Life on the Road with June and Dave: City of Rocks - August 20th & August 19th Travel day

August 19th was a travel day from the Lavender farm in Oregon to Almo, Idaho. Funny sign for the day near Bliss, ID: Hot Springs, exit in 18 miles. Caution: alligators. Anyone other than Brett willing to share a hot spring with gators?

The other interesting thing we came across was someone moving one of the sections of a farm field watering system. The truck pulled it and there was a guy on the back steering the back portion.

August 20th - We are staying at a really nice state park campground in Almo with one of the highest concentrations of pinyon pines.

We did the geology walk in City of Rocks National Reserve today. One point of information, it is a reserve because when they “saved” the land, they did not take land away from the farmers and owners who already had land in the area. So as you go through the area there are parts that are the reserve and parts that are private property that people are farming. That is what makes it a reserve.

Something good to know if you go to a place that is part of the National Park Service you can go on the NPS app and download the information about the park. They have guided tours as part of that. Today as we were doing our hike, we could pull up the information about the geology on the trail as we hit the numbered posts on the trail.

The California Trail went through this area. You could see the passes and there was one rock that people who came through had signed with wheel grease from the wagons in 1849/50 time frame.

1850 - the D. Tickner travelled the trail 3 times. I can only imagine his strength

1849

There was one overlook that we were at that you could see a mountain range that was 100 miles away. (No picture as it wouldn’t look like anything in the picture). However, the sign showed you the name of all the formations and that this one set of mountains was 100 miles away.

Short geology lesson:

The rocks are made up of 2 types of granite - Green Creek (darker rocks) and Almo pluton (whiter rocks) Green Creek granite is up to 2.5 billion years old, oldest west of the Mississippi. Pluton is young at only 28 million years old. Pluton is an intrusive magma.

The little bowl like holes that collect water are called Pan holes. Pot holes are in river beds.

There was one rock they talked about called Bath Rock that had a pan hole that was 2 feet deep. Cowboys and rangers used to bathe there. We walked around Bath Rock, but did not see this pan hole.

Enjoy some pics.