Accretionary Wedge #57- Seeing Geology everywhere

Accretionary Wedge #57 - Seeing Geology Everywhere

Evelyn at Georneys has put out a call for post here accretionary-wedge-57-seeing-geology-everywhere/

I like to walk. No; that's not right - I love to walk.  If I don't do any other form of exercise for the day I always try to get a walk in.  Most of the time I like to walk a set course that is a little less than 3 miles.   I follow the sidewalks in my neighborhood.  And as I walk I like to meditate on things or just think about things in general.  Most of the time I brood about my family and the things that are going on within it.  But other times I like to clear my mind and just think about things in general.  One of my favorite general things to think about is geology.  I love it because I see it everywhere.  And as I walk I can see all sorts of geological things going on in the sidewalks that I walk on.

So now  Evelyn has put out this call and as I was walking I was trying to figure what I was going to write about.   I was getting thirsty on this walk.  Ta -da - something popped into my head - I know I can write about Slurpees and how when you suck on the straw too fast you break the capillary action and don't get anything out of it, but if you suck on it really slowly and steadily you can get so much more out of it.  I used to use this explanation all the time in discussing how to produce an oil field.  For awhile I was a developmental geologist and it was my job to help design how a discovered oil field could be produced to obtain its maximum production.  Most of the time when I would start talking about why drawing the oil out too fast wasn't good for the field, I would hit resistance - they wanted get as much out as fast as they could.  But if I got a slurpee and had them see how it draws down they could understand that.
    So that was what I was thinking about as I was walking.  And the more I was walking the more I was thinking about getting that slurpee when I was done.   Boy would it be good, especially since the weather was already in the nineties.
    But then gosh darn it wouldn't you know I would see something and the geology just popped out at me.  This is what I saw:

 Here Evelyn wanted cat stuff and in the side walk was these cat paw impressions, and also these molds being infilled with sandy material. 

All I could think about were those paleontology courses and how rare it is to get a land animal imprints and what would someone a million years from now think about this stuff if they discovered it while doing an excavation of the area.
    It also got me thinking about how when I see wet concrete there is just something in me that wants to leave an imprint. These people had the same impulse that I had and put their imprints for the rest of us to see for a long, long  time.  It also got me thing about years ago we did some remodeling and had to pour some concrete and we did something very similar.  When I got home I checked to see if I could still find it and I could get to a part of it but the rest was covered over. 

So I continued to walk and thought about the geology I was seeing.  And trying to decide what I should be writing about.  Then I came upon this weathered stain.

It reminded me so much of a field trip I was on where I saw something similar. If I recalled these red spots were from iron oxide weathering out from siderite.

Decisions, decisions- the more I thought about it I should just stick with the sidewalk stuff and see what I could come up with.
     It wasn't long before I came upon stuff like this to make up my mind.

When you first look at this you think oh- more iron oxide staining but then when I looked closer I realized there had been an magnolia petal that had deteriorated there.  This stain wouldn't last long but the other will stay for a long time.
Then there were other things like this which finally made up my mind for me and made me want to do sidewalk geology instead.

 Here was a vug where at one time there had been some organic matter that had gotten into the cement and had deteriorated leaving this hole.  Now its being filled in with other debris.

 I wondered if this hole had been created the same way? But when I looked at it more I decided it may have been an air pocket that collapsed when the cement hardened or else there could have been a pebble that was slightly higher and had popped out. 

Then I saw this crack that really showed the cement cracking out of it and creating holes that way.  It's so interesting to see how the cement cracks and weathers. 

Look at this radial cracking.  It looked like something may have impacted this sidewalk at one time.  Or Maybe a car drove on it.

Look at this crack.  To me it is a good example of normal faulting with the hanging wall to the top and the footwall to the bottom.   Here's another example of faulting with the tree roots being the cause for the uplift of the hanging wall.

 I then like to see the layering of sediments on top of the concrete.  And how in the lows the water has a tendency to accumulate the muds and such which then can harden.  I also like looking at how the redish sands are heavier and settle out then with the less heavy dark organic material on top.
    Some times you can see imprints in the mud/ graywacke material.

 Which reminded me also of these photo where there were dog prints in the sidewalk.  My dog was kind enough to provide a scale for those dog imprints. He's about 10 lbs.

Another imprint that I liked seeing was  these: 

I thought they were really neat to see.  I saw this section of concrete as it was being poured.  It started to rain really heavy as they were finishing up.  The striations across were done with the broom but the round circular marks are from the rain drops.
    On 6-18-13 which was after I did this post we got some very heavy rain.  As I walked after the rain I couldn't help but to notice the rain drop imprints on some sidewalks.   When the stuff is still damp that's when you really notice it.  
This 1st one isn't very in focus but you can get an idea as to how big the raindrops were - there is a dime for scale.
  This was almost all organic debris from the rain. 

