Skip to main content

A Gneiss Weekend

I'm trying to catch up on a slight backlog of blog posts here - this weekend away actually took place back in June, but I never got around to writing about it. To be honest our weekends away tend to follow a predictable pattern which you are probably getting used to: realise on Friday that we have a free weekend, book a last-minute motel, drive several hours to some unexplored piece of Texas, visit a state park or two, spot some wildlife, and back to the city again. But this one was somewhat different in that the piece of Texas we went to was underground.


To be precise, Longhorn Caverns State Park, a stunning subterranean selection of stalactite clusters, smooth sculpted rocks and glittering calcite crystals. Our guide was a 21-year veteran of the caves and took us on a slightly longer route so that we got to appreciate even more of the wonders. Not least of these is that the caverns are 68F year-round, providing a welcome relief from the 95F heat outside. Before air-conditioning the relief must have been even more profound, and the locals have used the caves for various purposes over the years, including a church, a Prohibition-era speakeasy and dancehall, and a gunpowder manufacturing plant during the Civil War. You can still have a wedding or party there today, which is certainly unique, if perhaps a little gloomy.





Next day we were up on top again, sailing along the Colorado River with the Vanishing Texas River Cruise. The Colorado, which is not to be confused with the more famous river of the same name running through the Grand Canyon, is the longest river entirely within the borders of Texas, running for about 600 miles down to the Gulf. In the Hill Country, where we were, it has been dammed into a series of reservoirs. Our cruise boat was chugging its way across the highest and largest of these, Lake Buchanan.
At first the guide seemed concerned only to point out the various housing developments and holiday sites around the lake shore, but as the trip went on we spotted herons, egrets, pelicans and cormorants. As the boat slipped into the narrower confines of the river proper, we rounded a corner and were suddenly confronted by a pretty waterfall, all the better for being completely unexpected. Here we paused to let off a handful of kayakers. They splashed onto the marshy shore with their boats and belongings, and the cruiser was just pulling away again when they realised they'd left their paddles on board! Whoops...








The nice pun in the title refers to the fact that around this area there are various lumps of pinkish rock sticking up out of the landscape. These are known as gneiss islands, and support unique microhabitats for rare plants and animals. In Inks Lake State Park we followed a trail across some of these "islands" and admired some of the flora and fauna, though we aren't good enough naturalists to know if we were looking at anything particularly unusual. We're naturalists enough to appreciate the contrast between hot rock and cool lake, however, and plopped thankfully into the latter after trekking across the former. Aaaaahhhh....




Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mr White Watson of Bakewell

Once upon a time, back in 1795 or so, lived a man who was always asking questions.  The kind of questions like, "Why is glass transparent?" or "Why do fruit trees grow better in that place than in this place?" or "What does the earth look like underneath the surface?"  This last question was one that he was particularly interested in, and he went so far as to work out what the rock layers looked like where he lived, and draw little pictures of them.  Now he was a marble sculptor by trade (as well as fossil hunter, mineral seller, and a few other things) so he thought it would be even better to make his little pictures in stone.  That way he could represent the layers using the actual rocks they were composed of.  Over the course of his lifetime he made almost 100 of these tablets, as he called them. Then he died.  And no one else was quite as interested in all those rocks and minerals as he was.  His collection was sold off, bit by bit, and the table...
Post a Comment
Read more

Birmingham: Temples to many things

Birmingham's cathedral is overshadowed by more modern temples: the mirrored swirls of New Street train station; the dotted bulge of the Selfridges store; the lacy blocks of the library; the pillars and pediments of the museum and art gallery. Museum and town hall Next to all these, Birmingham Cathedral, in its square of dusty grass, isolated from the main flow of shopping and travel, seems less like a dominant building and more like a minor chapel. It turns out the unpretentiousness is deliberate. St Philip's Church was built in 1715 when the worshipping population of Birmingham had outgrown the medieval constraints of St Martin in the Bullring . Birmingham remained part of the Diocese of Worcester until 1905, when Charles Gore pushed for the creation of a new diocese and became its first bishop. Seeing the depth of need in the city, he decided to convert St Philip's to a cathedral rather than spend money on a grand new building. Birmingham Cathedral had to be restored afte...
Post a Comment
Read more

Southwell Minster, Newark-on-Trent, and a pilgrim cellist

You may remember that I recently mentioned people doing weird and wonderful things. Well, I found another one. Last year, Kenneth Wilson visited all 42 English cathedrals. On a bike. With a cello. It was a cargo bike; the whole setup, cello and all, weighed about 50 kg; and he mostly managed a rate of one cathedral per day, with occasional rest days and train journeys where absolutely necessary. That's a lot of cycling. Of course, he wrote a book about it, and when I found out he was on the schedule at Newark Book Festival, I had to go. It also provided the perfect excuse to visit Southwell Minster. Newark-on-Trent feels like it is in the depths of the Nottinghamshire countryside, but it isn't actually hard to get to, I thought as I buzzed along the dual carriageways of the A50, A453, A52 and A46 on a sunny Sunday morning. All along the route, the grass stood bleached and crispy, scorched by the summer heat.  Newark Castle with crispy grass The author event was at the National...
Post a Comment
Read more