Ruins, Mountains, and Caves Oh My!

Alright!!! Still catching up on late blogs...

Two fridays ago, we threw a huge party to celebrate Canada Day and Eric's birthday (he is also Canadian). We grilled out and had Canadian Burgers (they just looked like burgers with Canadian bacon to me...) and lots 'o yummy veggies and corn. It was really good and we had an extreme excess of food afterwards. We played rock band and cards to finish off the night.

The next day we went to Sunset Crater and Wupatki Indian Ruins, which are about 20 miles from Flag. Sunset Crater was not what I expected, but it was still really cool. I was picturing something like Meteor Crater (which I have not seen yet), like a big hole in the ground essentially. Sunset Crater is actually a mountain that blew it's top. It's not a crater at all; it was a volcano! Such a misleading name.

Look! We're in a small crater!

Sunset crater!

Still, it was a nice and really easy hike, and there were free book guides that told you about the area. After walking around there for a bit, we drove on over to the Wupatki Ruins. It's a beautiful drive, as the Painted Desert is visible on the horizon, and the fields around the road were an interesting shade of golden wheat color with the classic forest green AZ shrubs. The ruins were really interesting and cool.

Wupatki Ruins.

There were two 'basketball courts' that Native Americans used to use. There was also something called 'The Blowhole' that was a hole where air from a low-pressure cave came whooshing up. It felt like A/C coming out of the ground! A brief relief from the desert heat... We stopped at a few side ruins on the way (including a 'Citadel' ruin). Then it was back home again! We got to drive past the scorched side of the Peaks from the infamous Schultz Fire, although you couldn't really see too much.

Playing basketball in The Ballcourt... :)

The view from The Citadel... Painted Desert in the distance.

Sunday was, of course July the 4th, Independence Day. To celebrate our country's birthday, a few of us including myself set out to hike to the top of Mt. Humphreys, the highest point in Arizona. The view was fantastic!!! It is a grand total of 12,637 ft above sea level. For comparison, the average elevation of the state of Indiana is 700 feet... The view was a bit hazy because of the smoke from the fire still, but it was nonetheless quite impressive. It was incredibly cold and windy on the hike up, but the most surprising part was that it was warm on the top of the mountain. I would have guessed that it would windier and colder since there are no formations to block the wind, but apparently I don't know my climatology very well? It was a fun hike and took us about 7 hours to hike 8 miles (and we lollygagged like nobody's business). It was a nice change to hike the Snow Bowl trail without having to run from a fire!!

Independence day on Mt. Humphreys. From left: Nick, Eric, and Christine. And yes, that flag was actually there!

The view from the top...

Once we made it back to the apartments and showered it was off to Prescott, AZ to enjoy some 4th fireworks. Flagstaff wasn't showing any fireworks because of the fire danger, so we traveled south. After a dinner stop at In 'n Out, coffee stop at Starbucks, and wandering around Prescott looking for the fireworks, we settled down for the show. The fireworks were admittedly a bit puny, but better than none. Afterwards we stayed to enjoy the clear skies for a bit, doing some stargazing before heading back to Flag.

The next day I had off work, so I finally got to sleep in! In the afternoon, we went to a lava river cave, or as I prefer to call them, lava tubes! At first I thought it was going to be a bit lame. I was just picturing a circular tube in the ground that was really small. Luckily, they turned out to be much cooler and actually very fascinating. The cave was about a mile long at which point it becomes to small to walk through. You can find info about lava tubes here, but the basic gist is lava erupted from a vent and as it flowed across the surface of the ground, the top layer solidified. The underlying layers, however, continued to flow as a hollow tube was formed from the path of the flowing lava.

The only picture I have from the caves... our dorky group at its best. :) From left: Teresa, Christine, Nick, Eric 1, Eric 2, and Sarah.

The cave looked like a huge subway tunnel because the bottom was flat and the ceiling was rounded into a half-circle shape. It was much larger than I expected, sometimes 30 feet high. There was a small section where we had to crawl on our hands and feet as well. It was quite cold in the cave! It usually gets down in the 40's inside. Even as we were entering it, you could notice a drastic change in temperature. There was ice at the mouth of the cave!