Different side walk with more of a sandy underneath and less organic material.

raindrop imprints on a sidewalk

But I thought it was also interesting to see after it had dried in some places too and the matrix was more sandy than organic material (which also lead to its drying faster).  I always think of 'The present is the key to the past' and if you can see things in the present you know what you maybe seeing when you look at past rocks.  

raindrop imprints on a sidewalk

      Here's another interesting one. 

I like to think of this as an igneous dike cutting into the sidewalk and driveway.  It fun trying to figure out the sequence of events.  First there was the driveway to the NW corner.  Then came the sidewalk to the SE.  The there was fill in in the SE corner and the last was the W central driveway material added to make a circular driveway.

Some times the side walks act as conduits for water.  This to me looked like a natural spring but in reality it was a hose that had been left on to water a plant. 

 A channel is being formed.  There is so much that can be said about  water and water features that I'm going to skip them. 

 And sometimes you can see ripple marks in the street concrete. 

 And sometimes you can see graded bedding going on,  with the courser grains on the bottom and the finer ones near the top. 

I could go on and on about the rocks in the concrete but there isn't enough room to write about all of that.

One of the things I was not expecting to see but was just too cute not to take its picture was this baby blue jay.

baby blue jay on sidewalk

 I couldn't tell if its wing was damage or what but it sure did favor the wing over the other as it was hopping/ flying trying to get away. 

baby bluejay

I was just glad this bird wasn't at my house because here's what I have staying by my front door all the time.

And here's Evelyn's cat picture.
I always thought he was trying to do a good job demonstrating  stalagmites (rising from the cave floor) and stalactites (hanging from the cave's ceiling).

Now I wish I could have that Slurpee I was thinking about earlier.

Accretionary Wedge #54 - Geo Brews and Geo cocktails

Its the end of the month and I haven't done the Accretionary Wedge for the the month of January.  Ryan over at Glacial Till is the host (Accretionary Wedge #54- On The Rocks: Geo-brews and Geo-cocktails .  I know he wants people to be creative but right now I'm not up to being that way and from the looks of things I missed the deadline.  But I do like doing the AW so here's mine anyway

 I'm not much of a drinker.  When I do drink its usually wine or beer.  Being a geologist I naturally gravitated towards beer when I was in college.  To me there was nothing better after a day out in the field than to come back to an ice cold brew.

    One of the reason's I didn't drink much was because I was so broke all the time.  I simply couldn't afford to go out and spend a lot of money on drinks.  One of the cheaper beers I discovered was Rolling Rock and that quickly become one of my favorites.  At the time it was being produced in Western Pennsylvania ( here's what Wikipedia has to say about Rolling_Rock ).  Living in Southeast Ohio it didn't have to be shipped far and I think that kept the costs down for it.   It also said it was made from natural springs which reminded me of some of the natural springs we had were I was growing up.  I also liked that it was a lighter tasting beer. 

Now it is still made from natural springs in Missouri.  The funny thing was when I first moved to Louisiana I couldn't get it here.  But when they started to make it in Missouri about 2006 I could finally start getting it again, yet when I looked for it in NE Ohio recently I couldn't find it.  I must admit I didn't look very hard since there were so many other choices around and I don't drink more than one or two at a time.

So here's my favorite geologic drink.

Now I don't drink much due to health reasons.  But with it being Mardi Gras season its nice to have some brew in the house.

I muse:  Is it time to go and pop the top? 

Accretionary Wedge #53- The end of the world as we don't know it

Lockwood is hosting Its the end of the world as we don't know it as Accretionary Wedge 53.
The call is as follows:
You could make up a tale of geologic and sciency absurdity, describing in the most insanely over-the-top manner how the world/universe will end. Contrarywise, you could report on the world's end as it happens, complete with reporters going out to report "LIVE!" from the apocalypse. Personally, I think the world will go out in sectors, like an orange with 24 sections, as they pass through midnight, but I'm not sure whether it'll be at the beginning or end of the 21st.

Or, you might choose to pick a bit of "respectable" journalism, and pick it to pieces in the most acerbic way you can. (Rick Sanchez, "What's that [10 meters] in English," anyone?) Here are a couple examples of me doing that, the first to point out the myriad mindless errors and misjudgements: Science "Journalism" by Press Release. And the second to show the the original press release totally missed the boat on why this news was important and so very interesting: More On the Gigavolcano.

