Caching on Monday & a Visit with Doris & Roy 8/10-11/2009

Monday morning, even though it was very hot and humid, we went out to do some caching in the Bernardston and Turners Falls area. Our first 3 caches were right in Bernardston, the first being on a deserted baseball field, one on the gate of the recycling site and the third at the site of a 1780 iron foundry and later in 1852-1913 a cutlery company until the building collapsed in 1964. Next cache was at the Factory Hollow industrial area of Greenfield and site of several mills in 1784, in 4 story granite factory buildings. Built in 1830, woolens were made for the Union Army during the Civil War. Operation ceased in 1872 and factory burned in 1933 and the only thing that remains is a bell tower (which by the way wasn't visible). Next cache was at the Songline Emu Farm where they have has been raising all natural emu, without hormones or antibiotics, since 1995. They sell their own formulated emu or and emu meats.
Next cache was located inside the Great Falls Discovery Center in Turners Falls. The Center is fully accessible and is housed within a complex of old mill buildings and includes open habitat exhibits, fish tanks, and a multipurpose program room. Exhibits highlight various habitats found in the watershed, time lines put perspective on today's view of the threats to habitats and what we can do to safeguard them. The four-acre park that surrounds The Center has butterfly gardens, native plantings views of the canal and river as well as safe play areas. This park is linked to a railtrail that runs from Turners Falls to Deerfield, a walking tour through downtown Turners Falls, and the watchable wildlife areas of Barton's cove and along the canal.
Next cache was in Unity Park in Turners Falls which is home to the Turners Falls Fish Ladder: fish ladders along the Connecticut River to help migrating fish pass over its dams.
Next was a cache in a parking area overlooking the Turners Falls Dam and our last cache was a Earthcache which right across the street from the cache overlooking the dam. The cache had to do with a rock formation which was igneous extrusive rock. When it comes to igneous rock there are two types: igneous intrusive and igneous extrusive. First, what does igneous mean? Well the word igneous comes from Latin, which means born of fire. Igneous rock begins forming beneath the Earth’s surface where the environment is hot enough to keep rock in a molten magma form. This molten magma eventually hardens into rock in two different ways. The first is the molten magma rises, as any hot material will, towards the surface of the earth. As it rises it can reach a shallower depth than which it came from, yet it may not rise to the surface. Here in this new environment the rock will cool, still under ground. This kind or rock is called igneous plutonic. The word plutonic means under ground. This is how igneous intrusive rock is formed. Igneous extrusive, the kind or rock that you are observing, forms a bit differently. This rock also began forming beneath Earth’s surface in the form of molten magma. The difference here is that this molten magma oozes out of fissures, cracks, in rock at the surface of the Earth, or it flows out of volcanoes. Volcanoes in Hawaii flow out lava in this manner. As the rock reaches the Earth’s surface it spreads out and loses the name magma, but gains the name lava. As this rock flows across the surface of the Earth it cools rapidly, much faster than igneous intrusive rock. The entire ocean floor of the Earth was formed this way and it too is igneous extrusive rock. One way to determine that you are observing igneous extrusive rock is that you will see that there are nearly no large grains in this rock. That is you don’t see large mineral crystals. Remember that like ingredients in chocolate chip cookies, minerals make up all the rocks found on the Earth. The rock you are observing does have minerals in it, but it doesn’t have large crystals of them. This is because the rock cooled too quickly. Remember that the rock cooled on the surface of the Earth. Rock that cools on the surface of the Earth had little time to cool, it cools very rapidly. This leaves little time for large grains of crystals to form. For example, if you were looking at igneous intrusive, such as granite, you would see large crystals of quartz, feldspar, and mica minerals. You don’t see this in the rock you are observing. Granite has large minerals because it cooled under ground near the surface but not on the surface of the Earth. The rock you are observing is igneous extrusive called basalt. Some of the rock looks like it has a course texture, but don’t confuse that with large grains of minerals. One can find large grains of minerals in smooth textured rock which may in fact not be igneous extrusive rock. Where did this large rock structure form? It is possible that that this rock structure formed when basalt oozed from a fissure in rock at the surface of the Earth. It is believed that this crosscut through the road on Route 2 is Deerfield basalt. It belongs to a huge outflow of lava called the Deerfield Basin from the Jurassic period that formed a huge flow of 180 feet thick of basalt that is sandwiched between coarse to fine grained sediment strata. Turners falls is believed to be on one side of glacial Lake Hitchcock this may explain at least one of the sedimentary layers. In some locations along this rock structure (the eastern and western ends of the structure) you can clearly see vesicular looking basalt. This vesicular rock (looks like tiny holes and tunnels through rock) is associated with hot, gaseous lava flowing out of fissures and volcanoes. That's your history lesson for today everybody.
Then we drove back to the coach for lunch and dinner to end the day.
Tuesday we stayed around the coach until about 12:30 as we were going to visit Dori & Roy, Kim's aunt and uncle, for the afternoon and to have dinner with them. We got to their house about 1:00 and sat and chatted for awhile. Then Doris took us out to see some of the local color like Yankee Candle, Old Deerfield, Shelburne Falls and Greenfield where they live. We got back to the house about 4:00 and we left to go back and feed Muffy and Raggs and then drove back to their house for dinner. We had a great dinner of Goat cheese and olives appetizer, BBQ chicken marinated in a Peruvian marinade, cole slaw and potato salad. For dessert we had Dancing Bear chocolate cake with ice cream. Everything was great and we had such a nice visit. We plan on going caching Thursday with Doris and then going back to their house for pizza on the grill. After dinner we headed back to the coach for the evening.
Well time to say until next time we love and miss you all. Mom & Dad