Ain't it fun living in the real world?

Up to this point, I have been working remotely.

On Wednesday, I had to go back to Provo to get my retainer, and while I was there, I worked in the library. I looked up at Y Mountain and saw some of its trees already turned red, and I was once again sad not to be there. But I'm adjusting to my new life; that night, after I got back, I ran to the place of the North Salt Lake landslide. I want to go there again and take pictures. It was crazy. It looks like a cardboard dollhouse got ripped apart--but it's a real house, and it wasn't an earthquake or a wrecking ball that did it, but moving ground.

But on Thursday, I went and worked in the Church History Library east of the Conference Center. I got set up with my own cubicle, my own computer, my own work phone (although I still need to set up voicemail), and my own drawers and cupboards. I feel like a professional! It seems like a fun place, except that I have to dress up and I don't have very good dressy clothes. It will be weird working in an office, but I got a nice transition into it. Thursday just so happened to be the day of a semi-annual two-hour-long meeting in which they talked about what's going on in the Church History Department. Then on Friday, I only worked a few hours before I left with my parents.

We drove up to and through Idaho to see where Lake Bonneville drained. Around 14,500 years ago, a natural dam in southern Idaho broke, and the lake dropped three hundred feet in a period of eight weeks. The water gushed at 70 miles an hour, carving out the already existing Snake River Valley.

 This is where the water first started running out. I'm not sure how much of the valley was already carved out when the dam broke.

 This little hill is a Cambrian-age limestone outcrop. I know it's Cambrian (which started about 500 million years ago) because the geologic map on one of the signs said so, and I know it's limestone because it fizzed when I put hydrochloric acid on it. The stairs lead to a monument about a pioneer, not about Lake Bonneville.

The Snake River Plain in Southern Idaho is full of volcanic rocks. Usually we think of sedimentary rocks as having stratigraphic layers, but it happens with igneous rocks too, as there are different layers of basalt (cooled lava) and tuff (volcanic ash welded together). This was near a site where you can see ruts from the Oregon Trail.

 You see that light-colored layer at the bottom of where the bridge connects? If I understood correctly, that is the depth of the river before Lake Bonneville came through.

 

 Tomorrow is a new month. And a continuation of my new life.