“Don't wake me for the end of the world unless it has very good special effects.”  ― Roger Zelazny

Or, like I said, you might have another idea. But remember, it's supposed to be a party. No downers allowed- though that might be a topic for another Wedge.



Okay here's my attempt at how I envision the world ending:

A few years ago, around where I lived they used to always say, 'Hell will freeze over before the Saints would win a super bowl championship.'   Well guess what they did win in 2010 and then a few days later we had snow!!  We just knew for sure hell was starting to freeze over.
Here's the pictures to prove it:

2-12-2010 Show on the Bayou

 This was two scenes from my back yard. 

2-12-2010 Snow on the Bayou

In Northwest Louisiana we hardly ever get snow. Every year we have one or two days of freezing but rarely are the conditions right for snow, more often than not if we get anything we get a freezing rain.  About every three years we actually do get some snow but the ground is so warm it never sticks or stays.  Its good for closing schools down and causing havoc with the roads since people don't know how to drive in it but other than that you really don't get to enjoy it.
But once every ten years or so we actually get something that stays and  can be played in. On this day it actually did snow and stayed.



   Now they predict that the world will end on Dec 21, 2012 which is also the first official day of winter.  When I think of winter I think of cold and snow. So that got me thinking about what would happen if hell really did freeze over when winter starts. We would be in a winter state all year long because there wouldn't be any ground heat to melt the snow away. 
    Most people associate heaven with the skies and celestial thing, and the think of hell as the underground.  Hot, fire and brimstone stuff. In other words places within the earth- Hades.  But the key thing here is that its inside the earth-- not some where else.  So now I'm assuming on 12-21-12 the earth is going to have to be cooled down so that hell can freeze over ie it will have to be below 32 degrees Fahrenheit.  That would mean that the upper core of the earth would have to solidify and quit being fluid. We would loose the magnetic field since it was now solid and couldn't move. This would play havoc with our electronic gizmos stuff.
  For the media that still be operating they probably would be report it wrong and blame it on The Penguin, of Batman's fame and enemy. The media will claim The Penquin finally invented a device that absorbs heat and turns it energy, unfortunately everything it touches turns into a frozen solid mass, by compressing the atoms so there is no space in-between the electrons.  Once it starts there is no stopping it, kinda like a chain reaction.  They try to stop it but its gotten totally out of control and just keeps on going, deeper and deeper into the earth.  

   Because the earth would have to get so cold to offset the heat produced by the radioactive decay of materials every thing would freeze.  The media would also be reporting all the fun activities that people would be doing.  The snowbirds would be in bliss they would think they could finally go skiing whenever they wanted too.  They'd just dress warmly.  Not realizing how cold things really would have to be in the end and everything with water in it would be frozen solid - even themselves.
     Since the earth is so cold it would start to shrink forming huge crevasses.  These crevasses would eventually meet up with each other causing huge piece of the earth to break away from itself.  These pieces would go hurtling into space and join the other cosmic debris that is out there. Soon there would be nothing left of the earth. The earth would be no more - fini- gone- kaput.  Thus the end of the world as know it.

    I would really know its the end of the world is as soon as some of this stuff started to happen people would realize whats going on- because the media would be telling me so. People would want to be with their loved ones.  My family & friends would try to contact me and say goodbye.  I would know its really,really, really serious if I ever got a text from a certain friend of mine, thanking me for the help I've given him through the years, and apologizing for being the way he was and realizing what a mistake that was and telling me he was sorry. Without a doubt- I would know its the end because I know the only time that person would every contact me is if he truly thought that -This is it- there is no future to look forward to and this is the the last chance he could make amends.


   Seeing that text would put me is such a state of shock I would have to inhale deeply.  I would inhale so deeply I would cause a barometric drop in pressure.  That and with the global warming that had been occurring plus now the freezing of the earth by The Penguin  would cause all sort of chaos to occur with the weather system.  The result would be one huge gigantic tornado.  This tornado would just keep getting bigger and bigger and wouldn't dissipate like normal tornadoes do.  Finally this system would get out to sea and become a hurricane/cyclone or whatever you would want to call it. Then it will cross the oceans and eventually come back on shore again and will spin off even more tornadoes.  Eventually it would cover the whole world with mass destruction either from the tornado or from the hurricanes. This massive system would help dissipate the heat that's been stored at the surface of the earth and cause it all to be release as one massive destructive force of energy.  .

