Day 2: LA to Bishop, CA in Owens Valley…

We all loaded up in the morning and headed out of LA and north to Bishop, CA. In doing so, each small group contained within one vehicle got to start to know each other through swapping stories of school, travel, the most disgusting things that have happened to us, whether we were “planned” or “surprises”, and other tales. I drove one of the vans and Hope Johnson rode shotgun. She shared her great assortment of music that included stuff from the 80’s. We were told that this music is not considered “vintage” by the 20-somethings in the car, which is a nice way of saying old. Hope and I realized that we were like the parents sitting in the front forcing the kids to listen to the oldies. Pretty funny.

loading up to travel…

We crossed the San Andreas fault, leaving the Pacific plate and climbing onto the North American plate. The rock formations were a dead giveaway to the transition, as the regular sedimentary lines of the rocks looked like someone came in and shuffled everything around. Then, we headed to Mojave, CA to refuel and pick up lunch for later. I got a blueberry jelly donut from “Stoked Donuts”, highly recommended.

 Johnny Cash is great for driving through the desert, FYI.

Our next stop was Lone Pine, CA. Here we stopped for lunch and gawked at an amazing view of the Eastern Sierras with weather just starting to show itself…

After lunch, it was on to Bishop, CA. We took a side trip to see the Bristlecone pines, which grow only on the Manganese-rich Dolomite. These trees are up to 4,000+ years old and simply amazing to see. I stood next to one and had a moment, trying to imagine what it was like when it was a sapling, wondering how many times it had been struck by lightning (most of them had). 

I also got my first experience of hunting ancient fossils (these were around 500~550 million years old). These were called Cloudina, formed by the Cloudinids (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloudinid). These were small (2-5 mm) cone shaped shells of an ancient worm-like animal. We were looking at the fossil record of a shallow, relatively calm ancient sea…totally cool. I eventually found my own specimen which had both the cone shaped pieces and a longitudinal tube-like fossil, so cool. Amazingly, I forgot to take a picture of my rock so here is one that Russell Shapiro found and was using to help guide me as to what I should look for (I am not such a great fossil hunter yet).

The day was ended with dinner at “The Pizza Factory” in Bishop followed by a lecture by Frank Corsetti on Stromatolites…not bad for Day 2.