Happy Boxing Day

Here are some pictures of the Christmas Day blizzard as it looks the day after. The wind has died down and we felt it might be worthwhile now to move the monster drift out of the way so we can eventually back the car out of the garage. That will have to wait, though, till we can get rid of the bigger drift at the far end of the drive. We'll have to wait till the snowplows get finished with the road. Maybe we'll be lucky and they'll move part of it for us.

This snow managed to insinuate itself everywhere. The pickup was parked outside, and this is what we saw when we opened the hood.


This is the drift created by the Forsythia bush south of the house. This picture hardly does it justice.

The sun barely pierces the cloud cover and the view to the southeast is really beautiful today. (You can click any of these images and see a bigger view.)

Here's Susan working on a snow angel.

...and the result.

The nice thing about ugly weather is that afterwards it's beautiful.

"Brain Rocks" (and update)

(Note: There's an update at the end of this post.)

There is a layer of limestone near our house that is composed of what we have been calling, for want of a better name, "brain rocks." This is because their texture is like the folds or sulcus of the brain. What are they? That's what we'd like to know.

Here is one spot we find them -- south of Robinson in Brown County, Kansas, on the hill south of the point where Buttermilk Creek crosses Redbud Road -- coordinates 39° 47' 51.18" N and 95° 24' 21.05" W:


The rocks are mostly eroded out of the hill here, but are almost everywhere you look. (Click on any picture for higher resolution.)


These rocks are sometimes found in a conglomeration, and sometimes they are separate. They range from tiny, to up to 5 inches in diameter. Many are broken in half, revealing layers on the inside. Below are photos to show the texture and detail of several samples.








Update:

We received the following excellent replies to our queries -- the first from the Fort Hays State U. geology department:

I suspect that the rock you're looking at is some variety of limestone or dolostone. Without being able to do some basic field tests I can't be more certain. Limestone would react vigorously in weak acid, whereas dolostone would visibly react with acid only if powdered. Both would be scratched by steel or glass.

The Kansas Geologic Survey geological map for Brown County indicates the nearest bedrock is Pennsylvanian-aged rocks of the Wabaunsee Group. It's impossible for me to say from here exactly where you fall in the overall stratigraphy of that group but it's constituted dominantly of shale with a number of limestone formations interspersed.

[...] I hesitate to go much beyond that without seeing the rocks firsthand. I do suspect that some of those rocks on your blog post (the ones that show concentric zonations, particularly) are showing post-depositional effects of interaction with groundwater, either during the process of diagenesis (original solidifaction of the sediments) or during subsequent hydrothermal events or weathering. [...]

Sincerely,
Ron Schott
Department of Geology
Fort Hays State University

...and the second from the Kansas Geological Survey:

According to Bob Sawin, a geologist here who has studied this area, these are stromatolites, a kind of fossilized algae from the Pennsylvanian Period of geologic history, roughly 300 million years ago. You can learn more about them at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stromatolite.

These are actually fairly common in various Pennsylvanian and Permian rock units in eastern Kansas. Bob says these are from a rock layer called the Soldier Creek Shale, which is part of a formation called the Bern Shale. Here's a scientific reference about them (though this is a publication that would probably be pretty hard to find, and would undoutedly tell you more than you need to know).

Sawin, R.S., West, R.R., and Twiss, P.C., 1985, Stromatolite Biostrome in the Upper Carboniferous of Northeast Kansas, /in/, Dutro, J. T., Jr., and Pfefferkorn, H. W., (eds.), Compte Rendu IX International Congress of Carboniferous Stratigraphy and Geology, vol. 5, Paleontology, Paleoecology, and Paleogeography, Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale and Edwardsville, Illinois, p. 361-372.

Rex Buchanan
Deputy Director, Outreach and Public Service
Kansas Geological Survey

A few more pictures

These are from our last two walks from this vacation. Here is a flower cluster that we haven't had time to identify. Maybe some of you have a flower ID book for the mountains, or western region or something.
This is called mountain figwort.
Here we are at Lake Ann on Thursday. This was just before Susan started off up to the Continental Divide. Greg wandered down to that lake in the background and watched and took pictures of her.
We found this strawberry and ate it after taking this picture. We've noticed that strawberries have the same amount of flavor regardless of size. This one, smaller than a pea, delivers the same punch as one of those huge hybrids.
And this the picture from our hike up to Pass Creek Lake today: a small, tough desert flower which we haven't identified yet. The blossom looks like maybe it's in the buttercup family.

Close-ups, continued...

This is an alpine sunflower, also called "Old Man of the Mountain." This one is a little past prime, and reminds me of Van Gogh's sunflowers.
Here's meadow (or field) chickweed.

This is either stemless goldenweed, arrowleaf groundsel, Fremont's groundsel, or something else.
A toadstool.
And Fremont geranium. Richardson's geranium is white, this one's pink or purple.

Some Close-ups

These pictures are from our hike to Buffalo Meadows, northeast of Buena Vista, on Tuesday. The first is wild roses, of course. Click on these to zoom in.
This is a mariposa lily, early in the morning so it's not completely open yet. Mariposa is Spanish for "butterfly." It's also called a sego lily.
This is a ladybug watering itself on a monstrous dewdrop on a leaf. Susan got face-to-face with him/her with the macro focus setting on the camera. Needs editing, but I can't figure out how to do it on this library computer.
This is called "beautiful sandwort." I spent most of the morning today looking through about 5 wildflower ID books, so I'm almost sure of this.
And this is alpine clover, also known as whiproot clover.

Cloyse's lake and Ptarmigan Lake

Yesterday we hiked up to Cloyse's Lake, starting at Rockdale (in Clear Creek Canyon a little above Beaver City). We took a few pictures, but we'll let this one of white columbine stand for them all. You probably already know you can click on any of these pictures and see them in huge magnification, probably too big for your screen. We hereby thrust them into the public domain, so you can use this as a background if you want.

The yellow flowers are from today's walk, up to Ptarmigan Lake, and to the pass just above it. These flowers were beside the path at the pass. In the background you can see the rock slopes above the lake with patches of snow still on them.

And the third picture is Susan in her cold-weather clothes at the pass. You can see those flowers in that picture, too. -- G&S

Well, it's been about a year. We're in Colorado now. We stayed a few days in a cabin in Twin Lakes. This is the view from our front porch (Susan's photo).

This is the destination of the hike we took Friday -- an unnamed lake right below the pass below Deer Mountain.

This is a white flower.

And this is columbine.