided to get ready for bed.  We went to the showers and discovered they had no hot water.  I took a sponge bath and called it quits.
    During the night it got very cold and the next thing I knew it started to rain.  It was pouring down when we found out we didn't set the tent up as well as we thought we did.  The one end collapsed.  I shifted over but was now in front of the door.  The door wasn't as water proof as the rest of the tent.  And so all night long I had a steady drip, drip, drip on to my sleeping bag.  I was so glad that I had a polyfilled one verses a down filled because my tent mate had a down  filled one.  The water was rolling off my bag and accumulating in the corner were she was sleeping.  She had down and her bag got soaked and she had the most miserable night of her life - as she so delicately put it.

We were all up well before dawn and couldn't wait to get on the road.  For such a miserable night it was surprising how beautiful the day ended up turning out to be.  It didn't take us too long to find a place were we could eat breakfast, and things were looking better.
    This trip was basically a geomorphology trip.  We saw some interesting erosion features at our first stop.
I even have a picture or two.  (Please note: These images are not the best because they were taken in Oct 1979, and were on slide film.  I just recently have been able to digitize them)

My memory is rusty but if I remember correctly this was an glacial moraine.  And we were looking at features in it and being told how you can tell the difference between a moraine deposit verse a stream deposit. 

 A lot had to do with the grading and seeing cross bedding in it.

 
We didn't stay long at this one spot before we were on the road again.  I didn't mind because I was seeing some lovely fall foliage too.

Then we went to the next stop.  It was a strip mine that was being reclaimed.  We weren't there very long before a pickup truck showed up and two men with rifles got out and asked us what we were doing.  The department chairman, went up to them and told them who we were.  He showed them the letter he had giving us permission to be there at this piece of property on this particular day.  The men said they didn't care who we were - we were to leave and leave promptly.  The department chairman started to argue with them, which wasn't the best thing to do.  They started to get a mean look on their face and it wasn't long before it was decided we best leave.  I did get one photo as we were departing.

 We next went to a golf course that gave us permission to walk along the creek, as long as we kept out of the way of the golfers. We saw some nice erosion features as we walked along the creek bed.

 Here's the group walking along the bed trying to keep dry.  For as much rain as we had the night before I was surprised at how low the water was.

 And this is one of my all time favorites photos of that trip.  The department chairman getting so involved with what he was talking about - he didn't care where he was standing.

 This is what he would have fallen into if he fell.

Finally it was lunch time.  We stopped by a grocery store and got some food.  We all made something to eat and weren't planning on being there long - trying to save time so we could see some of the stuff we had missed the day before.
  Here we are resting and talking about what we will see next.  I'm in this photo - a friend of mind took it without me knowing about it.  It was a pleasant surprise when the slides got developed and has become one of my favorites.

I'm  resting with the rest of the geomorphology class

We were headed back to the car when we noticed we had a flat.

Here's the department chairman fixing the flat.

 So then we had to sit and entertain ourselves.  Some were more creative than others.

There was one more quick stop and then we were done. This was about how careful you must be with clays and weathering. If you look in an area make sure you cover the area back because if you don't over years you'll end up with features like this.  I liked this photo because it was so pretty at the time.

Ohio fall foliage

All I can remember was I was so happy to finally have gotten back to the University.  At least I had Sunday to study for the midterms.