1 In all of the years camping at the Kern River County Park, I had neglected to take a photo of the Kern River. So here it is. The river ends near Bakersfield as it soaks into the aquifer and is also used for municipal water supplies and irrigation. Prior to human development, the river flowed into a series of broad, shallow, seasonal lakes.
2 So nippy, in fact, that the small weedy wildflowers had a thick layer of frost. (So did our tent).
3 Garry Hayes gets the geology party started by introducing the concept of geologic provinces, formations and faults that will be seen on the trip.
4 We had a HUGE class this trip.
5 Our first stop of the morning was at the velvety Ant Hill, the lesser version of the nearby Sharktooth Hill.
6 I found no sharkteeth this day, but I did find what looked to be a rib bone.
7 Steve and Laura hunt for 20 Ma shark teeth.
8 Steve finds his first sharktooth.
9 The class digs to find some good teeth in the Round Mountain Silt - a member of the Miocene-aged Temblor fromation. The area was once a shallow sea some 15 million years ago and home to a massive die-off. A severe red tide has been suggested as a culprit for the mass death and fossiliferous deposits.
10 Laura's sharktooth.
11 Laura was happy finding this large tooth.
12 The view from the top is quite nice, even in a dry, brown year.
13 Steve feels the wrath of a Joshua Tree.
14 Red Rock State Park. We were here to check out the Miocene Dove Springs formation within the Ricardo Group of rocks.
15 These rocks are part of the Ricardo Group and contain amazing layers of rhyolitic ash, sands and silts, most of which suggest a savannah-like setting.
16 Laura loves Red Rock State Park.
17 The students got to observe Steno’s geologic principle of original horizontality first-hand.
18 We found some interesting volcani-tuff breccia (big angular cobbles and gravel trapped in a finer-grained matrix) among the rocks within the Dove Springs formation.
19 Here's a small breccia.
20 This welcoming outcrop seemed to have a bit of cross-bedding or angular unconformities going on. I didn't realize it until looking at the photo, so I'll have to give it a closer inspection next year.
Day 2