DARWIN is on his 12th year of teaching, currently at Springville High School teaching astronomy, geology, environmental science, and physics. He also teaches physics at UVU for a 7 week STEM summer school program for junior high students. He also teaches teenagers in our church ward. He's super busy, but still makes time to be an awesome dad and husband.Well at any rate, my last semester included a trip of our choosing to a variety of locations around the United States and Bahamas. I went on a trip that was centered around the Lake Superior region that included the states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. I could obviously spend more time than you are willing to give to discuss the geoscience of the area, so I will endeavor to entertain you with some pictures and highlights of the trip. Enjoy!
Our first stop was called the Lilydale Brickyard where we collected fossils. This was the beginning of the trail, nice and marshy. Toto, I don't think we're in Utah anymore.
This is what our scavenging looked like, a hill where rain water slowly washes out fossils from the bedrock. I'm in the navy blue shirt.
The brown and white in the photo is a large group of bryozoans, a sea animal that looks kind of like coral, but no relation. These were the most common fossils we found, this being one of the greatest outcrops they've seen on the trip. Other fossils that were found were brachiopods (clam looking things, but again no relation), crinoids (sea flower looking thing related to starfish and sand dollars), and an occasional trilobite if lucky. Other early sea creature fossils can be found here too. No dino bones if you are wondering. These fossils were deposited hundreds of millions of years before primitive dinos existed.
These next pictures were taken at an Interstate Park on the boarder of Minnesota and Wisconsin. I'm standing in what is known as a pothole. (Yeah, creative name, I know.) These formed when an ice dam blocked glacial runoff (called a youkalup) during an ancient glacial period that created Glacial Lake Duluth, an earlier version of Lake Superior so to speak. The ice dam broke and tons of water flowed through this area easily weathering and eroding the bedrock. Some areas had boulders and cobbles that got caught in a depression in the rock and were swirled around smoothing the sides of the potholes and making them deeper.
Another pothole with a depth of about 12 feet.
An illustration of what I was trying to explain above.
This photo shows a close up of some of the rocks at Interstate Park. It is called an amygdule basalt (or in other words, lava rock that has had its vesicles or holes in the rock filled with other minerals). The colorful spots are where the vesicles of the basalt had water flow through it and deposit minerals in them. I think it looks sort of like a fruit cake.
This I had to show. In Ashland, WI, there were a ton of these Mayflies about mosquito size the previous night. In the morning they were about an inch or so long. But the most disturbing thing was their numbers. They caked all the cars, the lamp posts, and the ground. Walking to the van in the morning there was a snapping sound from their bodies as I couldn't help but traverse through the bug litter. Birth, mate, then die. What a life.
The next several images come from the Michigan Tech University where the greatest collection of minerals are found. The image above is a large sheet of copper that was extracted out of bedrock. This area is rich in metals such as copper and iron due to the uniqueness of the geology; a mix of continental rifting (pulling apart) and glaciation. If you look closely you can see a copper witch.
This is the larges crystalline form of copper that has ever been found, about softball size. Before now I didn't even know that copper had a crystalline form. You will see photos of this specimen on all of Michigan Tech University logos. It's their pride and joy.
These are copper "skulls". They form when copper is deposited around a cobble and then the cobble is weathered away leaving the copper shell.
This is a beautiful image of hematite (an iron oxide) in fan shape and spheroidal forms.
These rocks contain certain elements that fluoresce under short wave and long wave ultra violet light due to the elements in the minerals. The different wave length will fluoresce different minerals different colors dependent upon their atomic properties. Aren't chemistry and physics wicked awesome!?
This mineral is stibnite or antimonite. Pretty eh? It's an antimony sulfide mineral. Amazing what sulfur can do to make a mineral look so cool, e.g. pyrite and galena. There is a sample of stibnite twice this size at the Museum of Natural History in New York.
Everyone's favorite. Gold! This is how it is found in the veins or cracks of bedrock. This is what you would see if the rock was dissolved away.
One of my favorites, malachite, a copper carbonate mineral. The copper in it gives it the green tint, like when a copper statue or roof is oxidized, it turns a greenish color. It often forms in this spheroidal form.
Another popular mineral, pyrite, or fools gold. This is an iron sulfide mineral. Sometimes it forms in perfect squares, diamond shapes, dodecahedron looking shapes, or discs. There were many more beautiful, breath-taking specimens, but I'll let you go to a mineral museum in your own time.
This is just a fun shot I took on one of the shores on Lake Superior. The red, smooth rock is rhyolite, a lava rock that is more ashy than basalt.
This image and the next was taken at the National Weather Station in Duluth, MN. The gal in the photo turned just as I took the picture to wave goodbye so it's a funny shot. It's just to illustrate the monitors she uses to design the forecast for that area. There were several other work stations that looked like this too.
The giant golf ball, soccer ball, or volley ball is the Doppler radar tower. When you watch the weather on the news and see the colorful movement of the storm, this is the device that measures that. The radar inside the ball spins in a circle changing its angle to measure various altitudes of the atmosphere.
This is a small garden snake that one of my colleagues picked up. When I walked by it hissed at me. It must have smelt a scent of my ball python on me and got jealous.
This was a neat shot of a reflection. The water is pooled in a ditch shape gouge in the rock that formed when a rock was frozen in a glacier, and as the glacier moved it gouged the bedrock below.
