We flew to Albuquerque first thing Monday morning. After we gathered up our luggage, we loaded into a van and started driving north to Taos. Our lessons started as soon as we got on the road. As we drove along, our instructors, Bill Muehlburger and Pat Dickerson, tagged teamed talking about all the mountains and features along the way. There is no way I will be able to summarize all the information that we received over the course of the week, so I won't really try. Suffice it to say, we learned tons of stuff (or, perhaps more properly, we were told tons of stuff - hard to tell how much of it will stick. . .). Bill and Pat are walking encyclopedias. Bill has been advising NASA since the early 1960's on geology. He has taught every one of the astronaut classes. It was quite the privilege to have him as an instructor. And, it was so interesting to hear all the stories that he and Pat told. It turns out that back in the 1950's, Bill did a lot of the field work to create the topographic and geologic maps that are still in use today. Wow!

So, we drove along and discussed the landscape. Every so often we would stop and look at some things more closely. The geology of northern New Mexico is quite amazing. Everything is there from volcanoes to areas that have been under the ocean. The rocks in some places are nearly 1.5 billion years old. The Rio Grande, which cuts through the region, exposes a great deal of the geologic history. Speaking of the Rio Grande, at one point on our tour for the day, we passed a cabin along the river where my family stayed for a vacation about a dozen years ago. That was fun to see - brought back some good memories.

Tuesday was more touring and discussing the region. We started out at the Rio Grande Gorge. If you have never seen this gorge, you have missed an impressive sight. We began with a lecture in the middle of the bridge at the top of the gorge. We discussed the big picture land forms that we could see, both down in the gorge and all around us. Following that, we proceeded in the van down some back roads (i.e. not-on-the-map dirt roads) to the bottom to view things up close. We had lunch at a park near where the Red River intersects Rio Grande. Here is a fun fact for you. The records show that the Red River used to be the head of the Rio Grande. The current head of the Rio Grande joined up with the lower part of the river later.

After we had eaten our picnic lunch and before we hit the driving trail again, we spent some time looking at stereograms. These stereograms were made from space. Pictures of the ground are taken at different angles from the Shuttle or some other space craft. When viewed through stereogram glasses the pictures show the ground in three dimensions. The detail you can see is quite amazing. The stereograms are quite a useful tool to see the big picture geologic features that you might otherwise not be able to see from ground level.

Wednesday was a busy, busy day. We covered a lot of territory. We began by going to a spot along the Rio Grande where the Apollo 15 crew trained for their lunar mission. The location was near the town of Pilar and was a gorge that was about 1 mile across and 650 feet deep. This gorge was similar to Hadley Rille on the moon. After we had a lecture about the rocks and the geologic history of the area, we looked at pictures that were taken by the Apollo 15 crew on the moon. As we stood on one side of the gorge and looked at the rocks on the opposite side, we could see that they were the same type of rocks that were opposite the Apollo crew across the lunar gorge. We could also tell that the lunar gorge was cut by a lava river, similar to the way that the Rio Grande cut the gorge where we were. It is hard to describe how exciting it was to have our geology training come together in this fashion. To put it in the vernacular - it was WAY COOL.

I learned during the course of our day that before they went to the moon, the Apollo astronauts had a lot more classroom training than we have had. Plus, they had mission specific training. But, the basic field training we are doing is quite similar to their basic field training. If we get picked to go to the moon, then we will have more detailed training later. Interestingly enough, the moon crews all reported that their first walk on the moon was difficult from the standpoint that there were no trees or signs, etc. to give a sense of scale. After they had walked around a bit and sort of paced things off, they were better able to tell the scale of the features and rocks that they were seeing. I never really thought about it before, but I guess it would be had to tell how big or small something was in the distance when you have no reference with which to compare it.

After we left this particular gorge, we did more driving around the area and discussing of features. At one point we stopped at what appeared to be a random crossroads. There was absolutely nothing there except some grassy areas next to the side of the road. Turns out we were at a spot along an old (pre-Columbus) trade route. This was pointed out to us since there were pottery shards all around us - right there next to the road! There shards were from several different time periods. You could actually see a progression of artwork and materials in the different pieces that we found. It was absolutely fascinating. One thing is for sure, if you didn't know where to stop, you would never have known that there was a pottery shard goldmine there.

