Road Trip IX, Days 33-37, Kentucky to Kansas: Bluff Buffs, Sharing Our Love of Sandstone

Posted on March 21, 2019 by gretchenwing

Since this is Road Trip #9, you can imagine how many times The Mate and I have crossed Kansas. But Kentucky, not so much. We’ve generally passed either above or below it; the big interstates make it fairly easy to miss. But this year we went to eastern Kentucky, on purpose, for two reasons.

Reason #1: St. Patrick’s Day was our 40th anniversary, and we wanted a pretty place to spend the night, plus a kitchen for me to make the Reuben sandwiches we’ve been eating together ever since March 17, 1979.

Thus: Natural Bridge State Resort Park.

Ooooh.

Pretty place with kitchen: check.

Reubens: check. (Roasted Brussels sprouts weren’t a thing 40 years ago…but they are now!)

I’ll be honest: the culture of eastern Kentucky makes me uncomfortable. In these polarized times, it’s hard not to imagine people looking askance at our scruffy Subaru, and The Mate’s ponytail. It’s hard not to wonder how we’d be received if we were a gay couple, or people of color. I also imagine what they’d think of me, a middle-aged lady acting like an early retiree, eating my hummus-arugula sandwich…a left-coast, REI-wearing, Subaru-driving Ivy Leaguer…

Maybe I’ve been listening to too much CNN, or reading too much US history, but that polarization is real

So it was a sweet relief to get up into those lovely trails and find people…enjoying the same beauty I was enjoying.

Ooh!

The Natural Bridge itself is very cool…

…whether from above…

…or from a distance

…but it’s only part of the sandstone sculpture on display. There’s also balanced Rock…

Rock: check. Balancing: check.

Lovers’ Leap…

Those teeny-tiny tents down there tell you how high up this is. Leapin’ Lovers!

…and then just the stone itself. I couldn’t get enough.

So…pretty!!!! I can’t stand it.

All the trails are concentrated in a small area, so I imagine during high season it must be pretty crowded. But in March, meeting handfuls of other tourists was just nice. Everyone up there had walked steep trails for the sake of scenery: my people!

Reason #2 for our Kentucky dalliance was two sets of old friends, not seen for over a decade. The first lives in Louisville, where I didn’t take any pictures, but we did ride our top-favorite bike path, the Louisville Loop, so here’s a picture from last year.

Coolest bike path ever! You go, Louisville!

The second was in Land Between the Lakes, near Kentucky’s western tip. We met our friend for a day hike, then spent another night in a very pleasant cabin. (Could we have camped? Yes. It only got down to freezing that night. I wimped out. No excuses.)

“Hey, it’s nice and warm in here.”

No sandstone here, but we did enjoy a lovely lakeside walk…

No sandstone? No problem.

which treated us to some splendid little crowds of turtles.

Yes! Spring’s a-comin!

And just as before, meeting fellow walkers in the woods did my conflicted soul as much good as reuniting with an old friend.

From Kentucky we headed across Missouri, another non-Subaru state. There, we visited another section of the amazing Katy Trail, a 200+-mile rail-trail that stretches nearly the entire length of the state.

And such a cute name too.

Our section follows the Missouri River, thus…bluffs!

Ahhh…

Otters wallowed in the powerful current. Cliff swallows attended their nests. Signs alerted us to Lewis and Clark’s one-time camping ground.

Mud nests. Not pictured: otters, and Lewis & Clark.

Because it was the middle of a work week, we met very few souls out on the Katy. But just knowing it was there, knowing that citizens of Missouri support this…

You can see I-70 crossing the Mighty Mo in the background

and this…

Free air for your tires and everything!

…gave me those warm fuzzies about my fellow Americans that I so badly need.

Next day, we had one more sandstone encounter, this time in Kansas. Most of what you see of Kansas from the interstate is fields (pretty unimpressive this time of year), but as you might expect, a few miles off the big roads yields great results. In this case: Wilson Lake State Park.

I mean, it’s not a wheat field, but it’ll do.

And guess what: sandstone bluffs again!

Hey, buddy!

Once again, our privileged status, on vacation in the middle of March, gave us the park to ourselves. And the solitude of my walk set me thinking.

The real stuff, the good stuff, what we share as fellow Americans–love of our land, our families, and our freedom to enjoy both–that’s our bedrock. Like sandstone, it has accrued over time, all the time warped and eroded by pressures like economic need and religious mandate. Sometimes it’s just covered up by ugly growth.

