What I Did on My Holidays 

Well it wasn't a holiday - it was a Geological Learning Experience in New England, led by Dave Green. It just seemed like a holiday.

I am not going into the details here, I am just going to show some photos of things which caught my geological eye.

The photos on the blog are duplicated in much greater detail elsewhere. You can see them by clicking on the photo. If you click on the photo on the photos.churchard.com page, you zoom in even further. You may need to wait for a few seconds for the larger version to come into focus.

Garnets in a rock, on a traffic island, Hague, New York. Probably from Gore Mountain.

We found some less spectacular garnets near Lake George.

Our garnets 

43 deg 29' 58.55" N, 73 deg 44' 45.73" W

We went to Vinalhaven Island, off the coast of Maine, where a local geologist showed us round. Among the things he showed us were gabbros in granite which he described as being like pillow lavas. Instead of lava flowing into cold sea water, he describes gabbroic magma at 1,200⁰C, flowing into granite magma at 600⁰C. At the moment I cannot think of another explanation.

Blocks of gabbro in a granite matrix.

Blocks of gabbro in a granite matrix. Foot scale.

Also on Vinalhaven he showed us spheroidal rhyolite which is a most peculiar rock. How it forms is, to me, a mystery.

There is a limited outcrop of this rock and the local geologist tells us that specimen collection is forbidden.

Much of our time was spent on the Maine coast which is incredibly complicated with several terranes being plastered onto the the North American Plate. But you can see some very nice rocks.

Finely bedded sediments of the Silurian - Ordovician Kittery Formation (part of the Merrimack Group) on an island in Saco Bay.

43 deg 27' 21.15" N, 70 deg 21' 40.45" W

At Bald Head we saw the same rocks in a more metamorphosed state.

At Bald Head sediments of the Kittery Formation form a syncline.

There are good examples of boudinage.

43 deg 13' 11.62" N, 70 deg 34' 37.68" W

Also we had some rather good scenery to look at. 

Basin Brook reservoir.

44 deg 16' 9.67" N, 71 deg 1' 11.90" W

And the famed New England fall colours could be seen.

Trees became more colourful as our visit progressed.

43 deg 44' 36.39" N, 73 deg 35' 0.37" W

All my photos will be going online soon and I will link to them on the blog. 

Dave Green had put an incredible amount of work into organising this trip and it showed in the fascinating geology we saw.