Saturday, September 06, 2008

I Wanna Rock - Saturday 9/6/2008


And not so much roll.

At least, not while hiking.

Anyone know under what circumstances the round and egg-shaped bits of quartz are created? We also found lots of fairly crystalized quartz, like the stuff in the lower right corner.

We didn't really plan to, but we climbed through a barbed wire fence to check out some freeway-side detritus that Hydra thought might be a motorcycle gas tank, but which turned out to be an empty red 50 pound dog food bag.

Then we explored the huge terraces where the northbound 14 cuts through the hill just south of Santiago Road. Verboten! It's so cool to be a grown up and know that a) you probably aren't going to get caught because it's too much trouble to try and catch you and b) the fine would be worth it.

The base of each terrace is probably 15-20 feet wide. It was interesting to look down at the freeway and to realize that where we were standing was once the inside of a hill.

And me without my camera!


Possible geode.



More of the eggy quartz. (Don't quote me in any term papers, kids. This is not a technical term.)

3 comments:

ksweets said...

hey sally, awesome photos. email me mweigold@iusb.edu so i can add you to my political blog. Dana's would be awesome too! Love you!!!

Liz Dwyer said...

Are you going to break the possible geode open? My boys are dying to find one. Seeing those quartz makes me remember how my sister had a rock polisher when we were kids. The rocks turned out so lovely when they were polished. I bet these quartz eggs would as well.

Sundry said...

Hey Megan, Thanks for the invite. I'm so there!

LA - Yeah, we are going to break it open. I'll post the results. The other things we've found that looked geode-like were just more of the same inside. Acton's supposed to be a good area for geodes, though.

Maybe your little rockhounds need to come up here and poke around. This was found about a 15 minute hike from our back door.