Saturday, October 18, 2008

Just Another Road Trip

cycle Prior to taking off on yesterday's "just another road trip" trip, MOH and I went over to our newly rented storage unit, on the outskirts of the little town we stay in while working, he on his cycle and me in his Prius. Our storage unit is primarily for stashing the cycle during the winter, partly so we can have a bit more room in our gravel driveway. We will also be able to store a few other things there: our tiny rental is getting full, what with us bringing out winter stuff, then summer stuff, then camping stuff, then this-and-that stuff, and... Right now, it's mostly empty, though.
dust devil On the road we saw a few dust devils...
lizard ...and a couple lizards. This one was scampering around on some white tuff, either a base-surge tuff or an air-fall tuff, not that the photo shows anything particularly diagnostic, or typical, of either type of tuff. (Sorry, I just had to try for T-type alliteration, there.)
prius We duly stopped at a few faults, one barely shown across the road beyond the Prius, our erstwhile field vehicle.
truck It's hunting season out in the deserts, steppes, and mountains of central Nevada, and it's also that wood-cutting time of year. Notice how I neatly erased the license-plate number from the wood-hauling truck
sundog We saw a nice sundog as we were approaching Reno. This one was in the sundog position on the right side of the sun, and showed good rainbow-like colors. A circle around the sun never developed, but a second sun dog vaguely showed up in the sundog position to the left of the sun. I looked hard for a Kern arc straight overhead, but didn't see one. I saw one once at Pyramid Lake. The sun was almost down, and straight overhead there was a circular rainbow, which is very rarely seen and even more uncommonly photographed. I had no idea at the time that such a thing could even exist, but there it was. I'd like to see another one someday.
sunsetThe sunset while driving through and around Reno was wonderful and brightly colored...
sunset ...including this strange oval sky "hole." (That's not a technical term!)
b+n We stopped at B+N, bought a few books, had some coffees, and bought some 16 oz bags of coffee at much better prices than we usually see in small-town Nevada.
gas station After stopping on the road for some after-dark gas, we finally made it to our home at the lake. The air was cool - exactly 46 degrees F according to the Prius temp sensor - and it was nicely damp compared to the dry air from whence we'd just come. The past-full moon was up and shining through thin, high clouds, and haze from woodsmoke was hanging over the ground.

2 comments:

Andrew Alden, Oakland Geology blog said...

I love looking for arcs in the sky. The circumzenith arc is always a treat--I see one about once a year. I actually own both editions of Walter Tape's book on haloes. The Kern arc sounds extra special.

Silver Fox said...

I hadn't heard about these books, but they are available at AGU, if anyone else besides me is interested.

Thanks, Andrew!