Something like this

So I hope and pray that this period we’re living through now is one of those temporary times–a period of ugliness from which our bedrock may emerge. I pray the rock isn’t riven straight down to its core. Let those bluffs hold.

Road Trip VIII, Days 39-42, Colorado Springs, Durango, Page, AZ: Big Rocks Rock. Don’t Ask Me Why.

Posted on March 22, 2018 by gretchenwing

WHY are giant rocks so irresistible???? I’ve been pondering this for three days now.

From these breathtaking, knife-edged monoliths casually lounging practically in our friends’ Colorado Springs backyard…

The Garden of the Gods is just a city park!

…to the gloriously tempting caprock ledges of Mesa Verde…

The Mate skirts the edge…

But I gotta go right to it!

…to the hopelessly delicious sandstone of Navajo Country…

Must…climb!

…I am in awe. There are these Rockies…

Pikes’s Peak at sunrise, from our friends’ window

Looking back toward Durango from atop Mesa Verde National Park

…and then there are these, and what they do to me I’m still trying to understand.

Is it their smoothness? Their age? Their color? Their…? I give up.

Igneous, Sedimentary & Metamorphic Rock: Why Grand Canyon Offers The Best Metaphor For Love & Marriage

Posted on July 2, 2016 by gretchenwing

I adore geology metaphors. Plate tectonics, uplift, magma–are you kidding me? In Grand Canyon last year, even before this trip, I was struck by the way the three types of rock symbolize the growth of a long-term relationship. So struck, in fact, that I wrote a song about it. I’ll let the lyrics explain themselves, ok? It’s called…

Rocks of Ages

When I first met you, I couldn’t get you

Into my arms fast enough

You said you adored me, you melted down for me

Hot lava lava lava love

Two igneous kids, swimming in bliss,

That’s what we were at the start

Now that we’re older, the magma’s grown colder

But we’re still rock solid down deep in our hearts.

[igneous, ok? Plenty of that around Lava Falls in the lower half of the river]

Hot lava lava lava love

Rocks of ages, counting the stages

Life is what happens while you make other plans

After so many changes, the only thing strange is

How the earth still moves when you take my hand.

[That’s just the chorus. Now for the sedimentary, the layered stuff:]

Albums in piles, stretching for miles

Children and homes and careers

Stacking our cares and blessings in layers

Years upon years upon years

Life’s mighty stratified, but I’m nothing but satisfied

Let’s go ahead and grow old

Call us sedimentary, we must have been meant to be

‘Cause the age that we’re heading for is looking like gold.

Call us sedimentary…

Rocks of ages, counting the stages

Life is what happens while you make other plans

After so many changes, the only thing strange is

How the earth still moves when you take my hand.

[here comes the bridge…]

Who could have seen us, all that passion between us

Living those promises of sickness and health?

I’d like to say I knew, when we said “I do,”

But you know I’d really just be fooling myself.

[and now, finally–metamorphic. Rock whose chemical structure’s been changed by pressure, heat and time. That’s marriage for ya!]

After so long, feelings so strong

Generate forces so vast.

Family pressures, too strong to measure

Uplift a life that will last.

We didn’t plan it, but our love is granite—

Yeah, we got metamorph hearts.

Love in our souls like diamonds from coal

Gives us riches to live on till death do us part.

Yeah, we got metamorph hearts

[my beloved Vishnu Schist!]

Rocks of ages, counting the stages

We entered into with those golden bands

After all of our changes, the only thing strange is

How the earth still moves when you take my hand.

Rocks of ages, counting the stages

We entered into with those golden bands

After all of our changes, the only thing strange is

How the earth still moves when you take my hand.

Yeah, the earth still mooooves when you take my hand. G. Wing, April 2015

See what I mean?

Oh, want to hear what the song sounds like? Copy & paste the following URL into your browser (sorry, couldn’t get it to work as a link):

C:\Users\Gretchen\Documents\songs\RocksOfAges.MP3

Or maybe you want to share your favorite geology metaphor? Please, rock on!

Reason # 7,582 Why Grand Canyon is Just That: The Great Unconformity

Posted on June 28, 2016 by gretchenwing

If you read my last post, you know how hard I’ve been grooving on Vishnu Schist, the somewhere-around-2-billion-year-old rock at the bottom of Grand Canyon. For all of y’all who aren’t quite as rock-geeky as I am, how about this to blow your minds: in this picture, I am spanning approximately 1,050,000,000 years (that’s 1.05 billion) with my thumb and forefinger:

And my fingers aren’t even all that long.

