Craters of the Moon Nat Monument

[honda03842]

Craters of the Moon is larger than Rhode Island and has a rift fault that is 52 miles long..... lava, in the pass came up thru the rift as well as thru some 60 cinder cones.

The thing that surprised me the most was that in Moose frequent the park.

[fusedlight]

Originally Posted by honda03842

Gary,
<snip>

At Craters a lot of the lava had a bright blue, shiny surface coating. Do you know what causes this?

Thank you

My guess is that it's a micro-metre thick glassy coating (that aforementioned "fused" tuff). It's not really blue...just an optical artifact. Think of it like an oil sheen on the surface of water. The oil isn't coloured, it just looks that way.

[honda03842]

You may want to attempt to get the maileing list from the people who run the "lower" maritimes rally in July. I was surprised by the number who had not visited Newfoundland.

[honda03842]

For those interested in Newfoundland. I should also say that May-July is prime iceberg time in Newfoundland.


Trails, Tales & Tunes Festival

[honda03842]

Gary,

Attached is a picture of piece of the blue coated stone; there is square miles of it in Crater. It looks like a surface chemical reaction since it does not go thru the surface very far. It looks like a blue mascara. Your can double click the picture to get a bigger view.

Also is a picture of our campsite in Crater...high on a windy hill. The fridge did not like it and would not keep running until nightfall when the winds abating. Though we were at between 5-6000 feet the fridge worked well when the win d stopped.

Night fall was about as dark as I've seen in a long while. The nearest towns are more than 25 miles aways and both less than 1000 people.

Speaking of the wonders of geology, today we're in Twin Falls, ID and have learned about the geology of the Snake River gorge...anothr amazing story.

[Jon Vermilye]

Here is a photo of the night sky I took at Craters of the Moon last year, and a moonrise from this year's visit.

[honda03842]

Great picture, absolutely love the night sky. It was so smoky last night that the moon was a deep orange, very eerie but not with the brilliance of your picture.

More rocks, when camped on the Salmon River we went into Salmon to attend the Sacajewea Festival, held since she was born in the area.

At the festival, among other events, a man and his son were chipping arrowheads and spear points from obsidian. I was wishing I had some. Today I got out of the Honda to disconnect the trailer and my site's s ian stone base had half dollar obsidian chips all over the place. Lucky me.

The Sacajewea Festival had another interesting event. Their were about 20 booths with dutch oven cookers, each booth cooking about 2 dishes. When you entered the area you bought 6 tickets for $5. You used the tickets to get food, typically a ticket an item. Clever and good event with all kinds of different dishes not to mention the country music band playing in the background.

[fusedlight]

I've asked my buddies on the Rockhound's Group for a reading on this.

[fusedlight]

And, as always, The Rockhounds Group goes for Teh Win!

http://www.minsocam.org/ammin/am58/am58_1048.pdf

From the abstract:

The unusual color of the "Blue Dragon" lava is due to intense blue light being reflected from clusters of tiny titanian magnetite crystals, which, together with crystallites of plagioclase and olivine, are dispersed throughout an outer layer of clear brown glass. It is proposed that Fe'* -> Fe8*, and probably Fe'* -> Tia*, electron transfer processes are responsible for the blue color.

Looks like I was partially correct... the blue IS a glassy surface. However, it's NOT an iridescent sheen as with a film of oil. It's a reflection off of teensy-tiny (techy phrase, eh?) layer of magnetite crystals.

Ain't science grand?

[honda03842]

Gary, Thank you so much. Science is grand and your help in understanding equally wonderful. I guess I need to join the rockhound group.

Thank you. A little knowing smile is on my face.

[fusedlight]

Easily done! Go to:

Rockhounds Info Page

GcB

[Carol H]

Originally Posted by ThomasE

We visited Crater Lake a few years back in the pre-trailer days, very nice, but didn't camp there due to the amount of mosquitoes. We're in the SF bay area of California, so going to Calgary and Glacier, we'll likely go through Nevada and Idaho bypassing Oregon. Interested in recommendations for any must see spots in Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Alberta.

Thomas on your way to Alberta the Valley of the Fire State Park area is a nice camping area with lots of interesting areas to explore and Lake Mead is just down the road and the Hoover Dam can be done in a day trip from there as well. Have to say that for a State park the Valley of the Fire had the nicest/coolest camping spots I have stayed in.

[honda03842]

Lake Meades public campground is also a good deal $10/5 depending on your age, shaded and water view sites. Valley of Fire is well worth the trip as Carol stated.