Schedule for the 2015 Mojave Desert Field Trip
(Tentative)
Sunday, March 8: Depart from Scovel Hall in shuttle bus really early. (We’ll let you know the details soon. Note, to compound the pain, that the time changes this morning!) United flight 1174 from Cleveland leaves at 7:00 a.m.; arrives in the Las Vegas airport at 8:45 a.m. We’ll get our vans and be out of that strange city before noon, probably eating a fast food lunch on its outskirts. Our first geological stop will be at Red Rocks Canyon National Conservation Area just outside the city. Here we’ll see beautiful Mesozoic sandstones and a tremendous thrust fault. (I did my dissertation on the Carboniferous rocks exposed in the Spring Mountains above.) We’ll then drive to our lodgings at the Desert Studies Center on the shore of Soda Dry Lake. We’ll spend the rest of the day getting settled and exploring our new neighborhood on foot.
Monday, March 9: Our objective is to visit the southern portion of Death Valley National Park. We plan to hit as many interesting geological sites as we can as far north as the Furnace Creek Visitor Center. Your guidebooks will come in handy.
Tuesday, March 10: Time to see Manix Lake and the beautiful stratigraphy and structures around Barstow. We will start early in the morning and work our way through the ancient lakebeds moving west. We will have lunch in the extraordinary Owl Canyon and Rainbow Basin. On the way back we will visit Afton Canyon and look at evidence for the catastrophic draining of Manix Lake.
Wednesday, March 11: We will spend the morning through lunch at Calico Ghost Town (probably the mineral and 19th Century mining capital of southern California) and then drive south to visit Amboy Crater and the Granite Mountains.
Thursday, March 12: Our day will be spent within the Mojave National Preserve, stopping at the Cinder Cones (including the lava tube), an exposure of Cambrian limestone, the Kelso Dunes, Hole in the Wall, and Cima Dome.
Friday, March 13: Back north towards Death Valley today, exploring the Tecopa Lakebeds and volcanic ashes, the tuff at Resting Springs Pass, the Salt Spring Hills and the Lower Cambrian trilobites in Emigrant Pass through the southern Nopah Range. We’ll end with date milkshakes at China Ranch.
Saturday, March 14: We’ll drive back to Las Vegas very early in the morning, drop off our rental vehicles, have lunch in the airport, and board the 10:18 a.m. flight back to Cleveland (United 1174, arriving at 5:23 p.m.).