Life on the Playa

 I wasn't feeling the energy for my weekly Black Rock run while Desert Girl was in preschool. So instead I decided to do a little exploring. Since I had playas on my mind (see this earlier post if you haven't already), I went to a nearby playa.

 As I approached, I spooked some of the wildlife. Several pronghorn took off, as well as horned larks, a raptor, and probably more. I parked on the edge of the playa and got out to start walking around.

 A lone pronghorn, probably hoping I would just go away, bounded past. Fortunately I had my camera ready.

 I've never been able to see how a pronghorn runs, so I was fascinated with the photo results. Pronghorn are the fastest land animals in the Western Hemisphere, with speeds exceeding 40 mph. Worldwide they are second only to cheetahs. Pronghorn have 13 distinct gaits. I have to say I don't know what this one is.

 One of the cool things about pronghorn (cool enough to make me put it as my Favicon (the little icon that shows up next to the name of my blog) is that they are endemic to western and central North America. They have been around much longer than deer or elk, and they have evolved with the ubiquitous sagebrush and are able to use it much more efficiently than other ungulates. There used to be 12 species of pronghorn (Antilocaprids) here in the Pleistocene, but today only one still exists, Antilocapra americana.

Although pronghorn can run fast, they can't jump well. Instead of jumping over fences, they usually crawl underneath them. It looks as awkward as it sounds. Someday I might get lucky and get a photo.

I could see the pronghorn off a ways in the desert, watching the playa. I wouldn't have seen them, though, if I didn't know to look for them, as they blend in really well.

 The bone on the playa showed that not all animals are able to escape their predators.

 I found these nice pronghorn tracks.

 The tracks were near this puddle. Flocks of horned larks kept flying around. I'm sure this water is a major attractor. Playas are often dry, but when they have water, they are a hotspot of diversity.

 One of the things that attracts me most about playas is all the patterns that can be found on them. Near the edges I found small black gravel on the playa. It had filled in many of the mud cracks, accenting the dessicated pattern.

 The tree-like drainage pattern caught my eye. Even on a small scale, the patterns are fantastic.

 When you get out to the middle of the playa, it's hard to imagine what could possibly live on it. It seems so desolate and forlorn, so hard to make a living.

 The playa attracted some short-termers for a party.

 An elevation change of a few millimeters permitted a bush to grow out on the playa.

 And then I found this beetle out near the middle. What are you doing out here, little beetle?
 

 The beetle is in the lower middle of the photo--look for its shadow. It's really far from anything!

 It was moving quickly, perhaps realizing that it was more-than-a-little exposed to birds and other predators.

 These tracks that start and stop abruptly made me think of alien life. Perhaps that's due to so many alien movies being filmed out in the desert!

I was surprised by all the life I saw out on the playa. There was sign of lots more--plenty of scat from pronghorn and wild horses, burrows, bird scat, and more. At first it might appear as such a bleak place, but once you look a little closer, you can see that the playa is an important place for many animals.

Now I'm ready to go explore a few more playas!

St. George Dinosaur Disovery

 In honor of National Fossil Day on Wednesday, here's a post about some cool fossils we saw recently. We were headed to St. George, Utah to watch some friends run in the St. George marathon, and I figured that since we were going to make the trip, it would be a great opportunity to see some of the sights. With Desert Boy's love of paleontology, it was only natural that we head to the Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm. 

This is a relatively new site, discovered in 2000 when Dr. Sheldon Johnson was leveling a hill on his property. He found the dinosaur tracks, and it was quickly seen that this was an exceptionally good place for tracks. He worked to preserve the tracks instead of developing the land. I couldn't help but wonder what dinosaur tracks lay under the nearby parking lot, roads, church, and houses.

 And the tracks sure are spectacular! These are not difficult to see at all. I liked to think of the dinosaurs wandering across the landscape, unknowingly leaving prints that would be preserved for millions of years.

 At least three different species of dinosaurs left tracks at the site.

 We also saw fossilized mud cracks, which are cool looking.

 The site also has some other really interesting tracks, such as these swim tracks. Apparently it's rare to find tracks that dinosaurs made as they were entering the water and starting to swim. I also really liked the impression of dinosaur skin. It doesn't seem like it could be so old!

