3rd week of work…Intro to Archaeology and the Astronomy Festival!

I left Costa Mesa, CA on Sunday evening (definitely later than planned). I ended up breaking up the 10 hour drive into 2 parts. I stopped in Vegas for the night, then finished it up in the morning to make it to work by lunch time. Thankfully my supervisor is totally flexible and understanding.

Anyway, I showed up on Monday right after lunch and, surprisingly enough, I had mail! My amazing uncl sent me a care package with tons of cliff bars and camp food along with a brand spankin new camera! I was pumped! 12 megapixels, shockproof, waterproof Olympus. Super awesome! THANKS UNLCE AL! YOU'RE THE BEST!!!

Later that day, my supervisor and I headed out to the field to get my first taste of archeological surveying. Having no experience whatsoever with archeology, the entire day was an awesome, but very slow, learning experience. Archeological surveying takes patience, time, and most importantly, a passion for extremely old stuff. I’m not gona lie, it was pretty boring. Every now and then we would find something cool, but most of the time, all we found were chert rock flakes. These flakes are remnants of pre-historic Indians’ tools and shavings from arrowheads. Since the chert was brought to the site by these Indians, they are considered artifacts. I’m still learning, and the biggest lesson is patience (and to get more sleep before staring at the ground searching for shiny rocks all day).

On Tuesday I worked in the Visitor’s Center all day. This was definitely more my style than archeology and more fun since I got to interact with a lot of people. I got to learn things about the park that I didn’t know before by answering guests’ questions. Surprisingly enough, one of the guests was a Gator grad and another one was actually from Davie! What a small world it is.

Towards the end of the day, I took a drive to the local town of Panguitch to assist with setting up for the 9th Annual Astronomy Festival! The festival is 4 days, from the 17-20 of June. Since Bryce Canyon NP (National Park) is known as one of the last sanctuaries for natural darkness, it’s an extremely appropriate site for the festival. 2009 is also the International Year of Astronomy!

Throughout the whole festival, I assisted in workshops, lectures, and stargazing!

3 out of the 4 days during the festival, I was put in charge of the rocket building workshop. This was a blast! (no pun intended lol) We even decided to strap a small rocket with 5 engines on the last day to see what would happen. It ended up not going very far hahaha, but it was still fun!

I also helped out with planisphere workshops. Planispheres are simple plastic tools used to read constellations in the night sky.

While working in the visitor’s center and also assisting with tickets for the lectures, I had the chance to meet some amazing astro- and deep space photographers! Including Wally Pacholka, Time & Life magazine “picture of the year award” recipient! His work is unbelievable! Check out his website at astropics.com!

Each evening, at one of the campground parking lots, the Salt Lake Astronomical Society (SLAS) would set up over 40 different telescopes to view the night sky! One of the nights during the festival was unbelievably clear. The Milky Way streamed across the sky and, amazingly, visible to the naked eye! I got the chance to see things like iridium flares (which are rare and specific times when highly reflective satellites that catch the sun just right as they are orbiting, shine brighter than anything else in the sky), various nebulae (where stars are born), star clusters, and even Saturn! Saturn was really incredible. Seeing it with my own eyes absolutely blew me away. I never knew how different and more inspiring it would be than pictures I had seen before.

On the last evening of the festival, the staff threw a “StarBQ.” We had steaks, salad, and cheesecake in the same parking lot as the stargazing. It was a little too late in the evening for me to really enjoy the meal, but it was a nice celebratory event anyway.

Today, I played a little basketball and went to take some pictures of Bryce Amphitheater since the weather was so nice. While I was taking pictures, I noticed a “little person” lady walk by with, what seemed to be, a few of her sons. Then, a camera crew followed behind them! I quickly realized who they were and spoke with the ranger (who I knew) that was put in charge of escorting them around the park. They were filming “Little People, Big World,” right in Bryce Canyon for the day! That was kinda cool.

Now, the festival is over, and I’m scheduled to spend at least the next week in Capitol Reef National Park with the cultural resource specialist doing archeological surveys. I’m excited to visit a new park! We’ll see how I like the archeology :/