On the road again

We are in Bozeman Montana tonight. The attached photos are from the Painted Canyon rest area at the Theodore Roosevelt National Park, at milepost 32 on I-94 just east of the ND/Montana Border. It was blowing about 30 mph and not warm.

The wind has been the big element across the prairies and into Montana. On our way east it was behind us. Now it has varied from east to south to west. Today they were detouring semi's around a stretch of I-90 because of the wind.

We just slowed down and kept all 4 wheels on the ground. Only 650 miles or so to home. Yahoo.

Anne

heading home

I'm headed home today, via I-94. Peggy flew home Saturday and is going back to work today. Our friend Emmy is going to drive to Seattle with me, getting in a road trip, helping me drive, and getting a chance to visit her family in the northwest.

I'll only post if there are really exciting things we see along the way. I'll be in Seattle until the 26th, then down in Alameda and LA for about a week (Disneyland and work). I'm not sure when I'll be coming back up to Seattle.

I'll attach a couple of Peter and Megan's photos of Joshua. He turned 6 months old yesterday and I miss the little guy. I'm looking forward to seeing him next week.

Anne

Minneapolis

We are staying with our friends Miriam and Emmy in Minneapolis. We went to the Twins game yesterday. We have been suffering from various illnesses and just taking it easy. Peggy flies home tomorrow.

Anne

another video of bison

video trials

more photos from Yellowstone

Update for last few days

We are safely in Dickinson North Dakota.

Sunday we celebrated Mother's day by going out to breakfast and reflecting on my kids and our mothers. We spent some time walking around Jackson Hole, and then went up to the visitor's center to spend some time there. We then went to the National Museum of Wildlife Art. They had a lot of sculpture and paintings by various artists, from older European artists to current American artists. After a coffee break, for Peggy, we headed up to Yellowstone.

It is still pretty snowy in lots of Yellowstone. Fortunately the Old Faithful area is not snow covered. We stayed two nights at the Inn. We saw old faithful and many other geysers.

Yesterday we drove around the lower loop road. Lots of geysers, elk, bison, and waterfalls. I'll send some photos.

Today we got up and headed north to the Mammoth entrance. We had about a half hour delay, going at bison speed, as we were caught behind a herd of bison going our direction. Lots of photos, and some video, and a little frustration. We finally got around safely, and worked our way out of the mountains. We had snow while were were following the bison.

After we got to I-90 in Livingston Mt, we headed east again. Lots of rain showers, but easy driving over all.

Tomorrow another long driving day to get to our friends Miriam and Emmy's home.

Anne

Old faithful inn

peggy and i drove from jackson wyoming to yellowstone this afternoon. we are staying in the old faithful inn which has no wireless internet. hence this is being written on peggys cell phone. so no photos today or tomorrow. there is still a lot of snow in yellowstone so we are not sure how much we'll be able to see. we did see old faithful go off after dinner and walked around the geysers here.

Grand Teton photos

Chapel of the Transfiguration

Spectacular Grand Tetons!!

Today we left Thermopolis and drove via Riverton and DuBois to Grand Teton National Park. As Peggy said most of the drive was purdy all around, but then it became spectacular. This is my first trip to the Grand Tetons and I was not disapointed. The mountains are snow covered. The lakes are ice covered. The trails are closed and the roads are open.

Peggy and I stopped at the visitor center and decided to ride our bikes up the valley. We road 25 miles up the road (starting at 6460 ft elevation) to the scenic loop at Jenny Lake. The wind wasn't too bad, the sun was out, and it was a spectacular view. My photos won't do it justice.

Our bikes got to meet snow for the first time. It is supposed to be in the 20's tonight. We head up to Yellowstone tomorrow after spending some time in Jackson. After a week in Thermopolis it seems like a big city.

Anne

Last Dino day

A very large rib

Today was our last Dino day. We spent some time with John in the casting and molding lab, and got to cast our very own little fossil ammonites. That was fun, also looking at the big bone molds, and learning how they mold from original bones to produce casts. The largest bone they have is a rib from Jimbo, their Apatosaurus. They also have a very large dorsal vertebrae, a little smaller than Peggy and I.

