Neos2

Just dropping this in here. According to the guidelines for EarthCaches 4. Landowner or land manager permission is required for most EarthCache locations, and the name, title, and contact details of the person who approved it must be included in a Reviewer Note. Most land managers, once they are told that concept and that no physical container will be left behind, are happy to have an EarthCache in their park, forest, etc. We would suggest however, that you develop EarthCaches in partnership with the land managers to ensure that sensitive areas are avoided. Depending on local laws and customs, permission may not be required, but this should also be included in a Reviewer Note.

I start by reading everything I could about the geology of the Kern River Valley. I'd look for science articles and geologic field trips that focus on the area between the Forks of the Kern Trail and the Little Kern River. It may have a special name, you'd know better than me, being local. Just the quick search I did shows a lot of very cool geologic formations in the area. I was surprised not to find more EarthCaches nearby. I found this one old thesis write up on the entire area---it's not tooooo technical. This site has photos that ID certain features of the area. Even if you don't find anything that looks like what you have, at least you can rule out things your site isn't. Check with your state geology department to see if they have articles on the area. I found one that said this: Is your location in any of those particularly named places? I know how daunting it can be to start. I have one EarthCache that I really had to work to figure out what I was looking at. I did a lot of reading up and a lot of searching, for days. (And I taught Earth Science, so while I'm not an expert, I did know the basics of geology). It is still the EarthCache I am most proud of and enjoy reading the logs from.

What was the online log like? Did it give details, provide a photo; anything to let you know they had done the learning lesson and at least followed the spirit of the EarthCache experience? Could there be a language barrier? Personally, I'm all for being generous with logging requirements, but I'm not a big fan of people who just refuse to make an honest attempt to log an EarthCache the way the owner intended.

I agree that I would run it past one of the EarthCache reviewers. The process is still geologic, even if some of the materials being eroded are man-made. It's physically and chemically weathered material after all.

Yes, please, let's leave this rest for now. I am locking the thread. When it is resolved, I will gladly post the outcome if the EarthCache owner and the original poster wish.

The OP has had their question answered. This thread seems to be headed in a poor direction. I'm closing it for now.

The only thing I see that I might change is the last part in question 2. I'd reword it to avoid using the phrase "periodicity of cyclical oxygen changes" or to explain what I meant. I know people can look up things like that, but as a teacher, I found that having to look up unfamiliar words and phrases makes people think a task is harder than it is.

Feel free to post your special plans for EarthCaching Day, or to tell us about the EarthCaches you visit that weekend.

Just a reminder:

Folk, please remember to follow the forum guidelines. I am particularly referring to guidelines, 2 and 4. 2. Forum courtesy: Please treat Geocaching HQ, its employees, geocaching community volunteers, fellow community members, and guests in these forums with courtesy and respect. Whether a community member has one post or 5,000 posts, everyone should be treated respectfully. 4. Personal attacks and inflammatory or antagonistic behavior will not be tolerated. If you want to post criticism, please do so constructively. Generalized, vicious, or veiled attacks on a person or idea will not be tolerated.

I have a couple of the Roadside Geology books. The title doesn't refer the the locations necessarily being alongside the road. At least in the Indiana one I have here in my hand many of them are a good hike from the nearest road. That said, there are people who would appreciate roadside EarthCaches very much, and not "just for the smiley" Anyone temporarily unable to hike a significant distance, people with chronic conditions that try to stay at least a little active, people with very young children.

If you still want to tackle the EarthCache, it's often possible to learn the locations of the right kind of fossils. According to this web page, there are outcrops of formations that include the giant horsetail Calamites fossil in parts of the state. If you want to search for fossil locations for a specific area, the rock/fossil collectors clubs are a good source. They often publish reviews of their field trips to fossil rich locations with directions to the locations, and I've had good luck getting them to respond to emails or telephone calls. Another resource to look for creating any EarthCache is the Roadside Geology series, such as "Roadside Geology of Missouri" by Charles Spencer. Specific sites are noted almost all of them legally accessible, and the write up is in clear, clean, easy to understand language for the average reader. It might not have anything on horsetail fossils, but there will be other topics that might make a good EarthCache. Hopefully some ideas that aren't already made into existing ECs. .

Welcome to the forums! This sounds like the kind of question one of your EarthCache reviewers could answer best. But I'm sure others will chime in with ideas. I found one older thread about an EarthCache that includes geodesy---The given example seems to work because it is "specifically linked to the location" Earth's Orientation - South Pole I am guessing you have a site in mind. I'd love to know what it is about the potential site you have in mind makes it 'perfect' for geodesy as the main focus. Could you explain in a couple of sentences?