   But these would be no ordinary weather phenomena since these tornadoes would be the type that come from OZ.  All my loved ones, even my friend that thanked me would be swept up in them and carried to a land of safety in another dimension. Only people with their towels will be saved and since most of my friends and family have read Douglas Adams  -The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (here's the Wikipedia link  ) they will be prepared and have their towels with them.  (Its been so since I read the books, I can't remember the names but I do remember how funny it was and ever since then I've been sure to carry a towel with me all the time in my car.  Most of the time its used for drying off wet kids from practices  and have found it to be some very valuable advice to have.) By having had  my family and friends saved we will all be able to live happily ever after.  - So there isn't a downer.  Plus I'll get to see some people I hadn't seen in a long time since we will all be deposited in the same area of Munchinkinland.
   
So here's how I see the world ending on 12-21-12-  it will simple be frozen solid.



Now I muse:  I wonder if it really will end - am I ready to go?   Should I start to carry my towel with me in my purse along with everything else?

Accretionary Wedge #52- Dream Geology Courses

This month Accrectionary Wedge #52 Call for post is being hosted by  Shawn at Vi-Carius  and is  Dream Geology Courses
The actual call is  here.

And here is the actual call by Shawn
This is the theme of this months Accretionary Wedge. If you are a geology/geophysics student then write about one or a few courses that you wish were offered at your university. They don't have to be traditional lecture type courses, they can be anything that you can imagine (and that are logical). Professors, feel free to do the same, or more specifically, write about courses that you wish you could teach, or that you have taught that were outside of the normal courses (stratigraphy, structure, mineralogy, etc).

For ideas, see my original post here

Now for my stuff:

First off I have not taken a geology course in quite a few years.  More precisely  I got my last degree in geology in 1981 and in 1990 I went into a different field and haven't really had a chance to take any courses in geology since then.  I would have taken some if there were any I could take but unfortunately I had already taken all the courses that were being offered at the local colleges in my area.  

So right now I really am not up to snuff as to whats being offered out there.  I do know my one son elected to take a geology intro course when he went off to college thinking it would be an easy course for him since I had exposed him to so much while he grew up.  He had a rude awaking and only got a B in it and said -dang that was a hard course!! and chose not take any more.   From his intro text book I could tell it was now broken down where more emphasis is place on water and hydrological processes and I was pleasantly pleased to see that.  When I was in school you had to wait until you were in grad school to get that type of exposure.  I always thought there should be more on hydrology since water is so critical to the world and where humans live - its nice to see others feel the same way I do and more emphasis is being place on it. 

    When I first got out into the real world, the one thing I realize I was woefully lacking in was business courses.  My company encouraged all the engineers and geologist to get their MBA's and were willing to pay for it provided you had completed the course with a decent grade ie B or A.  But to be able to get into the MBA program you had to have met their undergraduate requirements which entailed courses like accounting, finance, economics and business law.   I had always wished there was a geology course that could have covered those basics so that when I entered into the work force I felt more prepared for understanding income statements and balance sheets.  Later after I had taken the accounting courses I felt so much more prepare in understanding the way businesses worked and why even though you may have a good  project if it doesn't pay out within a couple of years it just wasn't going to happen until it became economically feasible because it all was based on the price of the commodity you were trying to sell. 
. 
    Now that I'm older and been out in the real world for quite awhile, I think the one course that I would have really like to have had would have been one on how to invest in buying gold, gemstones and other mineral interests. I would have liked to have had more information on this so it could help me with my investing in retirement accounts. I've seen the stock market rise and I've seen it fall drastically and when it crashes like that everyone says 'buy gold'.  Should I buy gold pieces that have numismatic value or is it better to go with companies that mine gold? Should I invest in an oil well - if so what type of interest should I have? What types of gems make good investments and also have nice intrinsic appeal that are affordable for resale if need be?  Should I buy futures and if so what are good future minerals to invest in - salt, sulfur, copper, silver, etc?  

     Also from the practical point of view -  I wished I had a course that taught you how to appraise rocks - gems and minerals.  Something that would help you earn certification through the American Gem Society (here's what Wikipedia has to say  about the  American_Gem_Society ).  When I was working on  my undergraduate degree I thought if nothing else I could work in a jewelry store until I could get a job that I considered more in line with what I wanted to do with my geology training.  I was made aware of how distinctly different jewelers were from geologist when I applied at a local jewelry store and was asked why type of certification I had.  All I could say was I had passed mineralogy and optical mineralogy.  That wasn't good enough for them.  They wanted only trained jewelers and certified gemologist.  That was a whole different line of education than what was being offered at where I was going to school.  I often wondered why the two couldn't be intermingled since we were both using the same type of equipment.
    I do know in later life being a certified gemologist is a good job to have.  My brother-in-law was one for many a year and it made a good second career for him. He always was able to keep busy because it  seemed like there was always a need for an appraisal of  estate jewelry or for insurance reasons by someone. It was good for him because he could work from his home and had flexibility in when he did it so he was freed up to do other things too.  And on the side his wife liked to string beads and make jewelry that he would sometimes sell to stores he was doing business with.