We then toured the welding shop. They were putting together a full size T Rex from the casts. It was very cool to see. I particularly enjoyed seeing the structure underlying the casts. The casts are much lighter than the original bone (foam vs rock). The entire T rex stands on one tube that looks to be about 2 inch square.

After that we went back to the prep lab so we could take our test. We passed and got our entry level prep certificates. We did the obligatory group photo and some shopping in the gift shop and took off.

Peggy and I are staying another night in Thermopolis, so we had a leisurely lunch, a 10 mile bike ride (bison and the Bighorn River) and a nap.

Tomorrow we drive 200+ miles over the continental divide to Jackson. We are looking forward to seeing the Tetons. It is getting colder, and will be even colder there. The elevation here is 4600 and there is 6200 ft. We'll be driving over another 9600 ft pass.

Anne

Anne

More bone work

We continue to have sunny warm weather here, although the forecast is not so good. Our team continued our work on our bones this morning. We continue to remove matrix material down to the bone (fossil). The fossil bone can be very brittle, and can break off, without any effort. We then get to use fancy superglue, either thick (when putting bone to bone) and thin (when reinforcing an area).

The bones we are preparing are to be cast, and the materials used and techniques do vary depending on the use of the bones. This afternoon we spent a couple of hours on the bones and then learned how to fill the big cracks with epoxy. The goal is to have the bones clean and filled, and then the smart folks can try to identify them and put them together.

Tomorrow morning we tour the welding lab and see molding and casting. The casting techniques are pretty complex, since they are trying to produce reproducible casts.

I asked a simple question today and got offered a job. Not sure that it really would be a job offer, but Bill did offer me housing if I'd come. I asked what kind of welding machines they had, and owned up to being able to weld (no certificate though). Then we talked at length about the difficulty of making the frame that holds either the bones or the cast pieces. They want them to look lifelike, which means not straight lines. It sounds really cool, and Peggy and I are thinking of volunteering some longer time frame sometime next year. Who knows, sometime there might be a dinosaur skeleton with my ugly welding underneath. Certainly a different kind of sculpture.

We are having a good time. Tomorrow is our last elderhostel day, and we will move hotels for one night, then head to Jackson and Yellowstone.

No photos today.

Anne

Wind River Canyon

Today we spent the morning doing more bone preparation, and then toured the Wind River Canyon.

The mystery package that some have been working on has yielded a treasure trove of ribs and other bones. The is all very cool. As Gust, one of the elderhostelers from Wisconsin said "I'm the first one to touch, to see this bone." Very cool.

I finished my first bone and got a new one to work on. It is very similar, but a little more fragile. I'm carefully chipping off the surrounding rock to get down to the fossilized bone.

The wind river canyon starts at Boysen Dam, a Bureau of Reclamation dam. The river glows throw a narrow canyon, in an Indian Reservation. The rocks were the star of our tour. We used a stratified drawing to look at the layers, faults, and way the "intrusive" granite shows up. It was very cool. We got to pick up rocks in the gros ventre (cambrian) layer which had tracks and marks from worms etc. We also got some cool pick granite.

Tomorrow we'll be doing more bone preparation.

Anne

Dinosaur bones and dental tools

Today was another great day. We spend all day working in the prep lab, gradually working up in tool and task complexity. Peggy got a new bone (hers was very fragile) and Anne worked on completing one bone. Each bone has a catalog number, and we keep prep notes (tools used, hours worked etc) on each bone.

Some people got to work on opening up new casts, looking for what is inside. That was exciting. The tools vary from dental pick, to small air tools (think dentist's drills) to sandblasting.

By the end of the day, we were pretty dusty. Almost all of the bones we've been working on are from the tail of one of three types of sauropods. They think that 6 or 7 different ones have their bones all in this one spot.

Tonight we had pizza and salad at the dinosaur center and one of the staff talked to us about human fossils. His masters and doctorate (in progress) are in paleoanthropology. He is working at the dinosaur center and hoping to finish his dissertation. We heard about Lucy, and the other probable human predecessors. Lots of questions yet to be answered.

