Blog Posts

Travels and Fun Facts!

Lab Meeting - November 20th, 2025

November has been a month full of travel! I am very grateful and happy to have gone on these trips, which gave me a change of scene and the opportunity to explore new places.

Sudbury Field Course (November 1st - 8th)

At the beginning of this month I attended the sudbury field school, taught by Oz, where we learned about the impact crater in the region and how its effects are still seen today. After a few days of lectures, we split off into smaller groups and mapped the shatter cones in the area. We were given a general area on a map, and drove along the highways/roads, stopping at outcrops along the way and recording observations about the rock and whether any shatter cones were seen. My group was lucky enough to come across so many shatter cones the first day (see some images below)!

Although it was a bit rainy, the temperatures were never too cold and it was quite nice to be outside in the fresh air all day. Besides the school aspect, the course was also a great way to make friends and get closer with some of the other geology graduate students. Our evenings were spent playing games, talking and having lots of laughs. Oz even provided us all with shatter cone beer (pictured below with the two shatter cone samples I took home that are currently sitting in the dinning room of my student house).

The scientific fun fact I learned about the Sudbury impact crater is that almost all the shatter cones found were south of the crater, since the rocks there are softer and would have formed shatter cones easier. The non scientific fun fact I already knew but was reinforced on this trip was that little animals use the outcrops as homes so check to make sure you aren't taking a salamanders home before removing a sample (said salamander below, his house was promptly rebuilt by us after this photo)

San Francisco (November 13th - 24th)

After Sudbury I had a very quick turn around to do laundry and repack for my travels to San Francisco, where my boyfriend currently lives and works. I have been working from his house during the day, and exploring the city on the weekends and evenings. The weather is a lovely 12-16 degrees so it's a nice break from all the snow we got before we left. I have had some incredible food, powered up some rediculously steep hills, and gotten a lot of work done thanks to the 40" monitor that my boyfriend has that makes me feel like im on Mars when working with jmars (yipee for productivity)!

I've included some photos i've taken so far while here (for those that don't know I really enjoy photography and have maybe too many cameras). For this trip I packed my only digital camera - a fujifilm X-E2 with a prime 35mm lens. While in a second hand camera shop I picked up a new polarized filter to try since my camera is old and doesn't do well in low contrast situations (i.e. cloudy days in SF)

The scientific fun fact I learned is that the area where the Golden Gate bridge is, used to be a vast plain that stretched 27 miles past the current California coastline. This area was where the rivers from the Sierra exited into the sea before flooding occured. Another fun fact I learned was about how native lupine plants thrive here because the serpentine soils, which exists due to the techtonic boundary the city sits on.