Now I know your thinking, "Wow, a rock" in a sarcastic tone, but this is the oldest bedrock in the United States! I mean, this rock formed when the North American continent started to form! Like, 2.7 - 3.2 billion years ago! That is like the oldest thing on the continent! Almost older than life ITSELF! AND I GOT TO TOUCH IT!!! Okay, calm down now.
Image of the Mesabi Range. The reddish tint to the mountains shows that these hills are chock full of iron. These hills have supplied a huge amount of iron for the U.S., especially during WWII. The water fills an old mine quarry.
Fun to see the size of the haul trucks.
This image and the next two are rocks called Banded Iron Formations (BIF). The striped layer comes from layers of oxidized iron and red chert. This gives us the evidence of when our atmosphere started becoming more oxygen rich depositing layers of oxidized iron. Also very old rock, and very pretty.
Folding in the BIF due to metamorphism.
You can see that the layers in the rock are offset along the crack that runs horizontal. This is a micro fault where slip has taken place from metamorphism. While we were at this stop, a short downpour of rain gave a beautiful look to the outcrop. One of the most amazing rock outcrops I've ever seen in my entire life.
I found the Knight bus from Harry Potter. In Silver Bay, MN of all places.
Just some pretty shots along the way.
Surprisingly, mudcracks can be "fossilized." You've seen mud dry out and curl up in pieces leaving what looks like cracks in the mud. Well, sediment can fill that in and get cemented to keep that mudcrack look in the rock as seen above.
Silly Minnasotains. Maybe this sign is for dogs.
This waterfall, Devil's Kettle, was really cool. The water that is flowing in the hole to the left has not been traced to where it comes out. It must come out underneath the other waterfall, but our professor stated that people have tried traceable dyes in the water but can't identify where it comes out.
A closer shot.
Me looking like a dork waving at the camera. It looks like I'm greeting the Red Chief on Peter Pan. HOW! Any rate, I'm standing on U.S. soil, and the rocks across the Pigeon River are Canadian soil. No need for passport here. (You just have to watch out for any snipers.)
This is Pigeon Falls or High Falls on the Pigeon River at Grand Portage State Park, MN. The left is the U.S. and the right is Canada. Funny story, one of our professors said on a previous trip they saw some Canadians on the other side. One of the students yelled, "Hey, we're Americans and you're Canadians." Uh, is "duh" the right word to use?
This is the rock at the bottom of Pigeon Falls. It is an easily weathered slate. I thought it was cool how it broke away in about 90 degree angles. Looks kind of like Lego's or something. 
The next few images are of Lake Superior and the shoreline along the north shore.
Not quite the Cliffs of Insanity as on The Princess Bride, but pretty nonetheless.
Dr. Rogers, our professor in charge of the trip. Turns out last year when they were at this spot, he was wearing the same outfit. I ran down to take a picture with him and tripped on a rock which almost sent me sliding down a decline toward the cliff edge. Adrenaline rush. Notice the sea arch feature in the background.
Beautiful shot from the cliff tops looking over the lake. If you look carefully, you can see the land on the other side. No wonder they call them "Great Lakes."
Me with some colleagues, Beth on the left and Kelly on the right. (Courtesy of Beth's camera.) As you can see the wind was ... well ... windy.
The three wise man. Or two wise man and one wise woman. Our professors from left to right, Tim (weather forecaster extraordinaire), Dr. Rogers (who went to Neverland and stopped growing up), and Athena (geology expert). Courtesy of Beth Jones.
Along our hike we noticed a tired tree that was sitting down to take a break. I knew they didn't stand all day!
Me in Lake Superior searching for agates (microcrystalline quartz, part of the semi-precious gem group). I never did get the opportunity to completely swim in it. It was a tid bit nipply. Once my legs went numb I was okay. The next two photos are beautiful sun shots of Lake Superior again, courtesy of Beth Jones.
After the trip was over, I had the opportunity to go to the Mall of America next to the MSP airport, the largest mall in the U.S. according to retail space and second largest on the North American Continent. I couldn't make it to all 520 stores. The center as you can see above is like a miniature amusement park and the stores surround the perimeter of the building. 
There was a Lego store there, which is always fun to see the displays.
Hey, I can see my house from here!
This may look like an odd photo to end with, but it was the closing event of my trip. After a glorious reunion with my extremely beautiful wife, we drove home through a barrage of road construction. After all, Utah does hold the Guinness Book of World Records for most roads under construction. (That's a joke if you don't live here.) At our exit, construction barrels had been moved around confusing both myself and the driver in front of me. He swerved, but I didn't in time to miss a barrel which nicked my mirror leaving it shattered. Also that morning our fridge compressor when out and we could either pay to fix it our buy a new fridge for the same price. What's even more funny is that almost every time I leave on a week long trip, a major appliance breaks down. In two separate apartments our water heaters broke while I was on a geology trip. No more leaving town that long without my sweetheart!Well, I hope I didn't bore you too much or get way to sciencey. The trip was incredible and has so many beautiful vistas which reminds me of how beautiful our Earth really is. I also made friends with wonderful people, my colleagues on the trip whom I will never forget and could go on and on about each one. Well time to leave this lake and head out to another one, because the next post will be our family trip to Lake Powell.
