Wednesday, February 13, 2008

When the Tule Fog gets you down....

The Central Valley of California is not one of the grandest places to be in the world in February, although I am sure that my friends in snow country might disagree, but frankly, it's not very long before the fruit trees bloom, pollen fills the air, and my hay fever goes hypercritical. When this all happens, I realize I have to get out of town. So...I am dragging 15 or 20 students out of the classroom, and we are headed to Death Valley for a long weekend!

There is no place in the world quite like DV...the oldest rocks in California, evidence of the Proterozoic snowball earth, 36,000 feet of Proterozoic and Paleozoic sedimentary rocks, detachment faults, strike-slip faults, turtleback faults, thrust faults, a two mile deep fault graben, the hottest and driest place in North America, the lowest place in North America, four species of fish (?!), and that is only scratching the surface.

Blogging will be slow for a few days...they haven't installed wi-fi in the campgrounds just yet...


2 comments:

Silver Fox said...

Wow,great photo, and one of my favorite places - and on the ground!

Sure would like to see some photos of turtlebacks, detachments, and all that good stuff when you have time.

Julian said...

Death Valley is one of those places I really should have visited by now. Have an awesome trip! We'll all be expecting photos!

And be sure not to come to the Inland Empire for anything right now, if you want to save yourself from sniffles. The trees are definitely in full force already. (Or if this isn't full force, then actual full force is going to be my sinuses' doom.)