The following Wednesday Teresa and I went to Dancing on the Square, a weekly event on Heritage Square in downtown Flagstaff. Every week they teach a different style of dance then have a couple hours of music and dancing. We learned salsa! It was a lot of fun, and before we knew it, it was time to leave. Unfortunately we couldn't get any of the other REU students to join us, but have high hopes for the future!

Also this week, a few of us headed downtown on Thursday to see the Burnett family play some good ol' bluegrass/folk music. The music was great and it was a beautiful day.

Some good ol' hometown music.

Lots o' photos in this blog. Next up... The most epic camping trip ever!

A Long, Long Time Ago...

Hello! I apologize for the lack of posting lately. Been a little behind I suppose. I guess there is a lot to say now, to make up for the lack of updates! It's going to be hard to think back so far, but here's a try... Going to split this up into multiple posts, for each week, as I'm that behind!

OK! So, two weekends ago (I think...?) on Friday a few of us and two people I don't know went to a restaurant called Granny's Closet to have dinner and do some... KARAOKE! I had never done karaoke until this time... it sure was an experience. Teresa and I sang 'Don't Stop Believin' by Journey. We were probably the third people to go... as the night wore on, I found that people were more receptive to bad singers the more drunk they got. Next time I'm going to try and go later! Eric and I sang 'Tom Sawyer' by Rush, and the crowd didn't really get into it (Rush ain't so popular I guess...). It was really fun and quite embarrassing! The way I see it, though, I'm never going to see those people again, so I might as well make a fool out of myself. Eric lost a bet to Teresa (she ate a habanero suicide chicken wing) so the two of them sang 'Oops I Did It Again' by Britney Spears... Remind me to never lose a bet to Teresa.

The next day we went to a few thrift stores. Some random junk I scored: 3 records, 2 pairs of earrings, a cool shirt, and a psychedelic red mug. Somebody bought a really tough puzzle of a gorilla sitting on a river made of stars... it's really strange. We're still working on the puzzle!

Sunday we went to Fossil Creek Springs, where we found water in AZ!!! Who knew it existed naturally here?! It was a good hike down to the springs, and once there we went swimming. The water was fantastically clear and cool, and it was really nice to get out of the heat for once. There was a pool you could swim to if you swam underneath a rock and came up ~10-15 second later... I was too chicken to do it. I hear it was really tough though, so I'm not too bummed about my irrational fears this time. In my defense I did jump off the side of a cliff/rock that was a good 25-30 feet high. Lots of fun! I'm slowly getting over my fear of heights! I fell on some slippery rocks and then had a wicket nasty/cool cut and bruise on my toe for over a week! I just can't manage to do anything without hurting myself.

At one point on the hike back up, we stopped to refill water at the source of the springs (it was clean). There were two middle-aged hippy-esque guys there who had a shrine with incense and candles set up. They were pretty funny, but really friendly. They gave us a pair of goggles, and you could look down into the source of the spring. Only myself and another guy in the group jumped in and stuck our faces into a hole in the ground. It was pretty neat, but I couldn't see very far. The hippy guy kept saying it went down forever and would be a life-changing experience. I'm pretty sure he was, shall we say, feeling a little more insightful than usual. If you use your imagination, though, it was pretty cool, I guess.

Okay! So that Tuesday we were invited to go observing on the 32-inch reflecting telescope at Anderson Mesa (Lowell's telescopes are there). It was pretty neat, but it was almost all done robotically, so the observer just had to push a few buttons and sit back. It was still pretty fun to 'drive' the telescope, AKA tell it what kind of filter to expose on and how long, and then look at the images, etc. Somebody went and got pizza and we sat around eating and chatting about possible deaths in the Canyon for a while we waited for clouds to pass. They never really did pass, but we salvaged a few images before giving up at about midnight. A small teaser into the real world of astronomy!

Sadly, I forgot my camera on every trip except for the observing... Hopefully later I can grab some from somebody else and upload some! For now, enjoy some photos of the telescope!

From left, Kathy (program director), Teresa (IU homedog), Christine (geologist that somehow got in the astro/physics program...), and Eric (the crazy one).

Some views of the scope.

Disco Inferno

Well. I think I've outdone myself this weekend! I foresee this post being pretty long and detailed... so beware! But oh man, do I have a story for you.

