Saturday, February 03, 2007

Armed with a pointy stick!

Today, in a fit of defiance and solitary determination, I Jeeped out to Red Rock Canyon solo. Turns out that wasn't too hard to do afterall, but the lack of companionship decreased my inane "bravery" to a level that prevented me from exploring old rundown buildings. I still ogled them from a safe distance though. Below is a summary of the day with geology learning links especially for Kilometres.


I like how my jacket's shadow makes me look like the marshmallow man! Grrr! Beware the pointy stick! I bet it could be a snake-stick too if need be. Thanks sister-dear!

It was a gorgeous sunny day, crisp air, but lots of warm sunshine! I took the opporunity to dry run a field trip I will do this semester and also take photos with my super-awesome 28-105 mm lens. Of course, since I was mainly using the ol' Nikon - I only took a couple of digital snaps to show all my faithful blog-readers. Here I am parked at the edge of a basaltic lava flow (most recent flow 130 000 yrs old atop fabulous columnar-jointed 400 000 yr old basaltic lava flow, annoyingly in a virtually impossible-to-photograph location) by a red cinder cone and "Fossil Falls". No murders today though.

Behind the red cinder cone is a flat expanse of mud cracks and a field of pyroclastics. It's a most surreal landscape (got to test 4wd here!).

And the "gem" of the day has GOT to be this Joshua Tree sculpture. When I first drove by I thought it was a regular tree decorated with some sort of shiny geometric design. I couldn't figure that out, so I figured out how to get to it. Can you guess what it's made out of? Behind are shacks that I desperately wanted to investigate, but vetoed, just in case they were near crazy desert folk with guns who didn't want me investigating.

7 comments:

bek said...

Are they horseshoes? Very neat sculpture anyway.

gnat said...

yes indeedy! it's one lucky joshua tree!

gnat said...

or unlucky... which way are horeshoes supposed to go?

Dawn said...

Did you really take a scenery shot featuring your jeep? It's almost like a JEEP advert!

gnat said...

I'm hoping for endorsements...

(Although, to be fair - the Golf has been featured in its share of scenery shots as well!)

Unknown said...

...which isn't to say you couldn't get endorsements from both companies. You have to hedge your bets when fishing for endorsements.

The sculpture was great. I never would have gotten horseshoes out of that. What are the spiney parts though? Any clues?

Also, thanks for the geology links, I learned a lot. I especially liked the pyroclastic rocks laying hither and thither.

In reference to your link to the red cinder rock... why does one mine cinders?

gnat said...

ahhh cinders, they make "clinker" or I should say ARE clinker - which one uses to line railroad tracks and BBQs.
I have no idea what the spiney parts are...