Superior Dry Lake
I returned to Superior Dry Lake after unexpectedly encountering an expanded military base boundary on my previous trip last year. This time I was able to plan my search area and set gps coordinates for the only playa of the 3 that remains open to the public. I planned my hunt based on the work done by Mr. Bob Verish, Dr. Nick Gessler, Mr. Paul Gessler (Bob's Findings - Dry Lakes and Examples of Transported Rocks, March 2006; also see Meteorite Recover on Dry lakes - Follow the Ice Rafts published by the 65th Annual Meteoritical Society Meeting, 2002) and others. I've found transported rocks before (1 and 2), but I've yet to find a transported meteorite.
Here are my gps tracks for about a 1/8th-mile portion of the "lake shore" that I hunted; I followed the high-tide line one way and the low-tide line the other.
There was a storm passing off to my east for the duration of the day. This storm was literally breathing, and the winds pumping out of it smelled like rain; it was awesome. The wind felt great since the air temp was about 103*F, the ground was probably 30 degrees hotter.
These huge circular swirls were going to open up and suck me into the sky at any moment.
This was the biggest dust-devil I'd ever seen. It had tornado-like structure (note the S-bend and debris cloud) and I could see it sucking sand hundreds of feet into the air. It's probably 0.5 miles away in the photo. This is a great example of one of the many processes that re-surface dry lake beds and uncover rocks that may have been buried for thousands of years.
I found this patch of perfect hexagons in the lake bed surface. Nature does cool things. It looks like the rocks all migrate up to the surface through the planes the cracks form along.
August is almost the end of prime insect breeding season out here, and there were lizards out everywhere getting their fill. "Mr. Lizard, Mr. Lizard! Turn for a quick photo please?"
A mirage on the horizon.
They're out there somewhere...
To be continued. | 