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Mark Helmlinger, Frank Eckardt, and Wolfgang
Buermann (and that's the Phoenix II in the background) |
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This is a story of a recent road trip
I had the honor of taking with my good friends Frank and Wolfgang.
We traveled in a truly incredible road machine, the Phoenix
II, formerly known as the Phoenix
One.
We found our theme for the trip on the wall
of a falling-down cabin in Bodie, CA: "Nothing Endures
but Change." Frank Eckardt is a geomorphologist,
from Capetown, South Africa. Wolfgang Buermann is a climatologist
from UCLA, and I am a remote sensing physicist. Our minds
have been stretched by our disciplines to encompass nature's
tremendous range of change, both in time and space. On this
trip, the evidence for change was "in-your-face"
overwhelming. We are indeed a young race inhabiting an ancient
planet.
If you decide to do this loop, be sure
to bring along maps, references,
and resources like Geology
Underfoot in Southern California
,
by Sharp and Glazner.
We left the Los Angeles Basin via Interstate
5 heading north before dawn on a Saturday morning. We
passed by Vista
del Lago. Ordinarily, the Visitors Center is a great
place to catch your breath from the road. It's free, quiet,
and cool inside, and it has interesting displays about California's
water system, one of the greatest public works on the planet.
It also has clean bathrooms. Unfortunately, landslides last
winter closed the road, and it is unclear when the repairs
will be finished.
We continued north on Interstate 5 to the
confluence of the Garlock and San Andreas earthquake faults.
The satellite photos we were carrying illustrated that this
is a dramatic collision of a young and active tectonic lateral
fault and a large regional fault that is nearly perpendicular.
The body of water to the east of Lebec is a sag pond. When
lateral faults move, gaps open up and the ground sags into
a depression. This is a very active and complex region,
but this area is slated for a huge development. Two major
aqueducts pass through this area as well as the major highway.
In fact, Interstate 5 follows the San Andreas for a piece
before winding down the Grapevine grade. More
geologic info is online here.
There is a Starbuck's Coffee store at the
Grapevine exit. For roadtrips involving a lot of driving
and not much time to wander around looking for things (a
cool adventure in itself sometimes), it's useful to do an
Internet search for favorite business locations before your
trip. The
Next Exit
guidebook lists businesses at all major Interstate exits,
or you can use the free program provided by TravMatix
for figuring out, while on Interstates, where and when to
stop for lunch, gas, etc. The RTA Fuel
Cost Calculator also provides current fuel price information
for most major towns in the USA and Canada.
Next:
Cental Valley, Sequoia, & Yosemite>
Mark
Helmlinger
August 7, 2005
