Rocks in my Socks: Class Field Trip

Blue Ridge Parkway.

Blue Ridge Parkway    

Pilgrimage to the mountains, roadcuts and waterfalls of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia.

Charles Mitchell led a trip that (during the day at least) managed to dodge our wet spring’s many thunder showers, but camping was a different matter! Skyland Lodge on the Blue Ridge Parkway was dry and beautiful as always, and the group got up-close and personal with lots of great rocks that record the complex history of orogenic history of the central Appalachians. The rocks show multiple generations of deformation, which the students spent a glorious time sorting through.

Sandstone pictured with hammer.

Late Ordovician Bald Eagle Sandstone with metamorphic and sedimentary lithoclasts derived from the uplifted Taconic orogenic belt

Students examining rocks in a road cut.

Examining Late Ordovician rocks in a road cut exposure near Reedsville PA. (Source of rock shown in picture #1).

Students examining rocks.

Measuring axial trend and plunge of folds in the Ordovician Mather Gorge schists at the Great Falls of the Potomac River, Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Historic Monument, Maryland.