   Finally there is another course I  would have liked to have had too.  Recently I just read a book by David R. Montgomery called 'The Rocks Don't Lie - A Geologist Investigates Noah's Flood'.  I really enjoyed reading it and as I read it I thought this would make a great book to teach from.  I liked the way David Montgomery takes you through the history of the way geology evolved and how the church world and the science world split over some very dumb ideas.  He did a good job explaining how both can coexist together and there really doesn't have to be such a big rift between the two as there now exists.



Now I muse:  I wish colleges weren't so expensive now, because I would have been a professional student if I had enough money to keep on going.  I love learning.  I do know when I was in school it seemed like I couldn't get enough geology courses and there was always something being offered that I wished I could have taken but due to scheduling just was not able to. 

I Muse:  I saw were Glacial Till - Ryan Brown was taking a Scanning Electron Microscope course and I was so envious of him. Oh how I wish I could take that course too and am so glad to see it being offered. For my thesis I did some work on one and wished I could have spent more time on it.  At the time SEM were relatively new and not much work had been done because they were so extremely expensive to operate. The thought of a whole course on just that one instrument alone is so encouraging to see.  The possibilities of  the things that will be discovered just boggles my mind.

I'm not a poet - No Accretionary Wedge #51 Geo Poetry

I just realized, I missed the Accretionary Wedge 51 (   http://blogs.egu.eu/geosphere/2012/10/03/the-accretionary-wedge-51-call-for-posts-geopoetry/    for the month of October over at  Matt Herod @ Geosphere.  I guess the reason I missed it is two fold.

First off I'm not a poet, and have a hard enough time trying to compose lame limericks.
to prove it here's my feeble attempt:

My unPoem:

I'm so not a poet
and I truly know it.
I'm completely fine
instead of wasting my time
writing poems about rocks
to be knitting socks.
So a poem wont' happen
Now I'm putting down my pen.


The other reason is my main computer has been down, and I just have the iPad to work with. It's great for keeping up with email and such but lousy for writing long things on it.



I muse: you can't do them all.

Accretionary Wedge #50- fun moments in field camp

Evelyn is hosting Accretionary Wedge # 50 over at geornerys  . 

Here’s the topic:

Share a fun moment from geology field camp or a geology field trip. You can share a story, a picture, a song, a slogan, a page from your field notebook– anything you like!

It's been quite awhile since I've been on a field trip.
But there is one trip I will never forget - The Geomorphology Field trip of Oct 1979.  It seemed like anything that could go wrong went wrong.  I was suppose to be a simple leave Friday afternoon, camp out at a state park and return the next day and we would eat at restaurants around where we were stop.  Pretty simple and easy.

From the moment we all heard about it  we had a bad feeling about it- none of us wanted to go on this trip since it was right in the middle of midterms.  But it was a mandatory one & if you wanted to stay in the good graces of the department you went - I think having the Department Chairman planning it & leading it  might have been a contributing factor to influencing our decisions to go.
   We all met at the schedule time in the scheduled place - raring to go. Only problem was there was no van. The van was being used by the geography department and they they were no where to be seen. Our departure time came but still no vans to go in.   So we sat and waited, and waited, and waited.  Finally after dark they showed up - (this was before cell phones and no one knew were they were).  They didn't realize the van  was going to be used after they got back and had stopped to get some food and a few brews by the smell of them.They half hardily apologized and took their sweet time unloading.  Then we noticed that the van was on empty so we had to find a gas station that was open- it took a couple of stops before we found one that had the right type of gas we needed.   Needless to say we didn't make it to our first planned stop that night.
   We went to the state park instead and set up our tents.  It was no fun setting up the tents in the dark, especially in a place were you have never been to before.  We finally go them up or thought we did.
    Then we went looking for some food.  By then the restaurant that previous trips had gone to was already closed.  So we had to ask around and realize that we were in the middle of no-where Southern Ohio and there just wasn't any other place to eat.  We finally found a 7/11 open and swarmed in on them like a plague of locus. It was everyone for themselves and you were lucky to get a bag of chips and a drink. Needless to say the owner was very happy with all that we bought and told us to be sure to come back. 
    We went back to our camp site and decided we would be on the road at the crack of dawn so that we could make up some of the lost time due to the missing vans.  Instead of staying up and drinking like some of the guys were my tent mate and I decided to get ready for bed.  We went to the showers and discovered they had no hot water.  I took a sponge bath and called it quits.
    During the night it got very cold and the next thing I knew it started to rain.  It was pouring down when we found out we didn't set the tent up as well as we thought we did.  The one end collapsed.  I shifted over but was now in front of the door.  The door wasn't as water proof as the rest of the tent.  And so all night long I had a steady drip, drip, drip on to my sleeping bag.  I was so glad that I had a polyfilled one verses a down filled because my tent mate had a down  filled one.  The water was rolling off my bag and accumulating in the corner were she was sleeping.  She had down and her bag got soaked and she had the most miserable night of her life - as she so delicately put it.