Huh?

Allow me to let the geology experts at LPI Education Resources explain for me:

An unconformity is a surface in the rock record, in the stratigraphic column, representing a time from which no rocks are preserved. It could represent a time when no rocks were formed, or a time when rocks were formed but then eroded away.

The Great Unconformity (a.k.a. huge gap in the rock record) happens to exist between my beloved Vishnu Schist (metamorphic, formed by pressure) and the sedimentaryTapeats Sandstone laid down (much later) above it.

For me, it’s one thing to contemplate the scale of millions and billions of years laid down in rock. It’s another entirely to contemplate millions and billions of years that AREN’T THERE.

Where did they go? Were they laid down, then eroded away? Why those rocks, those years, and no others? Or were they never laid down at all? Why on earth–or, more accurately, why NOT on earth?

I already want to come back in my next life as a geologist. Since this life is already too full, I think I’ll have to wait till then to fully explore those questions. Right now, I’m content just to groove.

Schist Happens: How I Fell In Love With A Bunch of Rock

Posted on June 24, 2016 by gretchenwing

It’s called Vishnu Schist. It’s estimated at 1.8-2.2 BILLION years old. It was waiting for me at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

So….black…

It’s black–black as tar-covered ravens in a coal mine at midnight. It’s shiny. At river’s edge, it’s fluted into perforated columns I wanted to climb into.

So….shiny….

This was, of course, impossible, because A) I was paddling past the schist with 6 other people, and B) since the air temperature was around 115 degrees, the schist would have branded me all over.

Still, what a way to go.

Know what else is amazing about schist, aside from its age and its looks? It’s made from metamorphosed limestone. Think about it: WHITE rock created from the bodies of once-LIVING sea creatures turns, with enough time and heat and pressure, into this:

There’s even a word for that shine: “schistocity.”

Talk about a metaphor that rocks!

There are other rocks in Grand Canyon to love, and I will write more about them in the coming days. But right now I’m still reveling in the memories of that sleek, black, geological poetry.

Road Trip VI, Days 8-11, Pinnacles National Park to L.A.: How Giant Rocks Bring to Life My Inner Philosopher-Child

Posted on February 19, 2016 by gretchenwing

I said it last year in a post from Joshua Tree: I LOVE big rocks. Climbing on them, sitting in their shade, hiking around them–heck, even just driving past. There’s something about the way a nondescript hillside suddenly bares its soul to reveal the inner globules of sandstone or tuff or conglomerate that were there all along: “Look what I got going on!”

Let’s go, y’all!

And yes, of course I don’t mean “suddenly”–we’re talking about erosion here. But that’s the effect, and it gets me every time.

The Mate and I just spent two nights camping in Pinnacles National Park. While our nights were private, there were actually four of us on our daily hikes: us two, my inner child, and my inner philosopher.

Big Rocks!!!!!

Inner Child was the loudest: “Can we climb on that? Can we can we can we? Ooh, look–CAVES!!!!”

Caves!!!!

But Inner Philosopher was just as insistent: “Do you REALIZE that all these fantastic spires and hoodoos are actually just the remnants of what is there ALL THE TIME–what you are even now walking upon and taking completely for granted? Have you thought about what it MEANS that only passivity in the face of inexorable forces can reveal the inner truths of external appearance? Was the Buddha right–all is illusion? Or are these rocks the living soul of the earth? Or are they merely the next layer that our mortal eyes are capable of SEEING?”

I see a spire. Inner Philosopher sees…inspiration.

Luckily for The Mate, most of this chatter was inside my head. All he had to put up with was me, oohing and ahhing at the condors and hummingbirds. But he was doing the same.

Couldn’t get a picture of a condor. But here’s a hummingbird for you!

I know this isn’t a classic travel blog, but just in case you find yourself in the lower Bay Area or traveling toward LA on I-5, here’s a classic travel blog tip, take yourself to Pinnacles. Who knows who might turn out to be making the trip with you?

Road Trip V, Days 35-37, Yucca Valley (Joshua Tree N.P.) to Lone Pine, CA: Why Big Rocks Rock

Posted on March 29, 2015 by gretchenwing

Let me rephrase that. Why DO big rocks rock?

The Mate and I just spent two days looking at and clambering around on the big rocks of Joshua Tree. (“Clambering”–what a great word!) We’re still feeling high. And I’m trying to figure out why.

Is it because big rocks erupting out of the earth make us wonder what else is under our feet?