Ecuador Rapid Array Mobilization Project: Full speed ahead!

Day two and wow was this a busy day. We were up by 6:30am to get our truck loaded and hit the road by 7am. Its great to work so early in the day because it doesn't really get too hot until mid-morning or noon. So working early helps minimize our hours under the brightest sun and also maximizes our hours of usable sunlight. We also helped our time by getting breakfast at a bakery in the morning and lunch at a supermarket the night before. In the end, we were able to get five stations serviced. That's pretty great because we were only scheduled to get three today. The other service team also was able to get five today and two yesterday, leaving us just six total. We're going to team up tomorrow afternoon to finish those off and hopefully be back in Quito by mid afternoon Friday.

Since we were so far ahead today, we had a chance to walk down to the beach in Tonsupa. We walked on the sand, saw some shops, and then had a great little traditional Ecuadorian dinner at a small restaurant.

As we were driving, I was thinking a bit too much about a classic geo101 concept: U vs. V shaped valleys. I grew up, geologically speaking, in Michigan and Yosemite Park. Both of these are dominated by U shaped valleys. U shaped valleys form from slow glacial action wearing away the edges of a valley. Yosemite Valley is probably the most classic example and when I first saw it, my jaw dropped. In Ecuador, however, glaciers are pretty rare and so we see tons of V shaped valleys, everywhere. V shaped valleys form rivers running down hills or mountains. Nature never makes things that are perfectly uniform, but this is a pretty cool, easy to see, and useful geologic process indicator.