Saturday, July 21, 2012

Stoned


Alan Williams is a Canadian born, California bred Kiwi who has lived in New Zealand most of his life.  Fortunately for me, Alan is a math teacher at the school I teach at and he has become a good friend.  Alan's partner Kate was away at a conference and we planned to go skiing, but the conditions were not good so we loaded up Rosie and headed out on a road trip to see his daughter on the Banks Peninsula and to see Christchurch.

Alan Williams and a deer friend.

On our trip north the first stop was at the Moeraki Boulders Scenic Reserve.  The boulders are concretions somewhat similar to geodes, except that the inside of a Moeraki boulder is primarily calcite as opposed to quartz.  And the fact that they are significantly larger than geodes.



The boulders are only about a 300 meter strip of the beach.  There are large boulders and small boulders, broken boulders and whole boulders, smooth boulders and one (only one, mind you) seaweed covered boulder.

The entire Moeraki Boulder Scenic Reserve. 

A broken Moeraki filled with seawater.

A little Moeraki, about the size of a large medicine ball.

Calcite on the inside of a boulder.  This looked unusually like a rattlesnake head.

The only seaweed covered Moeraki.

Where will we go from here?



1 comment:

  1. Great pictures Jay! Hope you enjoy Christchurch as much as I did!

    Love,
    Steve

    ReplyDelete