That works for me as a defining line. Although it does get fuzzy again when you get to chemical sedimentary rocks, like rock salt, dolomite, and chemical limestone which form as an evaporate or a precipitant that is chemically cemented together, rather than by heat or pressure. Rock salt is easily described as crystals formed by a chemical process.

I went looking online for a scientific answer to the question "What is the difference between grain and crystal?" and found a discussion among "professionals" that debates this same question. It doesn't leave me with a definitive answer, because "it depends" on who is asking... Basically, whether you think there is a difference depends on your background. A petrologist or a metallurgist would probably think differently than a mineralogist or your everyday rockhound. From my (entry level college class) notes: Extrusive Igneous Rocks- formed by crystallization of magma at the surface of the Earth ~ characterized by fine-grained textures ~ rapid cooling at or near the surface -lack time for large crystals to grow. ~ called aphanetic (fine grained) ~ EX basalt, rhyolite Intrusive Igneous Rocks- formed by crystallization of magma at depth ~ characterized by large crystal sizes, i.e., visible individual crystals interlocked together ~ slow cooling at depth - large crystals can grow ~called phaneretic (coarse crystals) ~EX granite, gabbro I copied that so you could see how my college professor used the terminology to teach an entry level class. He was a geologist before he became a teacher; his specialties were identifying petroleum bearing rock outcrops and using X-ray diffraction to identify unknown substances. The class he taught in Crystallography had much more specific information about what was meant by crystal and grain etc. but it was a graduate level class, too. It was awesome, but technical far beyond anything we would ever need to know for an EarthCache. (The notes I gave my freshmen high school student weren't that much watered down from those notes; it's pretty basic definition type info).

fizzymagic said it well. It wouldn't be wrong to use crystal instead of grain, and yes, it may be a bit more technically correct. One correct way to use grain if it makes you more comfortable would be to say "the grain size of the crystals are about 3-5mm" etc. You could look at it as your chance to teach someone to proper vernacular on a subject in a way that isn't hard to do! I'd feel more comfortable using the word grain that way because I think it's a familiar way to use it for lay people, perhaps your friend would find that acceptable, too.

High School science teacher here with twelve years of teaching rocks and minerals in Earth-space Science class. I also have a non-teaching minor in GeoScience that focused heavily on rocks and minerals. For rocks and minerals granular means "consisting of small grains or particles" --Granite is granular. The grains are so large you can easily see them with your naked eye. One of my students once said "the grains on this rock look like cornflakes" about a piece of granite . Microgranite you might need to get out a hand magnifier to look at the grains if your eyes are getting old like mine. It's described as a "medium-grained" (1–5 mm grain diameter) rock. I can still see the mm sections on my ruler, but not like I could twenty years ago. Still, if I grab a piece of what someone calls microgranite, I can see that it is made of grains of a mixture of minerals. The grains form because granite is an intrusive rock; it cools slowly enough for the grains to form. Unlike extrusive igneous rocks such as basalt or rhyolite, which cool so quickly the grains cannot form well. ETA --to ask if that helps at all?

Remember to keep this thread on topic please. I think the subject is important to a lot of us and I really do not want to have to have to close the thread.

Let's all be sure to keep this interesting and important topic focused on the topic and not on individual people, please.

I'd certainly let them give me a hint at this point!

This was split off from the thread Help My Earthcache: a collaborative effort I thought this post deserved it's own thread. Team Microdot, you may want to edit your post so it makes sense as an opening post.

Here are a couple of guideline links: Help Center guidelines for EarthCache logging tasks. Geological Society of America guidelines for EarthCaches

With the Planetary Pursuit event about to start, perhaps this is a good time to check our EarthCache pages to make sure they are up to date and functioning as we intended. Do any links work? Have we made it clear that photos are optional (but very welcome)? Are images appearing where they should? etc. Anything else important that you can think of? With EarthCaches counting for 15 points each, we might get a little traffic on our caches.

What is your favorite EarthCache for 2017? It can be either one you created or one you visited. Was it challenging? Hard to get to? Did something funny happen on the way? Was it just stunningly beautiful? It's cold where I am, so I'm in the mood to curl up here and listen as you tell us the story

That is a wonderful explanation, GeoawareGSA2! That's the tact I took as a science teacher and as an EarthCache owner, but you said it so much better than I would have.