Gallery

Driving on the interstate in Maryland, my wife and I happened onto this spectacular roadcut.  It is named Sideling Hill near Hancock, MD.  It is a great example in the Appalachian mountains where it is easy to see that rocks that were originally laid down flat were warped into folds.  This particular type is called a syncline, a downwarp.  The area was then uplifted and eroded, leaving the downwarp as a positive feature, a hill.

My nephew, Paul gave Karen and I a tour of Red Rock Canyon, just outside of Las Vegas, Nevada.  The red and yellow Aztec Sandstone outcrops are preserved ancient sand dunes from the Jurassic.  The rocks in the back ground are much older.  These Paleozoic limestones and dolomites are separated from the younger rocks by major faults.  It may be a white spaceship above them, but we did not have a close encounter with it. 😉

Growing up in the eastern New Mexico, where most towns are less than 100 years old, I was impressed to walk through buildings that were two hundred years old along the US East Coast.  We moved to London and we saw Westminster Abbey that was 1000 years old.  When we visited Jerusalem, we could see the Wailing Wall, where the Jewish temple had been.  Old had another meaning.  The Second Temple construction began over 500 years before Christ.  It was a scale change.  Then we visited Ein Gedi, near the Dead Sea. Hiking up the trails we came to this, a temple site from Chalcolithic period (4th millennium BC).  That is to say that this was 2000 years old when Abraham came through the region.  Saying something is old can mean very different things depending on the frame of reference.