We were all up well before dawn and couldn't wait to get on the road.  For such a miserable night it was surprising how beautiful the day ended up turning out to be.  It didn't take us too long to find a place were we could eat breakfast, and things were looking better.
    This trip was basically a geomorphology trip.  We saw some interesting erosion features at our first stop.
I even have a picture or two.  (Please note: These images are not the best because they were taken in Oct 1979, and were on slide film.  I just recently have been able to digitize them)

My memory is rusty but if I remember correctly this was an glacial moraine.  And we were looking at features in it and being told how you can tell the difference between a moraine deposit verse a stream deposit. 

 A lot had to do with the grading and seeing cross bedding in it.

 
We didn't stay long at this one spot before we were on the road again.  I didn't mind because I was seeing some lovely fall foliage too.

Then we went to the next stop.  It was a strip mine that was being reclaimed.  We weren't there very long before a pickup truck showed up and two men with rifles got out and asked us what we were doing.  The department chairman, went up to them and told them who we were.  He showed them the letter he had giving us permission to be there at this piece of property on this particular day.  The men said they didn't care who we were - we were to leave and leave promptly.  The department chairman started to argue with them, which wasn't the best thing to do.  They started to get a mean look on their face and it wasn't long before it was decided we best leave.  I did get one photo as we were departing.

 We next went to a golf course that gave us permission to walk along the creek, as long as we kept out of the way of the golfers. We saw some nice erosion features as we walked along the creek bed.

 Here's the group walking along the bed trying to keep dry.  For as much rain as we had the night before I was surprised at how low the water was.

 And this is one of my all time favorites photos of that trip.  The department chairman getting so involved with what he was talking about - he didn't care where he was standing.

 This is what he would have fallen into if he fell.

Finally it was lunch time.  We stopped by a grocery store and got some food.  We all made something to eat and weren't planning on being there long - trying to save time so we could see some of the stuff we had missed the day before.
  Here we are resting and talking about what we will see next.  I'm in this photo - a friend of mind took it without me knowing about it.  It was a pleasant surprise when the slides got developed and has become one of my favorites.

I'm  resting with the rest of the geomorphology class

We were headed back to the car when we noticed we had a flat.

Here's the department chairman fixing the flat.

 So then we had to sit and entertain ourselves.  Some were more creative than others.

There was one more quick stop and then we were done. This was about how careful you must be with clays and weathering. If you look in an area make sure you cover the area back because if you don't over years you'll end up with features like this.  I liked this photo because it was so pretty at the time.

Ohio fall foliage

All I can remember was I was so happy to finally have gotten back to the University.  At least I had Sunday to study for the midterms.

Accretionary Wedge #49- other worldly geology

Dana Over at  En Tequilla es Verdad    has put out the call for post with this:

The time for our next Accretionary Wedge is nigh. I suppose it’s about time for your host to let you know what the topic is, then, innit?
With Curiosity landing at the base of a three mile high mountain on Mars, I think we all know there’s only one sensible choice: we must head for other worlds!

Curiosity’s first photo of Aeolis Mons (Mount Sharp). The 3 mile high mountain in the middle of Gale Crater was named for geologist Robert Sharp, one of the finest field geologists America ever had. He worked with NASA on several Mars missions before his death in 2004. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Dude. That is us, snapping photos on another planet like typical tourists. Okay, science tourists, but still. And this mission has got a lot of geology in it. I’m loving this mission. But it’s not the only time we’ve done some exogeology. So let’s don our space suits and explore some alien geology! There’s lots to choose from:
Mountains on Mars
Mercury Messenger’s unprecedented look at a hot planet
Io’s volcanoes
Venus’s bizarre surface
Plate tectonics on other worlds*
Hydrogeology on other planets (and if fluvial morphology is caused by liquids other than water, what do we call it?)
And more!

