First day over

Don't have much time to blog today.

It was our field day in the field.  Went well, we are all tired and sore though.  First day of lots of hiking will do that to ya, that coupled with having to measure a ~1500 foot stratigraphic section with jacob's staves (we finish that tomorrow morning, then we make a geologic map of the area tomorrow afternoon).  

So, HERE are some photos of the journey so far - of our pit stops on the way from socal to Montana and our first day in the field.  Let me know if the album does not work!

Oh and I would like to mention what the food situation is like here.  There is a dorm cafeteria buffet at breakfaster and dinner, and a vegetarian option is always offered, it would appear. However, nothing vegan has yet been seen on the menu, aside from the salad bar, which I am at least thankful for.  So I've had a salad of iceberg (bleh) lettuce, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, white mushrooms, with french dressing, the past two dinners.  I just supplemented that with a cocoa crispies cereal and rice dream snack.  So I'm not starving, but I'm gonna get real tired of salad soon.

They offer a sandwich bar and provide granola bars and nutri-grain bars, fruit, and applesauce and chips and soda, to pack sack lunches for the day to take out into the field.  All the breads they offer, by some local Montana bakery, have whey (cultured milk) in them.  Thankfully, as any other vegan will know, this is a common (pointless) bread additive even in some healthy, organic, whole-wheat breads, so I had already bought my own vegan wheat loaf from the local Safeway.

and I used the peanut butter and jelly bar to make my lunch sammich (the Lunch bar offers only deli meat and cheese).

However, there is a light on the horizon.  I found a natural foods store in town (it's biking distance, but I have no bike here, haha) called Good Life if I remember correctly, but its hours are such that I may not be able to visit it for awhile, maybe until I have a free day.  But the organic vegan stuff in the window seemed promising!  I'm crossing my fingers they have primal strips or jerquee.  

Until I write again, over and out

Geovegan 

(Emily)

At the dorms in Dillon (University of Montana Western). Not too pleased.

I got the internet to work on my macbook, but both of our double room's two ethernet jacks are on the same side of it, behind my desk.  My roomie can't get hers to work on her XP laptop despite the written directions are given for XP and Vista and not Mac OS X.  

Pissed off that Adium, iChat, and torrents are firewalled. Stupid dorm!!!  This is exactly why I moved into an apartment, to use in internet like an ADULT. 

Also this town has a Safeway and a pizza hut.  

On a happier note, driving through Utah was probably the prettiest stuff I've ever seen.

She's going to jack the jack my mac's using now to see if one of the two jacks is broken.

Also, for my iPhone I have some weird network called Extended USA - not my usual T-Mobile. I wonder if I am roaming?

Ps: Turns out there are two ethernet ports for every double dorm room and everybody but us in the entirety of field camp has a double room to themselves, but we got the one double that has only ONE working ethernet port, while the people living alone have ports to spare.  So we need to find an ethernet splitter.  Ghetto, UM Western. ghetto.

From Zion

We just finished dinner our second night camping at the Zion River Resort, just outside of Zion Canyon National Park.  I've never been here before, aside from sleeping through a family RV roadtrip through Utah.  I'm currently enjoying a cold Wasatch "Apricot Hefeweizen". 

Don't have much battery power on my Macbook (it drained itself from 100% down to 55% just by sitting around for ~48 hours) so I'll try and make this concise.

Yesterday (Tuesday) morning we left campus around 7:30 am, and made it to this campsite by about 6pm.  We had taken a detour to have a late lunch at Red Rock Canyon, which was prety cool - although having to drive through the Las Vegas traffic was annoying. After setting up camp just outside Zion, we set up to make dinner.

We had dinner/breakfast assignments, and I was in the first group to cook last night, and it was fajita night.  I quickly volunteered to do the onions and bell peppers :P  It was a great vegan dinner.  The other people made chicken, and we had grilled flour tortillas, and tapatillo sauce to top my vegan fajita burritos off.  

I got no sleep last night - I was too cold, even though it's quite mild and warm here even all night, i just get freezing cold when I sleep.  Tonight I'll wear an extra layer, and put a fleece jacket over my sleeping bag's face-hole.   Also, I have trouble sleeping in general camping, it makes me nervous, for at least the first night.  

So I woke up at 5:00 am freezing to death (after eventually getting to sleep at 12:00 midnight with the help of my iphone's ipod), and then again at 6:00 am when other people got up and i heard chatter and laughing, so I just said fuck it and got out of bed at 6:30 and after washing my face and inspecting my huge under-eye circles, I helped make the oatmeal with brown sugar at breakfast time, and we all packed our bag lunches for the day (pb&j yummmm).  We set out towards Zion Canyon by 8:30 am, for our first free day.  We got to do whatever we wanted, however much I wanted to see angel's landing, I knew I couldn't do it because of my fear of heights/falling, so I went on the riverside walk, the weeping rock, the archaeology trail, and the lower emerald pool.  I was satisfied, and plenty tired out.  I had an ice cream cone :/  

We all met back at the vans by 3:15, when we were supposed to be there at 4:00, and we played frisbee for awhile in the parking lot which was fun ("Car!!!" then "...Game on!!"), and our professor showed up at 4:00, turns out he had been having a pint at a little cafe without us, when we were all there at the cars early waiting for him!! So we all went and had a couple pitchers before going back to camp.  

We made pasta and salad tonight. Well not me, the cooking group that was scheduled tonight.  They were very concerned with me and constantly asking for input as to what I felt was sufficient precautions for my vegetarian pasta sauce (as opposed to their sausage meatballs and ground beef sauce).  Very nice of them :)  However our professor bought no vegan salad dressings (dammit, I should've thought of that and packed my favorite Trader Joe's dressing, the tuscan italian!) so I had thousand island :x

I suppose I should have known this trip would make me about 80% vegan 20% vegetarian. I mean, I'm not gonna break down and eat some chicken or steak or anything, but it's just so hard to maintain 100% veganism in this situation.  I'll try harder.  At least I always have PB&J, and the wheat bread (Orowheat) our field camp professor packed is at least milk-free! Yay!

Well my macbook is pretty low on power so I'll turn it off now.  Tomorrow, we head out through Zion, towards Salt Lake City, stopping in Bryce Canyon (never been there either, so excited!), and camping just north/past SLC.  

Anyway.

Hoping I can sleep better tonight, 

Geovegan