Jan. 7th: Death Valley National Park

Scotty's Castle

Scotty's castle
Scotty's Castle

A little bizarre for the middle of the desert, but it is California.
tuff layers
Igneous strata

From the hill behind Scotty's Castle, you can see a number of layers in the hillsides. These are all layers of volcanic ash - different colors for different eruptions. The white layer is shown in a close-up below. This rock type is called volcanic breccia.
volcanic breccia
Volcanic breccia

This is the white rock shown in the previous photo. The grey material is very fine grained volcanic ash. The larger pieces are chunks of rock that got erupted from the volcano - this type of eruption is highly explosive, and the explosion will fragment the volcano, and the chunks get incorporated into the ash. You can see some of the pieces are fairly large (an inch or so in size).
frisbee
Post-lunch workout

After playing with the semi-tame coyote, some of the students took to playing frisbee.


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