Howdy folks! My phone is low on battery and has all of my notes of the things we did since entering Vernal, so once that's charged those will come in two post editions (one for Uinta Basin in Eastern Utah, and one for Hanna Basin in Southern Central Wyoming).
I will, however, go over the "travel days" since leaving the Hanna Basin!
Our last day in the Hanna Basin was August 4th, which we celebrated with steak night in the local town of Elmo/Hanna. Very small town duo, and unsurprisingly we ran into the Palms, who own the land that Penny did her Ph.D research on and where we did our last three days of field work! They were very interested in what we had found (mostly a lot of fragments of bone and teeth, which Garrett's gonna use in research).
After steak night, we drove to Laramie, WY, which is one of the three largest town/cities in Wyoming with about 30,000 people in it. We spent the 5th touring around, going to Atmosphere Mountaineering Goods and awe-ing at all the cool stuff they have there. We also went to University of Wyoming and toured around the two (TWO!!!!) buildings they have reserved for geology. One of the buildings ties in directly with a geological museum, which had an AR sandbox that we all adored. We then went on an impromptu tour of the department and ran into some of Penny's friends from her graduate days, and managed to see the awesome new imaging technology used in the collections. Penny and I cried, it was wonderful. It was also then that both Garrett and I vowed to at least attempt to apply to UWyo, because TWO BUILDINGS DEDICATED TO GEOLOGY, Y'ALL.
We had lunch and dinner with two of Penny's friends from the UWyo geo department, which was awesome because dinner was a good 3 hour long conversation about life in Laramie, the scene of the geology department, and I decided then and there that UWyo was gonna be a place I definitely applied to, and if I didn't make it in I would move to Laramie at some point in my life. So uh, yeah, I love Wyoming now.
The 6th we drove from Laramie to Des Moines to visit Julie from Natural Trap and the collection she has there. Nothing too big happened.
The 7th we actually got to go to Des Moines University and look at the fossils, as well as tour the cadaver labs. I learned that I actually really like cadaver labs and anatomy, which isn't that surprising. We also had a really great grill dinner with Cory, Julie's postdoc who was at Natural Trap for a little while.
The 8th was a LOT of driving from Des Moines to Rochester, and I managed to play the entirety of In The Heights and Fun Home during my driving chunk at night. We made it back to Rochester around 11:30 or so, and Penny dropped me and Garrett off at my place, where Garrett's family was waiting to pick him up.
So yeah, that was the last leg of the trip. I'll be posting about everything between getting to Vernal and getting back to Rochester in the next day or so, I just need to sift through it all.
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