Friday, December 11, 2009

Friday from the Road: There & Back Again

I'm just going to throw out a few photos from my most recent road trip, which was to and from the NWMA convention last week. None of these pictures were taken on a Friday, but that doesn't matter to my way of thinking (which, admittedly, could be distorted by a slight fever).
On the way there, just after coming into Edwards Creek Valley, the guy ahead of me put on his breaks suddenly, so I slowed down, thinking I might get a glimpse of a coyote. Instead, off in the distance, I saw some smoke rising from a low spot in the Desatoya Mountains.
As I drove along, the wind was picking up in the valley. The smoke coming from a canyon to the south swirled a bit near the ground, then rose straight upward to spread out horizontally at an atmospheric layer not that far above ground level.
I eventually stopped and got this picture. The colors around the edges of the smoke fascinated me - and then my mind went on a tangent and I wished that the smoke could be from a little basalt flow erupting along a range front fault instead of a brush fire caused by who-knows-what. The canyon is probably the canyon of Edwards Creek. The truck ahead of me pulled over when they got cell service and called in the fire, which presumably stayed small, because I couldn't find anything about it online.
On the way back, I got this shot looking southwest down Big Smoky Valley toward Kingston Canyon, with the setting sun just about to go behind the Toiyabe Range.
A little farther to the east, the sagebrush bushes in Antelope Valley were a glowing golden orange, and the shadows were a deep greenish blue. The photo looks northeast toward the distant Roberts Mountains on the right and the closer Simpson Park Mountains on the left.

2 comments:

Gaelyn said...

I like the dream part with molten lava....

Silver Fox said...

Will we see basalt erupt on a Basin and Range range front fault in our lifetimes?