This image is the first high-resolution color mosaic from NASA’s Curiosity rover, showing the geological environment around the rover’s landing site in Gale Crater on Mars. The images show a landscape that closely resembles portions of the southwestern United States in its morphology, adding to the impression gained from the lower-resolution thumbnail mosaic released early in the week. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Can’t get out of the Earth’s gravity well this month? Not a problem! There’s plenty of “other-worldly” geology right here on our home planet, from features so bizarre you’d swear they’re from outer space to places where space agencies have tested equipment like rovers and trained astronauts to walk on other worlds. Places so remote and inaccessible we’ve been to Mars more often than we’ve explored them. Places that are so extreme that we turn to them for ideas of what to look for beyond our pale blue dot.
Since it’s already mid-month, I’ll give you a smidgen of extra time to explore: try to have your posts in to me by September 7th. We’ll publish the 2nd week of September.
Don’t miss the rocket – this edition’s gonna be a blast!


So here's my musings for this call.


When I first thought of what to write the first thing that popped into my mind was Meteor Crater.  (here's what Wikepida has to say about it Meteor_Crater.)  But then I figured lots of other people will probably think of that place too since that is a place that got hit by a meteor and when I think of 'other worldly geology places' I think of worlds covered with meteorite craters.  Yet I kept on thinking about Meteor Crater and decided to look at the pictures I took of it back in 2004 just for old times sake. I was disappointed to realize I didn't get a whole lot of pictures because I had just gotten a new digital camera and was trying to figure out how it worked.
 
   While I was flipping my photo album to those pictures I came across the ones for the petrified forest first.  I remember at that time thinking how alien that place looked and how it felt like I was on some distant planet and not the planet earth.  To me that meets the criteria of 'other worldly geology places.'
    Now I have to just say I'm going with northern Arizona so I can cover those two areas since they both struck me as other worldly geologic places with some really neat geology and they are less than 100 miles apart on I-40, which is really nothing when you consider how big the world is. 

METEOR CRATER
     I first went to Meteor Crater when I was a child of about 10 which was back in 1965.  I remembered being all excited about being able to see a place that had been struck by a meteor and wonder how they could tell that. I wondered was anyone hurt when that happened?  I thought it was a recent event - and wanted to make sure it didn't happen to me.  When we got there the viewing deck was closed to viewing but the museum was still open.  I read everything I could and was very disappointed I wasn't able to see it for my self. At least I found out it would be very unlikely for me to be hit by a meteorite and my curiosity about the place was satiated since the meteor hit 50,000 years ago.   I vowed to myself that some day I would come back to this place and see if for myself again.  And I finally did in 2004 and it was worth coming back to for sure.

And here are the 2 images I got of the place. (the others didn't turn out)
 Looking to the western side of the crater rim.

Meteor Crater, Arizona (April 2004)

And this was to the eastern side. It was morning time when we got there. 

Meteor Crater Arizona (April 2004)

I did find the geology interesting in the area and here's what Wikipedia has to say about it:

Geology

The impact created an inverted stratigraphy, so that the layers immediately exterior to the rim are stacked in the reverse order to which they normally occur; the impact overturned and inverted the layers to a distance of one to two kilometers outward from the crater's edge.^[22] Specifically, climbing the rim of the crater from outside, one finds:

• Coconino Sandstone (sandstone formed 265 million years ago) nearest the top of the rim
• Toroweap Formation (limestone formed 255 million years ago)
• Kaibab Formation (dolomite formed 250 million years ago)
• Moenkopi Formation (mudstone formed 200 million years ago) nearest the outer foot of the rim

 I also couldn't leave the place without getting something from there, so I was glad I could get a piece of meteorite oxide from the museum store.  Here it is

