Getting Started

So how does this work? So glad you asked!

You can use the tabs at the top to navigate to different stops (or the buttons at the bottom of each page) - and being online you get to do this in your own time. Please don't do this all at once. You will be miserable if you do. A field trip of this length would easily take a week, so for it to be enjoyable, don't cram it into an afternoon.

To start, you'll want to check out your Field Guide. You are encouraged to read through it and reference it as needed at each stop. On in-person field trips, your field guide would provide you with a background for the locations you visit, in addition to some geologic basics. This means that the mini lectures at each stop would build on this background from your guide. However, as a virtual trip, rather than make you look for stop information in two places, and make you read things twice, all the spot specific information out of the field guide, and instead into each respective stop. So, you’ll find your field guide relatively brief, and more focused on a general geologic background 😊. It is your responsibility to reference your field guide and ask questions as needed!

At the beginning of each stop you'll be introduced to where you are. You may be given some geologic diagrams that may be of importance (wink wink), and there will be a little excerpt about the geologic history. If you need/want explanations for the diagrams, first see your field guide, but if that’s not enough help, ask us during our live session!

Then you’ll see pictures! Interact with them! Many of them are 360° photos that you can turn and take a look around. Others are photos you can scroll through. To get the most out of this, you should play with them and see what you notice before scrolling down and take note in your field book. Most of geology is making observations. Once you learn to do this well, everything else will feel easy.

If you get stuck or think you’ve found everything, You'll be prompted with a few questions to guide you towards what we want you to notice (don't forget to check the comments on the photos). If you can’t answer the questions or didn’t think about what was pointed out, you should you to look again! Doing geology with only photos definitely makes things infinitely more difficult, but this is made as interactive and clear as possible! Being online, some photos as you scroll down are annotated to highlight things that you should notice!

Every few stops there is an added side note. Field trips are more than just geology — and that's the hardest part to communicate here. A lot of what contributes to trips is the community and learning skills (other than geology) from each other.

To reiterate this again:

Please reach out to us with questions, comments, or even if you want us to present this to you, and explain things verbally. We are happy to talk about it during our live session!