This weekend has been pretty tame, and Sunday we went to the Inner Basin to do some easy day hiking. The San Francisco Peaks here used to actually be one big volcano that blew its top a long time ago, and now there is a basin you can hike into. We planned on going about ~4 miles round trip or maybe more if we felt up to it. The hike was really pretty because there were trees besides ponderosa pine in the basin! I'm not sure what they were- birch? sycamore?

The hike through the Inner Basin.

At about an hour into the hike we saw snow! I was really excited to see snow in June! A little further into the hike, I saw this neat mountain to our left. I turned to the rest of the group and asked if anyone wanted to climb up it. Only two other people agreed. The other four decided they would continue on the Inner Basin Trail and if they got back before us, would just leave because we had 2 cars. So, together myself, Teresa, and Eric decided to hike off-trail literally up the side of a mountain...

We're about to climb up there... Sounds like a good plan, no?

The first part of our epic day began with scaling this mountain, which we would later find out was called Fremont Peak. At the time, the hike didn't look too bad, but as we started to ascend, I quickly realized it wasn't nearly as easy as it looked... The hike up consisted of three terrains. The first was the brambles. This was a little painful, but easy. The next was the loose rocks. This was by far the worst and slowest. Every step forward you would slide backwards. It was steep and hard to ascend quickly. It looked as if there had been a landslide recently so that's probably why it was so loose. Plus, underneath all these small rocks was snow! If you slipped enough to move the rocks, you could see snow under them. Loose pebbles on slippery snow = a slow and tiring hike. Eventually we made it to the third tier of the climb: the big yet still potentially loose rocks. This was probably the easiest, but most dangerous. There were lots of big boulders stacked on top of each other, and if you stepped on an unsteady one, you would cause a huge rockslide below. Yeah, okay, not much of a problem for one hiker, but when there's two people behind you... At one point I dislodged a huge rock and saw Teresa's life flash before my eyes as it barreled down towards her about 10 feet below me. Luckily she is nimble on her feet and jumped to avoid it. #1 of near-death experiences (you can tell this is going to be a good story now!).

The view about halfway up Fremont.

Ok, so about 3/4 of the way up this peak, I see a big cloud to the east. Whatever, a big cloud. Weeeell... about ten minutes later we all sort of realize this isn't really a cloud.

Hmm... That's a suspicious looking cloud. Bottom right is where we saw huge flames!

Turns out it's smoke. From a huge forest fire, that's... oh, I don't know, about a half-mile or mile from us. Uh-oh! Well, our options were this: go down the way we came up or climb to the top. I think we would have killed ourselves going down those boulders and loose rock, so it was up we went. Besides, there were less trees the higher we got. Finally we get to the top of the peak. WOWEE! As we look down to the east, we see some scarily huge flames billowing over the ridge below us (sadly I didn't get any photos of the flames). I guess this qualifies as #2 of near-death experiences, even though we weren't ever in thaaaat much danger.

Luckily, the wind is blowing away from us, but we still don't know what to do. I called 911, but kept losing signal. As I'm trying to call in, I notice a bottle behind a rock- as I look at it, I realize it's a message in a bottle! I opened it and everybody who had made it up there had left a message. There were no trails up to this peak, so only really crazy/masochistic people would have written in there. In the panic, I didn't have much time to read them, but Teresa left our names and date and 'NAU REU 2010'. On my third 911 call I get through long enough to ask what we should do. The operator asks where we are. We had no idea what peak we were on (there are 4). She asks which fire we're near. My first thought was 'There's more than one?!' Oops- did I forget to mention that there was a small forest fire south east of Flagstaff on Saturday? Well, in the panic I had just assumed it was the Hardy Fire from Saturday, but if I had thought, then it would have occurred to me this was a different fire as we were 15 miles north of Flag. Suddenly Teresa says to me 'We're on Fremont Peak!'. Turns out someone had written it down on the message in the bottle! How neat! We were partially aided by the proverbial message in a bottle! We were told to climb down the mountain on the side opposite the fire (no duh), so off we go.

The hike down was, when I start thinking about it, pretty rough. But in the heat of the moment, we just wanted to get the heck off the mountain as quick as possible so all the adrenaline was dulling the rough terrain. Today I have lots of cool battle wounds from rushing through the pine forest. At one point I fell into this crevice in between some boulders. My foot got stuck under a rock in a really painful position, but after some panicked shrieking the other two got it off of me. #3 of potential near-death experiences, but I wouldn't have died, just hurt myself. Lucky for us, Eric is an experienced hiker, so he was leading us the most promising direction in hopes of finding a trail. Surprisingly, the snow was the worst thing to hike on: it was incredibly slick and even when I made footholes, I still occasionally slipped.

