Blogs from Death Valley, California, United States, North America - page 2

After realizing that in this whirlwind return to school that I'll never catch my tail, I figured I might as well crank out this last entry now before it gets any later. We were without either power, electricity or both on days 7 and 8, and day 9 was the flight back which coincided with St. Patty's Day. So forgive the tardiness, but hopefully that line of excuses suffices one way or another. There is still plenty of geology to cover, so let's get to it! Day 7: Our first stop was along a roadside carved through a U-shaped valley.... hint, hint. The lateral moraines rising up from Bishop Creek was the last piece of evidence we needed to certify that this was the result of glaciation (photo 1088). From there we followed the creek ("crick" ... read more

Death Valley California and Death Valley Junction Nevada Well we managed to get out of Las Vegas fairly easily and I was glad to get away from the mad cap driving I can tell you, so it was back to Howard’s usual mad cap driving but at least there was only one lane on each side of the road! Death Valley was HOT so HOT infact I don’t think I have ever been so HOT as it was there. It was a really barren, arid, dry landscape with mountains. We got to Badwater Basin which was below sea level and you could walk out onto the salt flats, so we did. Well the heat was unbelievable even with a hat on it felt as if you had a burning hot weight pressing down on your head ... read more

A few photos from our trip across California, Vegas and the Grand Canyon.... read more

Hi Friends and Family, This was the day that we were leaving and again, we had to decide where to have breakfast as breakfast was not included in the cost of the hotel and hotel prices were OK but for two adults and one growing child would amount to nothing less than $50.00 and I'm not doin' it! No way! So back to the internet / local tourist magazine for up-to-date info and I found something. In one of the magazine, there was a small advert about a "real" restaurant in the locality that was so good, it was given an award for "best service" in 2010 and is known to have one of the best breakfasts in town. I checked it up via a consumer website called "Yelp" on the internet and it seemed to ... read more

Staring at Walls: An Extended Hunt for the Elusive Rock Lady: Digital Rasters and vector polygons once burnt my eye balls. Geological maps from the 1960s were scanned, digitized, exported to ArcGIS and georefrenced. Maurandya petrophila is an odd life form. It is of the Scrophulariaceae family, kin to Monkey Flowers, Penstemons, Indian Paintbrushes, and the like. Rock Lady has dark green leaves covered by tiny silver hairs and edged with an irregular spikiness. It blooms sometime between April and July, exposing a cream colored flower with two striking yellow lines extending deep from from its throat. Rock Lady grows only in small cracks on sheer walls of limestone. Exposed limestone is abundant in the many canyons of Death Valley, but Rock Lady does not grown on just any type of limestone. It only grows on ... read more