Cruise Nite '12

The event began in our village of Marathon at 1pm.

At 2pm promptly we left to cruise to the county seat of

Cortland, New York

 Main Street was closed off  to all other traffic.

Nice.

Vic drove the 1946 CJ2A and I drove the 2006 Rubicon.

We parked together

to give folks a peek at the changes from 60 years ago.

Red, white and blue cars to go with our American flag -

long may it wave!

The graphics are terrific on this hearse and the license plate is perfect,

is it not?

Look at that shine!

The fake bullet holes are just right on this antique.

All electric....

and plugs into the gas tank for a humorous twist.

Lots of door prizes donated by local businesses were awarded to those who attended.

Thanks to www.LateModelRestorations.com we brought home a tee-shirt.

A well-organized event and a nice drive on a fine, sunny day!

Three Days of Contrasts on Owasco Lake (from the shores of Casowasco)

Vic and I returned home just a bit over three weeks ago.

Although this post has nothing to do with the west

or with Jeeps and offroad adventures,

I have to share a couple of pictures.

Nearly every spring and autumn

I attend a three-day quilting retreat

with friends from my quilt guild

and

another area guild.

Our retreat is held at Casowasco - a Methodist retreat,

camp and conference center

on

beautiful Lake Owasco

 in the Finger Lakes Region of Central New York.

This time I took very few photos of the

facility itself
(2 are below)

The Lakeside Chapel with the dining hall on the left and Bethany where we sleep and sew is back in the trees.

The unusual conditions of the lake that first afternoon
are what cried to be documented.

As the day progressed the lake the air quieted and the lake became very still.

The water's surface became absolutely flat

and, added to that, was enormity of the cumulus clouds.

This is a rare combination as cumulus clouds are formed by moving air currents.

We normally awaken to the sound of the water lapping at the shoreline

and some days there are small waves breaking on the shore.

Not today -

there were only sounds of the birds celebrating the new morning.

Later that same afternoon

a breeze stirred and

the lake's surface

returned to more normal yet still beautiful conditions.

The following morning......

rain, wind, small whitecaps and even sporadic thunder as a front came through

Our final day was cooler,

even a wee bit brisk.

At 6 a.m.

the skies returned to blue

and the lake's surface

no longer produced mirror images of the shorelines and clouds.

Three days of memorable contrasts on the lake

shared with

very special friends!

Kilbourne Hole

We made the drive to Kilbourne Hole early in the winter when we were staying outside of Deming, NM.

Kilbourne Hole is the remnant of a volcanic explosion crater.

The Crater can be found a 2-hour plus drive southwest of Las Cruces.

Most of the bottom of the hole is private land so

permission from the owner should be secured if you plan to enter.

We chose not to enter but did drive the entire perimeter.

The Crater's age is somewhere between 100,000 and 24,000 years old.

Molten rock came into contact with subsurface water and vaporized a vast quantity of the water, turning it into super-heated steam.

Probably over the course of a few weeks, it erupted in a series of explosions.

There was so much energy that  it blew more than 550 million yards of ash, rock and alluvium over a 20 to 30 square mile area.

A comparable quantity fell back into the Crater.

Eventually, portions of the Crater collapsed inward to the present size.

The depression is elliptical in shape and 1.7 miles in length (shown here in panorama)

and

1 mile across.

It took 8 photos melded into 1 panorama to encompass that 1.7 miles.

You are looking across the width which is 1 mile from edge to edge.

The crusts of the Kilbourne Hole volcanic bombs are dull black or brown, but when broken open, they often reveal a brilliant, sparkling yellow and green interior of olivine glass granules.

The northern rim has yielded jewel-quality olivine crystals, called peridot.

One of our objectives that day was to find find just one of these gems which is also my birthstone.

We had a good time searching but, I'm sure at least hundreds of other folks have scoured the area long before us.
It would also likely have helped if we had a good idea for what we were looking!

The same area also yields high quality augite, a mineral which occurs as prismatic crystals of deep green or black.

These we found in large numbers.

What fun!

And because this was BLM land

(Bureau of Land Management),

the crystals are fair game to be collected in a reasonable quantity.

Three of them are shown as clustered here this afternoon.

The green and black combination is beautiful while the green glitters

in the sunlight.

As we have had little sunlight since arriving home

(and none this afternoon)

the beauty is invisible in this photo.

Much of the information above I've copied from a brochure printed

by the

BLM Las Cruces Field Office.