This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American
We made it to Fidalgo Island. Yay! We got lotsa pictures of bonza peridotite and serpentinite. Double yay! I'll have a proper write-up one o' these days, but for today, we'll do some outtakes.
This time, we visited Washington Park. I've been there once before, many years ago, and had no idea that Cujo and I had been hanging about on serpentinized peridotite. Yum! Now I knew, and B and I were determined to see all of it we could see. We got a sorta late start, got hung up in Everett traffic, and lingered over lunch, so it was late in the afternoon when we arrived. Let me tell you something about Washington Park: when you're in the parking lot, you'll freeze. There's a sort of saddle between the bay and the Sound, and the wind blows vigorously through, and it's like standing in a refrigerator. Do not let this deceive you. If it's a warm day, you're gonna end up sweating to death. That's because of this:
Peridotite is dark, dense, iron-rich rock that seems to love absorbing lotsa rays and reflecting the heat right back atcha. If you get a chance to go here on a warm summer day, bring plenty of water, wear sunglasses, and remember that a bit of seawater judiciously applied to the back of the neck will help cool things right down.
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The loop road, which is also a lovely paved trail, is nice and shady, and you can pop through the trees and bushes and get lovely views of the Sound and the San Juans.
The glacially-planed and polished serpentinite/peridotite makes lovely benches from which to stand majestically looking out over the Sound.
Here's a rare action shot of me crossing a crack through the peridotite.
Lotsa glacial action in this photo - see if you can spot it! You've been hanging round me long enough you should be able to see at least one or two things.
You definitely should do the loop road, either hiking or driving. There's another stopoff on the other side that is neato and I'll show you it in some detail soon, and then you get to the bottom, and there may be a buck and a doe grazing. However, the deer here are rude.
We laughed and laughed, of course. There were deer all over, including in people's yards. Washington Park is huge, and seems to be a happy home for them.
At the end of the day, driving home, Mount Baker was beautifully illuminated, so I pulled the car to the side of the highway and grabbed you a shot.
Wonderful stuff, and much fun. I've got to get my talk for FtBConscience done, work on the next post in the Seattle Seahawks Superbowl Ring series (which next post is a pain, because just when I thought I had the research finished, bam - came across a series of papers that call all our existing knowledge into question. Darn it all to heck!). But B asked some great questions about peridotite, so I'll try to sneak some answers in about that in the near-future, and eventually, after a few more visits to the Island, I'll be whipping up a series on the ophiolite there. And that's in addition to the ten tons of other great geology we've got going on! And summer field season isn't even over! It's going to be a super science winter, lemme tell ya.
Originally published at En Tequila Es Verdad.