With China to the south and the former Soviet Union on its northern borders, Mongolia is truly a land between. Squeezed between two recalcitrant neighbors and often in its history over-run with forces from both sides, the country nevertheless looks much as it did centuries ago. The landscapes vary from rolling sand dunes of the Gobi Desert to green and grassy slopes of the Steppes.

This past August, Ernest H. Gilmour, Professor of Geology, and Dale Stradling, Emeritus Professor of Geography (and a 1950 EWU alum) took part in a ten-day expedition to the Steppes and Gobi Desert of Mongolia. Gilmour's 16-year old daughter, Laura, and Stradling's wife, Teiko, also made the trip.

The goal of the expedition was to collect 250-million-year-old fossil bryozoans from mountains in the Gobi Desert for Gilmour's research. They succeeded in bringing these fossils back to the Paleontology Laboratory at EWU for study.

During the expedition, they stayed in traditional round Mongolian huts, or gers with nomads, drank salty tea and the fermented milk of mares, ate dried goat yogurt and tasty marmot meat, and bounced along in Russian vehicles for more than 1000 kilometers.