Smoke, Fremont, and Waxing Gibbous Moon.

Finally we found a trail!! Hooray! Later we would find out this trail was the Weatherford Trail (5.7 miles). It goes two ways: up Agassiz Peak or to Schultz Pass, where the fire was. Hmm, hard choice which way to take it, eh? Unfortunately it was out of the way, but it was the only trail in the area. We hiked up and up Agassiz, but we were making really good time with all the adrenaline. Eventually I saw a sign up ahead (we had no idea where we were or where we were headed). I ran up to it, read the sign, turned around, and started laughing. Turns out we were at a 'dead end'. The trail ahead was closed, although we didn't know why. Well, what else could we do besides continue on? So onward we went, climbing ever higher. We found out why the trail was closed pretty quickly. Parts of it were covered in a thick layer of snow/ice! Climbing on the snowed-over parts was pretty frightening. You had to be really careful not to slip. One wrong step and... well, it was a long way down. You had to lean over and brace yourself against the snow with your hands as you walked, so after we made it across, my hands were numb. Reminded me of the times when Sarah and I would see who could stick our hands into a bucket of ice the longest, except worse! (I always lost)

Snow/ice traversing. This makes it look way easier than it was.

The snowed over trail we just crossed!

Ok, so a little more snow traversing, and at last we find a real sign! Woohoo! We found out we were on the Weatherford trail that would eventually take us to Humphrey's (the highest point in AZ). We saw two hikers ahead, sitting down and taking photos of the fire. We were so happy to see other people! At least we knew we were headed the right way! We stopped to talk to them and we told them about our crazy story. Now, this is the kicker: Monday morning at work I received an email with a link to a blog about the fire. Turns out it was written by one of those guys we met! What luck?! The guy, Dan, works at Lowell! Here is a link to his blog... I thought they guys looked familiar, but I was certain it was the hikers we met when he wrote of the 'trio of students'.

~12,000 feet. The Snow Bowl below!

So, now we are on our way down to the Snow Bowl! It's a long ways down, but at least we know where we are, and the other REU students who didn't go up Fremont with us are going to pick us up at the bottom. It should all be downhill (pun intended) from here, right...? Well, about 10 or 15 minutes down the descent I begin to feel a bit funny. I had had a headache for a while, but I thought it was just from the adrenaline and the quick pace we were keeping. As I went further and further down the trail, I started to feel progressively worse. My head hurt somethin' nasty, and at some point I started feeling a bit light-headed and my fingers were getting tingly like when they fall asleep. Turns out I had altitude sickness! This made the hike down pretty slow because I had to keep taking breaks. We were low on food and water (this was supposed to be a 4 mile hike after all) so this didn't really help either. We passed more hikers on this trail, so that was encouraging. Finally we made it to the ski lift that takes people up the mountain! From here we just walked down to the Snow Bowl parking lot! We were so happy to see everybody else! Woohoo!

In summary: we stared at 9AM and finished at 6:30PM. I'm guessing we hiked about 15 miles throughout the day. At our highest point we were at 12,000 feet, starting from 9000 in the Inner Basin. Who knew forest fires could cause such a ruckus?! After we got some water/food/jackets, we all went back and showered/decompressed. As celebration for such a day, all the students went out to a local restaurant called Beaver Street Brewery and ate good food. It was a crazy and long day, but quite an adventure! It's taken me a long time to write this in free moments at work, but three days later here is my recounting of the event! This article is out of date now, but we are those hikers they refer to... I had to call the Sheriff back when we got back to let him know we were alive! (Search and rescue kept on texting me throughout our hike to see where we were or if we needed help out). Teresa's car is still in Lockett Meadow where we parked in the Inner Basin, and we're all crossing our fingers in hopes that the fire doesn't get there. She is currently on her way to pick it up hopefully!

This is the path we think we took...??

