Hi All,

One thing about adventures, they often bring surprises and important finds in the least expected places. On our last trip to Parkfield we spent an entire day trying to find two cemeteries, but with the help from a local we had a lot better luck this time around. You are probably asking about now, why would they want to go to a cemetery in the first place? I like to go there because you get a true sense of the history of any town by reading the head stones. They tell you who the founding fathers of the community were and about the era when people lived there, along with some idea if these places ever suffered from epidemics.

But in Parkfield, not only do the cemeteries reveal the above, but something even more interesting. By viewing the cemetery plots you can see how fault movement has affected the grave sites themselves, particularly those surrounded with concrete borders. We saw that some of these borders were offset, some appeared to have sunken and in a few cases we saw a single headstone which was higher on one side than the other; but all of these borders showed signs of earth movement.

The same held true in visiting the cemetery at Mission San Miguel. There was one grave that was very interesting. It had a cement border around it, which was cracked in the center with movement to the north. But most odd indeed was the headstone which had a base with a column on top. The column had broken at about one third of the way up and the upper part that broke off was standing in the sandy soil in front of the base of the headstone.

But more was in store than just checking out headstones at these three locations. We learned in our journey that the Parkfield Cemetery lies on the other side of a river bed and we had to cross a small stream to get there and in there was the bonus. The river bed had a huge volume of rocks and we collected quite a few. Though we found chert, serpentine and some other rocks we were well acquainted with, we also found some that needs someone with more knowledge than we have to identify them. Then in our trip around Vineyard Hill Road we noticed a very white sandy area with the Imusdale Cemetery just below the road. This cemetery offered something entirely differently in the geologic sense in that we found broken seashells there. These cemeteries lie about ten miles apart, with the Parkfield Cemetery on the North American Plate and the Imusdale Cemetery on the Pacific Plate.

Of course traveling through wide open spaces means you get a view of wild animals and this trip was really special. A couple of miles before we turned into Parkfield a bobcat ran across the road in front of us and thanks to little traffic we stopped for a few minutes to view this beautiful female in the wild. Then as we turned into Parkfield we found four Blacktail deer feeding along the side of the road. They were so beautiful. Of course we found ground squirrels all over the place and Don kept trying to run over them, but I put a stop to that. I kept telling him, "you're not killing any little cute furry creatures on this trip." So, from here, take it away Don, it's your turn.

One of the first things that we noticed was that the bridge had been repaired. It still has the curve in it so you can tell that there is movement along the San Andreas fault in that area. Also Petra noted and I might add very ticked off that the signs on each side of the bridge marking the plate boundaries were missing.

We arrived there around 4:00PM on Friday so there wasn't much for us to do that night. We had a very excellent steak dinner which by the way Petra paid for. I like baked potatoes, but all they had were french fries, but the french fries are unique in that they were almost like they had been baked.

While we did collect a few earthquake stories from the locals, we got a little bit more then what we had bargained for when meeting Donalee Thomason. It's her name that we see associated with the Dona Lee USGS Parkfield dilational strain data. It's located on her ranch about 1 mile north of town.

This lady is a very remarkable person and is a walking, living wealth of knowledge of the local area. I met her Saturday morning while she was selling her book, "Cholama" The Beautiful One in front of the Parkfield Café. I must have talked to her for about a half hour when I saw Petra walking up the road from the bridge carrying what looked like a ton of rocks from the way she was bent over and dragging her feet.

After taking a brief rest I took Petra over to meet Donalee and it was then that we learned that Middle Mountain was slipping on the north side and was moving toward the north. She wasn't able to give us all the particulars about this, but she had been there and had seen this for herself. Not only was this an eye opener, but we also learned of an extinct volcano named Castle Peak located just east of Table Mountain south of Parkfield. She said there is a caldera on the backside of the peak that is about 2 miles long and about 1 mile wide. It can be seen to the east off of Turkey Flat Road which by the way is a dirt road.

I really got a better idea of how this land has been tortured from the millions of years of movement along the fault when I saw some rock and soil layers that have been bent and folded as if by a child playing with clay. This can be seen as you are driving up the grade toward Parkfield from San Miguel. It is best viewed when the sun is in the western sky as the light is directly on it. The side of the mountain looks like someone had cut it in two. I have no idea as to where the part that is missing is located.

We couldn't have picked a better time to go as the days were warm and balmy and while the nights were cold it was not so cold that you could see your breath. The one thing that I missed was the sounds associated with civilization. They just weren't there. No noise, no nothing, except a barking dog or two, this I could learn to love....Don