Geol 373 is a one credit field trip class held once every four years. Occasionally the class goes south to Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico. In 1997 we took the photos below. The students made up the 'you know you're a geologist . . .' lines. Thanks to the folks at the Clements Coal Mine, the Farrell-Cooper mining Co., Cephus Hall - mineral man extraodinaire of the Ouachitas, the Midland Petroleum Museum and Neil Suneson of the OGS.

Ripple marks at Monhans Sand dunes

 Sunrise (!) in the Ouachitas

 You know your a geologist when:

 - You only drink Rolling Rock Beer.
- Your favorite song is "I wanna rock."
- Your pants hang around your knees because of all the rocks in your pockets.
- A chert nodule under your pillow is the one you've been looking for, for weeks.
- You name your rock hammer.
- You use your peanut butter and jelly sandwich to explain folding and crustal deformation.

Jump for joy! Made it before dark!

 Loading up Calamites.

 You know your a geologist when:

 - You come home from a vacation with more rocks than dirty clothes.
- You pull over on the side of the interstate to look at a road cut.
- You laugh at all the wrong times in Dante's Peak.
- You hope to die by a pyroclastic flow, just to experience it!
- You ask your fiancee for a big piece of carbon.
- You wake up because your handlens is wrapped around your neck.
- Your car is built from parts you've rescued from ditches while looking at outcrops.

Karin & Kellie - Day one - still clean

 Big Joe & the Guadalupes 

 You know your a geologist when:

 - You spend an hour looking at some dudes driveway.
- You refer to small oil rigs as "cute."
- Every piece of broken glass you see is obsidian.
- You reach into your backpack for a brush and pull out a crystal.
- Your friends are in your pictures for scale.
- On the beach you analyze the sand instead of swimming.
- You refrain from bathroom use for hours & hours just to make it to your stops before they close.

Scott - Lost in the Palauxy River

Everyone pay attention to Neil! 

 You know your a geologist when:

 - Your house is made of petrified wood.
- Your water park is built in a river.
- You total your car because you were gauking at a road cut while driving.
- Taking 8 hours between each meal and setting up camp at 10pm seems normal.
- You bypass Dallas to look at sedimentary features.
- All your film containers contain specimens.
- After 10 beers you argue about sedimentary deposits instead of genital size.

Jen & Erin - whose fault is it?

 AF photo: Linda & Joe trash it 

You know your a geologist when:

 - Bedding means something different to you than the rest of the world.
- Finding faults is a good thing.
- You eat more shale than you do food, and enjoy it!
- The driver is taking pictures out of the window for the passengers.
- Eating GORP you think of Garnet-Orpiment-Realgar-Pyroxene.
- You make more U-turns in one day than most people do in a lifetime.
- Everyone in the van is looking at structures in the roadcuts and the truckers are swearing at you on the CB.

More climbing. Yeech!

 The sun sets over the dunes 

Why do people put strange items on van radiators anyway?

. Signs that you may be a budding geologist:

 10. You have ever had to respond "yes" to the question, "What have you got in here, rocks?"
9. You have ever taken a 22-passenger van over "roads" that were really intended only for cattle.
8. You have ever found yourself trying to explain to airport security that a rock hammer isn't really a weapon.
7. Your rock garden is located inside your house.
6. You have ever hung a picture using a Brunton as a level.
5. Your collection of beer cans and/or bottles rivals the size of your rock collection.
4. You consider a "recent event" to be anything that has happened in the last hundred thousand years.
3. Your photos include people only for scale and you have more pictures of your rock hammer and lens cap than of your family.
2. You have ever been on a field trip that included scheduled stops at a gravel pit and/or a liquor store.

And the #1 sign you might be a geologist:
1. You have ever uttered the phrase "have you tried licking it" with no sexual connotations involved.

 pagemaster: ian.williams@uwrf.edu
 Last revised 5/19/04