The state of the fire as I write this: 14,000 acres have been destroyed and the fire is at 20% containment. It's been determined that an abandoned campfire started the fire. No sign of rain this whole week, so hopefully things will slow down on their own and with the help of the firefighting crew. Last night some southeasterly winds came in and now some of the smoke has settled on the city. You can smell the lingering scent of smoke outside now.

PS- I can't get the photos to enlarge when clicked on... I've spent forever writing this, so maybe I'll fix it later!

Picture this: we hiked the pointy peak third from left!

A Day In The Life (Good Morning Good Morning)

I have been asked to report on my day-to-day life here in Flagstaff. Sorry if this post is not very thrilling!

So, most of the time, I don't even do anything during the week. Usually I go out/hiking on the weekends, so the weekdays is when the downtime happens. Lately I've been getting into a morning running routine (experimenting to see if I like morning or evening more). The only downside is that I have to get up at 6 or 6:30 if I want be done in time. Luckily I have no life and go to bed at about 10:30 or 11 (I only say this because even during the school year I go to bed later). Running here is great, and I'm trying out all the nearby trails.

I work 9-5, save for a few days here and there. Since Lowell is about 2 miles from where I live, the three other REU students who work there plus myself carpool. It's not a bad walk, but it's all uphill there, and it takes about ~45 minutes. I don't really like arriving to work all sweaty.

What do I do at work? Well, I'll keep it simple: I sit on my butt in front of a really big mac screen. I think I posted a picture of my office before, so scroll down to refresh. I analyze data and write lots of code in Fortran (I like to compare it to Latin- a dead programming language save for astronomers...). I actually enjoy coding; of course, what I mean to say is that I enjoy it when I can get it to work. Debugging is not my favorite task. I am doing lots of cool things research-wise though. I'm not going to go into detail, but all you need to know is that I'm working with spectra of short-lived massive stars (F-G yellow supergiants to be exact).

I usually take a lunch break with my advisor and/or officemate(s). I think I've brought cheese sandwiches every day thus far. Is this enough detail? :)

I get back to my apartment about 5:15 and usually find ways to entertain myself the rest of the evening. Here are some photos of my apartment.

My bedroom... dramatic lighting.

Teresa in the kitchen.

I don't know if I've said so yet, but the apartment is really nice. Everything looks brand spankin' new and it's really big. It puts my soon-to-be apartment in August to shame... We are slowly making it homey by bringing random junk in. All the pictures I tried to take of the living room were ruined by the bright rising Sun, so maybe I'll put some up later.

I have to find creative ways to entertain myself, so I've recently taken up the harmonica. It was the only instrument I had that was small enough to travel. Suffice to say it's going slowly... all I know is 'The Saints Go Marching In'. I have high hopes though. I am currently reading 100 Years of Solitude, as well as My Antonia. I write lots of letters to people, and now that Teresa arrived, we have a TV! It's great! We get free cable, so I can sit around forever and entertain myself! We even get NASA TV, which is the most boring thing I've ever seen. It's exciting when they are launching things, but other than that I can understand why nobody wants to give NASA money.

Today is sort of a day off for me. A few of the other students drove to San Carlos this morning... it was a 4 hour ride, and they were only going to see some kind of rock (they're geologists...). To me it wasn't worth it. Instead I slept in (relatively). I had to run some errands so I've been walking all over town since about 10:30. I stopped at two bookstores (didn't find anything), then went to the Copper Coyote Cafe. It looked neat, but the Parmesan bagel I got was mediocre at best. I then stopped at Really Good Stuff! thrift shop and bought a shirt and reusable bag. Today and tomorrow is the Flagstaff Music Festival. I stopped by for a bit and saw some group I forget the name of perform.

Flagstaff Music Festival.

I bought a George Harrison and Fleetwood Mac CD at a book sale tent.

Downtown Flagstaff

I am now at the Cline Library, hoping to check out some books after I post this. Au revoir!

I saw this neat flower on my way to the library.

Keytars and the Universe

Whoa. This has been a hectic week (I feel like I say that every week...).

The highlight has definitely been, hands down, yesterday. It was, of course, the much-awaited Dream Theater/Iron Maiden concert. I apologize ahead of time for those of you who don't know them/don't care to hear the gory details of the concert. This blog is partly for my own record though, so I'd like to remember the intense epicness.