Meteorite oxide from Meteor Crater, Arizona

  THE PETRIFIED FOREST
   When I went out west the first time my family didn't have time for the petrified forest and skipped it in order to go to the four corners.  I wished they did go there because once I heard about it I always wanted to see it and was surprised they didn't once I realize how close the two were to each other. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about  The Petrified Forest National Park  .
  In April of 2004 my husband and I decide to visit Arizona. We decided to fly into Phoenix,  see lake Montezuma, spend a night in Camp Verde, then go to the petrified forest, spend a night in Winslow then meteor crater, spend a night in Flagstaff and check out the San Fransisco mountains and then head up to the Grand Canyon and spend two days  there and then back to Phoenix to catch our plane after he too a course for his continuing ed.. We came to the park from the south- southwest  on  route 180 and were purposely taking the back roads so we could see the area.  My husband had never been in the area before and wanted to see it.  Driving the back roads like we did gave us good feel for the place.  What impressed me more than anything was driving up to it how desolate everything was.  There were very few evidences of man and if it wasn't for the road we were on, I  doubt that I would have ever been able to find the place, even though it covers 146sq miles of Arizona.
(in 2011 we got back to Arizona again because that one trip just wasn't long enough and there was so much more we wanted to see and this time we took a plane trip to the Grand Canyon- Here you can see how desolate things really are - we were flying from Phoenix to the Grand Canyon and this is the area the pilot called the Painted Desert. As you can see there's not much out there.  Very sparse vegetation.

The Painted desert

 This area is famous for its petrified wood.  When you see the logs there is no doubt that at one times these were logs in a forest.  But then when you get up close you see that they are now turned into rocks that are beautiful in there various colors.
 Like the meteorite I just had to buy some samples to take home.
Here you can see the edge looking like tree bark and the growth rings of a tree.

 Here's the other side that is polished.

petrified wood from Arizona

 These rocks have eroded from Triassic rocks (Chinle formation) that formed more than 200 million years ago.  Its kinda amazing that these rocks have eroded out of the formations that they did since the area is so arid (getting less than 10 inches of rain annually) but that they have done.
    It is this dry arid climate that lends itself so much to it being so alien and reminding you of 'other-worldly geology places'.  Because to me that is the one thing that seems to make our planet so unique  - is its abundant water. Every other 'other-worldly geology' place just has the rocks but not the effects of water.  Some do have weathering effects due to their unique systems but again they just don't have the same type of  weathering like we do as seen on our planet due to water.  That's why its was so hard for me to think of a place that reminded me of a distant place - everything I think of has some sort of effect due to water and has lush green vegetation covering it. The petrified forest surprised me at how little vegetation there was and when I did see some I took a picture of it.   Enough of my babbling and now here's the pictures I took.
 Just look at this log and the size of it.  It amazed me that it could still be so well preserved.   

 Because this log didn't have branches, I could just imagine this pine tree tumbling down some huge river and having all its branches being stripped.  Kinda like the logs I see floating in the Red River after a major storm (like right now with hurricane Isaac.)   Then it hits the swamps of the delta and gets plopped down in gooey smelly mud.  Because the deposition is so fast the environment is anoxic and the log doesn't get a chance to decompose before it is covered over with more sediment.  It stays in the ground for awhile in this seal environment.  Then to the west a couple of volcanoes blow their tops, kinda like what Mount St Helen's did in the 1980's.  The fine ash gets transported into the atmosphere and then slowly settles down into this watershed basin.  The ash is high in silica and the conditions are just right for the silicious solution to percolate into the ground and fill in the voids of the tree. Over an extended period of time eventually everything organic gets replace and the tree has now turn into a beautiful stone.  Then the area as a whole got uplifted and eventually it was able to weather out of its encasing  surrounding shales /sandstones. 
   It's hard to keep in mind that this area wasn't always so arid.  That during periods of glaciation there was a lot more moister in this area and that is when these logs were most likely weathered out.    Here's some more images of the arid environment that the Petrified Forest now occupies.

Petrified Forest National Park

The Chinle Formation (Triassic) , Petrified Forest National Park. (Apr 2004)

 

The Petrified Forest National Park

The Petrified  Forest national park

The Petrified Forest National Park

 And finally I had to get this picture of this tree trying to grow against the odds.

Petrified Forest National Park

 That's it for now.  Now you know why I feel Northern Arizona is an 'Other-Worldly  Geology Place'.

 I muse:  I think the reason we probably couldn't go to the viewing area at Meteor Crater was because they were most likely training the astronauts for the moon mission.  When I went again they had a whole display about it at the museum.  I wish we could have seen that - I'm sure I that would have been so neat to tell people when I got back home. 

I muse:  You would not believe the problems I've had trying to get this post done.  Needless to say hurricane Isaac is wrecking havoc on our cable system/ internet system.  It keeps on knocking it out.- I was hoping by Aug 31 it would be working again but it's not.  I've kept this short because of that. 

I muse: At the time I took these photos I was still used to taking film photos and were used to be limited to 24-36 images at a time- I would take images sparingly so I wouldn't run out of film or in this case space. I had no idea I could get so many images on one disc.  Now I take all that I want and just delete the ones I don't - and only print the ones that I really like. Oh how the times have changed in just 8 short years.