the lowest point in my life (geologically!)

You may not know this, but classes at Vassar love making you get your hands dirty. 

In perhaps the perfect way to escape New York’s when it was perpetual winter, I traveled to Death Valley, California over Spring Break with my Sedimentology class!  Our entire class has been structured around studying the types of sediments and landforms we would encounter in Death Valley, so it was incredible to actually go there and see (and touch!) the geology firsthand.  We slept in a rustic Desert Studies Center used especially by geologists, biologists, and ecologists studying Death Valley and the Mojave Desert.  Our days were packed full of traveling and experiences: we visited multiple canyons, squeezed through holes in volcanic rocks at Hole in the Wall, saw a beautiful desert spring, traveled to Badwater Basin (the lowest point in North America), and even drove out into the middle of a salt bed at sunset to watch a comet pass over the mountains.  We climbed the tallest sand dunes in North America (Kelso Dunes) and, by scooting in unison down the steep sand slopes, created a deep, rumbling noise in the dunes caused by avalanching sand.  It’s called ‘making the dunes sing’!  The stargazing was, of course, also amazing.  This was my first time in a desert, but I’ll definitely never forget it (even if my tan has already faded).    -Katie