Peggy and I rode our bikes to and from the center today, and over to lunch. We skipped lunch at the senior center and went to Subway, and sat in the sun. It warms up to very comfortable daytime temps.

Tomorrow we are doing a tour of the hot springs and the Wind River canyon. We get a little prep time in the morning to continue on our bones.

Anne

Dinosaur bones, up close and personal

Today was a great day. The weather was nice, not as hot as yesterday, but the content was great.

We spent the day at the dinosaur center, touring the museum and got to go up the hill to the dig site, and finished up with working on our own sets of bones, cleaning them up in the lab. That's what we'll be spending most of the week on, and we were all anxious to start.

The dig site is owned by an individual, but the non profit and the for profit museum house most of his collection and help educate the locals as well as a lot of tourists. The dig site is only open for about 2 1/2 months a year, because of the weather. And the summer weather up there has temps at 115 degrees. So I'll not be volunteering to work up there anytime soon. But we did see a couple of sites that are not buttoned up for the winter, and got to walk around looking for bones. I found some pretty rocks, and a nodule formed by bacteria at the "death site". Peggy helped find a bone, sticking out of the side of the hill. They will go back and survey it's location (they use a total station) and preserve it in place until they can remove it. They actually do cast many bones and remove them to the museum. They have a big backlog in the lab.

We are getting trained to clean and preserved the bones. So far we are allowed to use a toothbrush and dental pick. We'll spend all day tomorrow in the lab, using these tools and water to clean off the "matrix" from the bone (fossil). It is very cool. Peggy and I are sitting in front of the windows that people can see thru from the museum. They do have small air tools, and a sandblaster that we might get to use.

We keep a log, of what we do, what happens, etc. These bones are all from the back of some kind of sauropod. There are three kinds that they have in this formation (the Morrison formation) one of which is an apatosaurous. That is basically a big one, what we called a brontosaurous when I was a kid.

We are all in hog heaven. This is way cool. We'll see how we feel after a week of this.

Thermopolis is small, so Peggy and I have been doing a lot of walking. We plan to bike some between places tomorrow.

As usual, the elderhostelers are very interesting people, lots of fun. The lunch at the senior center is not great, but dinner tonight at one of the three restaurants in town was very good. Not haute cuisine, but pretty good for Wyoming.

Anne

From Thermopolis Wyoming's

We arrived safely in Thermopolis, coming to town in the middle of their annual 3 on 3 basketball tournment on the downtown streets. Thermopolis has a population of about 3500. It has the Dinosaur center and many hot springs. The Bighorn river runs through it. There are 12 of us in the elderhostel group, many retired teachers, and others who love dinosaurs, as well as those of us who just love learning.

We got a short lecture tonight on the center and the work that goes on here. They have a short excavation season, but have a big backlog of bones to be processed. That's what we'll be doing. We also get to visit the hillside dig, and tour some of the area. The geology on the way here was phenominal. Once we got out of the clouds (with light snow) the varied colors of the rocks was cool.

I rode my bike around town while Peggy walked around this afternoon. It was in the mid 60's so very nice. Then Peggy did laundry and I sat in the hot tub, which is hot spring water. We met the group for dinner and got to see the dinosaur bones.

Hope you enjoy the photos.

Anne

Why oh Why Wyoming

We are in Sheridan Wyoming tonight, having survived all 556 or so miles of I-90 in Montana, not to mention Idaho and Washington. Tomorrow we'll head down and a little west to get to Thermopolis, where we meet our Elderhostel tripmates.

Thermopolis is at about 4300 ft elevation, and it is snowing south and west of there tonight. There was fresh snow in Butte this morning, and lots of snow in places as we crossed Montana. Hopefully we brought enough variety of clothes.

The attached photo is from Missoula Mt, where we stayed last night.

Looks like a happening place.

Stay tuned for more reports. I'll even get the real camera out, and promise some real dinosaur bones photos. Cool!!