 The kids really liked the touchable fossils.

 I thought this fossil was really pretty--and big! We were on little kid speed through the museum, which meant I couldn't read very much.

Much of the museum protects the biggest trackway, with a dinosaur replica to give a sense of scale. Although the museum isn't very large, it sure is interesting.

 The kids especially liked the hands-on activities in the activity room.

Another favorite was the sandbox.

It looks like the museum is working on making a short trail out back, which would be a nice addition.

Hope you have a great National Fossil Day!

Playas

I've been trying to read more books about the Great Basin and just finished William L. Fox's Playa Works: The Myth of the Empty. Some of it was fascinating. Some of it I skipped over. Anyway, if you are interested in playas, it's worth a read.

I wanted to share some of the cool things I learned. After all, I feel like at least once in awhile I need to be true to the name of this blog and talk about the desert and what's in it. Plus, the more I learned about playas, the more I kept wanting to learn about playas. I've spent quite a bit of time doing some Internet searches the last few days. They are cool places, even though they are basically barren and hard to comprehend.

What is a playa? It's basically a dry lake bed. The word playa is Spanish for beach, which can be appropriate in some circumstances. G. K. Gilbert first used the word in a scientific context in 1875, while on a survey west of the 100th meridian. The word had already been in use by then, as Gilbert didn't define it. It's true that playas do get water on them. However, the evaporation rate is usually ten times greater than the evaporation rate. One other important component of playas is that they don't have an outlet. That means that the salts and other minerals that are left behind when the water evaporates are distributed evenly, creating a very flat, homogenous feature.
How many playas are out there? Fox reports that more than 50,000 exist around the world. Most are small, like Yelland Dry Lake, pictured below.

The largest playa in North America isn't far from where I live: the Great Salt Lake Desert. The largest playa in the world is Lake Eyre in Australia, with a surface area of about 3,600 square miles. That size is hard to comprehend!

If you don't have a playa near you, don't worry, as playas are growing in number and size. Okay, maybe that's not such a great thing. The reason they're growing is generally due to groundwater pumping.

The biggest example would be Owens Lake in California, which was a huge lake until the water feeding it was rerouted down a pipeline to Los Angeles. The resulting dry lake bed created some of the worst air pollution in the U.S.

Dust storm on east side of Owens Lake playa. Photo credit: Basin and Range Watch.

If you want to find a sliver of a silver lining, it might be that humans have adapted to live with these playas in many ways. The following list is not in order of importance. At least to me. But perhaps it will be to you. Or maybe this list will give you some ideas about what you might want to do the next time you see a playa either in person or a photo.

1) First, playas are good for setting speed records. This is important to a lot of people as evidenced by the thousands that go to the Bonneville Salt Flats west of Salt Lake City every August.

A Streamliner at the 2009 Bonneville Salt Flat Races. (you can see a fun post I did looking at fast cars and going behind the scenes at the Bonneville Time Trials by clicking here.)

2) Playas have also been used for nuclear testing (the Nevada Test Site). Sometime in the future I'd like to do a post about the Nevada Test Site--I've been reading a lot about it lately and it's weirdly fascinating. They offer public tours--but you have to reserve a spot nearly a year in advance!

Most subsidences leave saucer-shaped craters varying in diameter and depth, depending upon the yield, depth of burial, and geology. This is the north end of Yucca Flat. Most tests have been conducted in this valley. Photo courtesy of National Nuclear Security Administration / Nevada Site Office. 3) Playas can be great places to party. The Black Rock Desert, the second largest playa in North America, is home to the annual Burning Man Festival, a week-long event creating the fifth-largest city in Nevada. The Burning Man website describes the event as: "Once a year, tens of thousands of participants gather in Nevada's Black Rock Desert to create Black Rock City, dedicated to community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance."

Most subsidences leave saucer-shaped craters varying in diameter and depth, depending upon the yield, depth of burial, and geology. This is the north end of Yucca Flat. Most tests have been conducted in this valley. Photo courtesy of National Nuclear Security Administration / Nevada Site Office.

