Desert... in Vermont...

Field day today. I'm taking what I think is my last geology class to finish out my minor here at the university. It's Glacial Geology, where we're learning about the most recent 'Ice Age' and the features and depositional results of glacial masses. Vermont is an excellent place to study glaciation- the entire state was buried under two miles (Yes, miles) of ice for a long period of time. When they retreated, they left behind millions of striations, grooves and cubic feet of till and other things that are caught up. So today, for lab, we visited the Gross Sand Pit, where a number of geology classes visit, because it's an excellent place to view a number of features left behind by a retreating glacier. Today was lots of digging in loose sand, looking at layers and figuring out exactly how they ended up in the way that they did. Lots of fun stuff, save for a couple things: 1- Next time I'm bringing goggles. Today was pretty windy, and sand was blowing everywhere. 2- Sand is finer grained than gravel. Thus, it gets everywhere. 3- My nalgene. Sand pits are pretty dry, and with a hot day like today, it's not terribly different than any desert that I've been in- hot, and the air is so dry that it literally sucks the moisture out of you. We did find some outstanding examples of topset and foreset beds. Now, to write a report and figure out a stratigraphic section for the entire place...
Was happy to get a 95 on my Civil War exam. I'm really enjoying that class.