This blog shouldn't really be here, it's not that I am 'working to rule' so much as the photos here were all taken on our day off, our rest day and this will normally mean no blogging.
In fact we did have a good rest, but on Monday of this week and we took ourselves off to the very lovely Elephant Rocks State Park. Just a few miles from our RV site.
It was full of rocks.
As the avid reader will know we have those that have a great interest in rocks following us so this is for them but you may enjoy as well, I hope so.
The rocks were formed a long time ago. Although the park has excellent information I could not begin to explain how the rocks were formed. Suffice to say that the rocks are very big, heavy and old. They are granite.
Now more Elephant Rocks.
So anyway the RV site has a big games room and block with laundry etc in it. This looks like pine but is in fact concrete, so that would be the place to go, and yes we are to have a storm tonight but happily it was nothing dramatic.
Cheers Bruce-granite is always igneous rock,ie formed by fire-within the molten magma beneath the Earth's crust.The rest here is lifted from Wiki.
ReplyDeleteGeologically, Elephant Rocks State Park consists of a tor, which is a high, isolated rocky peak, usually of jointed and weathered granite. The alkaline granite here was formed in the Proterozoic 1500 million years ago from a dome of molten magma. Nearly vertical fractures formed in the stone as it cooled, and uplift of the formation enhanced the fracturing. Eventually the overlying strata were removed through erosion, exposing the granite dome. With exposure, water and ice worked to weather and erode the surface of the granite and to expand the fracture joints. Eons of weathering produced the rounded boulders that are the park's signature.
The reddish or pink granite has been quarried in this area since 1869, and two abandoned granite quarries are within the park. These and others nearby have provided red architectural granite for buildings in states from Massachusetts to California, but most particularly in St. Louis, including stone for St. Louis City Hall and the piers of the Eads Bridge. Stones unsuitable for architectural use were made into shoebox-sized paving stones that were used on the streets of St. Louis as well as on its wharf on the Mississippi River. Stone quarried in the area currently is used for mortuary monuments and is known commercially as Missouri Red monument stone.
The Tors of Somerset (Glastoinbury Tor), Dorset,Devon and Cornwall were similarly formed at the same time as Elephant Park-both being part of an ancient Earth movement.
ReplyDeleteWould love to join you on last leg, but its a school day and holidays aren't flexible.
All the best, keep up the great work.
Dave and Bin
I see that Dave must be the reason for the Geologist posts :) I wondered who was a fan out there.
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