After our pottery stop, we went to a spot where there had been a hot springs in times past. Come to find out that rocks deposited in such springs are called travertine. And here I just thought that travertine was just some fancy building material. . . We collected samples of the travertine rocks and found snails and shells embedded in them - which is one way to tell that there had been pooled water in the past at that location.

After scoping out the travertine, we had a lunch break and then we drove to northern Colorado. We stopped at a mountain pass that was over 10,000 feet in elevation. This Southern flatlander was a bit chilly. . . We went to this area to look at glacial deposits. Aside from learning what travertine was, I also learned today that opals are glass that has melted and reformed. As far as I am concerned, that may be how the geologists think about opals; I just think they are pretty.

We had a change of pace on Thursday. We did not have the usual driving tour and talking day. Instead, we worked with some folks from the US Geological Survey and the New Mexico Bureau of Geology. Basically what we did was perform field work on some Indian land looking for hidden faults. There is a river that goes through this land that makes an unexpected turn. Normally when rivers make turns such as this one does, there is some kind of obvious reason, such as a change in rock composition due to a fault. Where this river turns there is no obvious fault, but that does not mean that there is not one (or more) hidden below the ground. So, we gathered data to try and better define what was underground. We investigated the ground by taking gravity and magnetic variation measurements.

While we relaxed after dinner, the geologists were busy reducing and interpreting the data that we had collected during the day. They presented us the initial results Friday morning. What they concluded was that there were a couple of breaks in magnetic data that may point to faults under the ground, but gravity data was not as clear cut. The second half of our class will have their field training in July and they will collect more data in this area. After their trip, we will get a full report on what was found. Hopefully it will make sense when all data gathered. Even if no faults are found, we have helped the geologists better understand the geology of the region. One of the other projects that the geologists are working on are to define the geology of the region to better understand how/where water flows - a very important thing to understand in such a dry climate.

After our data results briefing we headed back out in the van to look at more geologic features. Today we drove over to the giant volcano caldera that is west of Taos. Actually, there have been several large explosive volcanic eruptions in that location in the past. We were told that this is still considered a live volcano, although, it has not shown any signs of getting ready for an eruption any time soon.

At the caldera we were introduced to geologist/microbiologist who works with our instructors at the University of Texas. This person studies bacteria and how they may have formed/lived on the early Earth. How does a microbiologist get hooked up with geologists? Well, rocks are a fundamental part of a bacteria's habitat as the rocks provide minerals for use by the bacteria. The basic theory is that the early organisms, which came into being about three and a half billion years ago, were hypothermophiles, or, rather, life that could live in extreme conditions - hot temperatures, high carbon dioxide concentrations, high ultraviolet concentrations, and limited oxygen. Today we see life on Earth in lots of places that we would not have initially expected, for example, at the bottom of the ocean where there is no sunlight (but there is energy from vents on the ocean floor), or in the dirt about a mile under ground (the bacteria get nutrients from material leeching out of rocks by water percolating downward). So, we know that life can exist in very harsh environments.

Hot springs, as it turns out, are harsh environments and have similar conditions to what the early Earth my have been like. The hot springs are a rich source of chemical energy. We went to some hot springs in the area and looked at the types of life in the hot pools. I certainly did not realize how many layers of life there are in these pools around the springs. I just thought it was green goo. . . While we were at said springs, we helped to collect data and various samples. We collected various shades of goo and took data at the locations of the goo we collected. The data we took was temperature and pH. Even in the small amount of data we collected, it was very easy to see how the temperature decreased and pH increased as you got farther from the source of the spring. The color of the goo also changed with distance. Pretty nifty.

Once we were done at the hot springs, we loaded the van up and headed to airport. Most of the class went back to Houston. Dottie and I, however, stayed to do some hiking over the weekend. We figured, how could we not? We were already there. We rented a car and drove back to Santa Fe. We spent most of Saturday hiking around in the mountains near Santa Fe. After we were done hiking for the day we poked around the shops on the main square and had a delicious dinner. Ah, Saturday was definitely good for the soul. We went back to Houston on Sunday.