Falls and Amethyst hunting and a taste of Great Sand Dunes

The day after visiting the Slumgullion Earthflow, Ron took us to the Continental divide. He talked about how one side leads to Pacific and other to Atlantic. He showed us a measuring station. Rick also mentioned how the water would travel ;-)



We then headed to a nearby waterfall. We talked about some of the morphology found at this location. We saw topple rocks and hexagonal configurations of the soil due to dessication. We saw some landslides and the waterfall. We looked around and noticed the whole section was within a caldera. Lake City and the surrounding areas are enclosed within several calderas in this region of the country.



We went for lunch in Creede, CO and visited a nearby close mine. There were quite a few mine leavings that we checked for amethyst. Rick was nice enough to let us try for a while. For the time we were there, you could hear the rock hammers at work. I was too busy breaking rocks that I did not take pictures but will try to get some from others. :-)
I got quite a few pieces with galina and pyrite. I was working with Kelly to find the elusive amethyst so we both got plenty of sample of those two minerals. She was the one that found our small sample of amethyst. Thanks Kelly. Quite a few of the others got the same minerals as we did, some in greater quantities than others.

The Great Sand Dunes were are next destination for the day. Fran and Carolyn talked about the experiments we would perform. We all wrote our instructions and data tables in our notebook. Unfortunately, our trip was rained out but we will try tomorrow. We did get a chance to visit the main building and found out a few things about the Great Sand Dunes.