3) Playas can be great places to party. The Black Rock Desert, the second largest playa in North America, is home to the annual Burning Man Festival, a week-long event creating the fifth-largest city in Nevada. The Burning Man website describes the event as: "Once a year, tens of thousands of participants gather in Nevada's Black Rock Desert to create Black Rock City, dedicated to community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance."

From the Google Earth Blog: http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2011/09/burning_man_2011.html

 4) Playas were important crossing routes for emigrants.

5) Playas have encouraged art of various types, such as the famous Nazca Lines in a desert in Peru.

From http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/nazca/nazca-lines.htm

6) Playas may have encouraged aliens to visit.

Ibex Hardpan

(All the Groom Lake (Area 51) photos with aliens running around are classified, so I had to use the one above.)

7) Playas have some wonderful geologic mysteries contained in them, like the moving rocks on the Racetrack Playa in Death Valley National Park.

Photo credit: NASA/GSFC/Cynthia Cheung

8) Playas are great places to land airplanes--and for fly ins. Every year the Tule Valley (Ibex) Fly In at the Tule Hardpan/Playa west of Delta, Utah attracts many pilots. Unless, of course, the playa is wet. Then landing on it isn't such a great idea.

Photo credit: Blackrock at Backcountrypilot.org

9) Movie companies like to film on playas. I had heard about one being filmed on the above-mentioned Tule Hardpan and this post made me look it up. Here's a movie filmed out there:

What's your favorite activity on a playa? My husband has wanted to build a sail-contraption, but fortunately hasn't gotten past the dreaming stage. Somehow crashing at high speeds on the high desert floor doesn't sound like much fun to me.

I'm going to try and pay a little more attention to playas.

Like sand dunes, they capture some of the essence of the desert: the dry, desolate, and forbidding places where life is harsh, if it exists at all.

Preschool Fun

 Preschool has been back in session for awhile, and Desert Girl absolutely loves it. Actually, Desert Boy comments that he wishes he could go. He really liked all the playing and different toys. Teacher Gwendy says that most kids say they wish they could go back. You'll see why in this post.

On my carpool day this week, we had a good crowd, so I started taking some photos.

 The six bigger kids from last year are all in kindergarten this year, so it makes for a younger and calmer preschool group this year. The kids are still learning how to get along, but they do pretty well. Here Desert Girl and Isaac take the baby for a shopping trip.

 One of the best things the kids learn at preschool is that they have to put away one activity before they can get out another. I try to reinforce that at home--but it doesn't always work. Some may think that my house has had a windy fall storm go through it. It has, that storm is just named kids!

 This was Ariel's first day at school, and I think she liked it a lot.

 These two are always busy. When they get quiet, you know that they are into something they're not supposed to be into.

 Evan was kindly showing Andie how to do this puzzle. He's the big kid in the class now.

 When it was time for group, they all sat down so nicely and reviewed the colors and numbers and alphabet. The repetition works--Desert Girl sings the ABCs all the time, until we kindly ask her to pick a different song.

 It's quite an experience watching them all, seeing how much their young minds can absorb.

 Ella is one of the older ones and helps the younger ones learn.

 I took a couple videos with my camera that I now have to figure out how to reduce in size to get onto YouTube. I also took a few stills, like this one of I'm Taking My Home My Baby Bumblebee.

 The answer was three--both the boys got it right. Isaac looks like he's still checking his fingers.

 Then it's time to do their papers. They eagerly run over to the table and find a seat. The special number for the day was number "1".

 Then it's snack time and recess. Who wouldn't like preschool? In fact, I think I'm ready to go back. As you can see by the long sleeves, it's starting to cool off. Our unseasonably warm autumn is about to come to an end. We've had a strange weather year this year, but overall I have to say that it's been pleasant.

 Throwing balls was a favorite activity on this day.

 Ariel had her mom give her a push on this colorful tricycle.

 More ball playing.

 Ariel really wanted me to take her photo.

Then we decided to try for a group shot. These are always so hard to do, as the kids don't really want to sit still and look at the camera at the same time. I've yet to figure out how to do it successfully. With that disclaimer, here's the best one of the bunch:

 Maybe we'll have to try at the beginning of recess next time!

And just in case you don't believe me that it's the best one, check out this photo (where we admittedly let them make faces):

 'Are we done yet?'