Hi All. On Christmas day Petra and I went up to her study area on the Rodgers Creek fault. I wanted to see if I could find the place where I was standing when I had my dream about an earthquake centering in the area.

When we arrived Petra asked me to let her off at the bottom of the hill. She didn’t want to go up to the top with me. I can’t say that I blame her much. I do get carried away at times when I’m driving in the hills and places like that. She has gone up into the hills with me before, but that was because she didn’t have a choice. I found the place where I was standing when I had my dream. It kind of shook me a little as I had never been there before.

While I was up there Petra as usual was looking for rocks which I knew she would be doing. All the time I was hoping she wouldn’t find a heavy one for me to carry. She did. After we loaded them into the back of my vehicle and was headed for her home I mentioned I had geologist friend who might be able to tell us something about the rocks she had found. Some of the rocks she found we knew were volcanic, but a couple of the others we thought were sedimentary because of the layering in them.

Today when I arrived at my home in Hollister I called Tracy and asked him if he could identify some rocks I had. He said he though he could and would be over.

He told me that all the rocks were volcanic. The ones we though were sedimentary were formed by “flow layering” This was accomplished by a very hot almost liquid like lava that cooled fast and then another just like the first flowed over it. This continued until as such time as the eruption stopped. They were formed about 40M years ago so this would make them young. Must admit that 40M years doesn’t sound young to me. They were all formed above the water. He broke one open and you could see a crystal inside of it. The crystal is not the kind we are use to seeing. This one is black and is sort of round. At least it looked that way after breaking a portion of the outer stone away from it.

I also asked him about a creek that is flowing from somewhere out the hills. There were some very large rocks in the bottom. Even Petra knew I couldn’t lift them. My question was did the creek come before the hills or after? He said before. The creek was always there, but the earth had rose and the running water just cut down into the earth exposing the rock. When he asked me where we found them. I told him in the hills east of Petaluma. He said just about everything in that area is volcanic in one form or another.

Stay tuned for further adventures of Petra Challus and Don Eck.