To start off, myself and two other members of the REU group, Eric and Nick, left for Phoenix at about 3:30. I like the drive a lot, so it was nice. We made a planned stop at an In 'n Out in Phoenix for dinner. They only have In 'n Outs in CA, AZ, and NV I believe. Apparently it's a big deal or something... I got a pretty dissatisfying veggie burger, but the fries and shake were good. And the other two seemed to really enjoy their food, so I guess you need to eat meat. There is some kind of 'secret menu' that you can order off of if you know what to say. Weird westerners.

Hot Phoenix.

Moving along, we went to the venue next: The Cricket Pavilion, which was smaller than I expected, but pretty nice. Turns out we had superb seats. We were about 20 feet from the stage, which was excellent for my eyes, but awful for my ears. To be honest, I went online looking up DT tours, and was pleasantly surprised to see they were touring with Maiden. So, really, I went to see DT, and got a bonus of Maiden.

Wooo! Dream Theater takes the stage!

I've never seen DT live, but have been spending far more time than I should looking up youtube videos of them recently. In short, they kicked some serious butt. Some of the highlights were: Mike Portnoy (drummer) threw his sticks in the air multiple times and caught them probably 50% of the time... Jordan Rudess (keyboards) PULLED OUT THE ZEN RIFFER! YESSSSSS!!!! I think the all caps and exclamation points convey my excitement. I don't know why, but I have a strange obsession with keytars.

Jordan Rudess and John Petrucci during Panic Attack.

During one song, James LaBrie (singer) came to our side of the stage. When he did so, I was the only one in the area who was fist-pumping (I think everyone was there just to see Maiden...). He looks over at me and points to me from stage. It's really not anything spectacular, but for a brief moment I was one of 'those fans'. I can die a happy girl now (who knew that was all it took?). DT played a pretty great set (although I kept waiting for Overture 1928....). What I remember they played:

-Rite of Passage

-Home

-Panic Attack

-Under a Glass Moon

-Pull Me Under

-And some other song I forgot

But... that was only half of the show. The main entree was of course, Iron Maiden.

Unintentionally caught Steve Harris mid-headbang.

I know hardly any IM so I felt pretty out of place as the crowd got crazy and sang all the songs. I knew maybe 3 or 4 out of the 2 hours they played... woops! They were really incredible regardless, though. I have never seen such an energetic band perform. These guys are at least in their 50's, and they were running all over stage, jumping around, and being generally Crazy. Bruce Dickenson (singer) was running on top of the set, while Janick Gers (1 of 3 guitarists) was doing insane acrobats with his guitar. I think he actually played it 2% of the show, while 98% of the time was spent throwing it in the air (for real), banging it against props (seriously), playing it in between his legs (it looked uncomfortable...), spinning it around himself, and throwing the cord all around stage.

Janick Gers. He seemed to really enjoy playing like this.

Musically useless but visually entertaining.

The best way to describe the way he ran around stage would be prancing. I felt sorry for the drummer, Nicko McBrain, because he was boxed in around his drum set and nobody paid attention to him. Oh, I forgot to mention that at the beginning of their show, Maiden played a little intro movie to Mars The Bringer of War from the Planets by Holst. I didn't see anyone else around me who seemed to appreciate the reference... silly rock fans. They also showed some clips of the Crab Nebula! Something else I also forget to mention and am adding now: The guy next to me looked like Geddy Lee and was doing some serious head-banging and air-guitaring to Maiden... I've never seen anyone air guitar with such passion.

After the concert it took us forever to get out of the venue, and after a gas/coffee stop we were on our way back to Flagstaff. I happened to stick my head out the window and saw the Milky Way! So we got off the highway and pulled off to go look at the sky. We happened to see 4 or 5 other guys who actually had a telescope and chairs set out. They just happened to be astronomy/physics (graduate?) students! It was actually pretty funny that we were all astronomy people and we sat around talking about science and Iron Maiden. It was one of those strange chance moments that happens rarely but is really neat. The skies were phenomenal and the Milky Way very bright.

I don't know what kind of luck I was having, but on the way back I saw a fireball! I've never seen one, and it was really cool! To top off a long night, we went to Lowell to try and see Comet McNaught... turns out it's not visible naked eye or was too low. FINALLY I got back to my apartment at about 3 and got to sleep for ~4 hours.

The result today: I'm really tired and feel deaf!