Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Western Upper Peninsula Adventure -- Post 6

After leaving Eagle River, WI after the show, I headed down to a meeting south of Escanaba, MI.   There was no wifi signal, so I was not able to execute a blog posting yesterday.  It is good to be home after a long weekend of working in the cold at Cranberry Festival.

Today I will continue with the western upper peninsula adventure that my sister and I went on a couple of weekends ago.  The photographs is these recaps are a combination of those we both took.

After having lunch at Black River Harbor, we visited Rainbow Falls (last update) and continued to Sandstone Falls.




After parking, we had a nice walk in the woods before descending down a steep bluff.  The trail guide said that it was just a 1/4 mile, but it seemed a lot longer given the steepness of the terrain.






Location: Black River Scenic Byway, 15 miles north of Bessemer
Height: 15 feet
Crest: 30 feet
Water Source: Black River
Waypoint: 46.65N 90.047W
Summary: The smallest of five main waterfalls on the Black River Scenic Byway with lots of surrounding rock that allows you to explore the area.



As we were exploring the area, I noticed this pothole carved out by grinding rocks that swirled in the current.





In addition to the sandstone layers of rock, there also is a lot of Copper Harbor Conglomerate.   Like all sedimentary rocks, the Copper Harbor Conglomerate formed in a four stage process- erosion & transport, deposition and cementation.   This is a coarse grained clastic sedimentary rock, composed of rounded to subangular rock fragments that includes granules, pebbles, cobbles, and boulders set in a fine-grain matrix of sand or silt. The components are cemented by calcium carbonate, iron oxide, silica, or hardened clay.
More information about Copper Harbor Conglomerate is available on this web site: http://www.geo.mtu.edu/~eegochis/CopperHarborConglomerate_EarthCache.html



The next two pictures show a particularly photogenic piece of Copper Harbor Conglomerate.



Notice in the photo below that there is Copper Harbor Conglomerate on top of the sandstone.


More photos of the Copper Harbor Conglomerate are below.




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