Rocks and Walks
Instructor: Cheryl Fontaine
Wednesdays • Classroom: 9/13 & Fri., 9/15 • 6 Field Trips: 9/20-10/25 • 10:00 AM
Class size 5-12 students
0 seats remaining
Location: Klahr 103 & Field Trips
PLEASE NOTE:
• The first two “Rocks and Walks” classes will be held in room 103 at the Klahr Center from 10-3:30 PM.
• Persons from the waiting list for the 2023 spring Rocks & Walks class have been pre-registered.
THIS CLASS IS FULL.
“Rocks and Walks” will be an outdoor journey through some of Maine’s geologic history and a great excuse to get out, have some fun, meet new people, and learn something new. Following two days of classroom instruction, over the course of the next five weeks we will take five outdoor excursions to sites of geologic interest along the coast of central Maine.
The purpose of these day trips will be to explore Maine’s bedrock geologic history and develop a sense of the immense amount of time it took for Maine’s landscape to form. We will look for clues in the bedrock outcrops that reveal the complex history that the rocks have to tell. Although looking at the rocks will be the focus of these outdoor trips, there will be additional opportunities to walk beaches, visit museums and lighthouses and dine at local restaurants, or have a picnic lunch.
Site visits will be day-long and travel will be by carpooling. We will be walking to bedrock outcrops that are accessible, but walking will be on uneven and sometimes rocky ground. The sites will have adequate parking and restroom facilities. We will be having lunch (optional and locations to be determined) prior to the site visits.
Class size is limited to 12 individuals. There has been a high demand for this course. Please make certain that you can attend all of the field trips. People who are on the waiting list from last semester will be offered the first opportunity to register for the class. There will be a ten dollar ($10.00) class fee to help pay for materials used in the class.
Wednesday, September 13 & Friday, September 15 from 10 AM-3:30 PM
Both classes will have a 1 ½ hour lunchbreak.
The first two meetings will be in a classroom setting to discuss an overview of the course. We will discuss some of the geologist’s tools including the Geologic Time Scale, how rocks are dated, and an overview of the Maine’s Geologic History. We will look at how rocks and minerals are identified and talk about some of the rocks we will see. We will be providing both handout and will email learning material. We will work out some of the logistics such as travel and lunch stop preferences.
Following the initial classroom sessions, we will travel to five different areas to look at bedrock outcrops over the next five weeks. Field trips will be on Wednesdays, however if the weather is bad on that particular Wednesday, the Friday of the same week will be set aside as a rain date.
Prior to each field trip an agenda, maps and driving directions, along with geologic information pertinent to the day’s field trip, will be emailed. The day will begin with an optional lunch at 11:00 at a restaurant near the field trip site. The field trips will end in time to get folks back to Augusta by 5 PM but participants will be free to schedule their return as they want. Participants will need to arrange their own transportation. Carpooling is encouraged.
Wednesday, Sept. 20 (rain date Friday, Sept. 22) • Owls Head
BIRCH POINT STATE PARK
Here we will look at the 421 million year old granite of the Spruce Head Pluton which forms the headlands surrounding Birch Point State Park beach. We will also look for cross-cutting younger dikes and veins and evidence of exfoliation. As the glacier that covered the State melted about 12,000 years ago, and as the rocks rebounded, the relief of the weight caused the rocks to fracture or exfoliate.
Birch Point State Park does not open until Memorial Day. We will have special permission and access through the park gate for this trip.
Wednesday, Sept. 27 (rain date Friday, Sept. 29) • Bristol
PEMAQUID POINT
At Pemaquid Point we will be looking at metamorphic and igneous rocks. The Bucksport Formation, the original country rock, is 440 million years old, but was metamorphosed later, between 415 and 360 million years ago. We will also look for folds in the metamorphosed layers.
We will also see younger igneous rocks, including pegmatites that cut across the metamorphic rocks and narrower even younger veins of quartz. The younger rocks occur both as cross-cutting dikes and parallel sills. We will show how the rocks differentially erode between the metamorphic and the harder pegmatites.
Wednesday, Oct. 4 (rain date Friday, Oct. 6) • Port Clyde
MARSHALL POINT
These are by far the most complicated rocks and the oldest rocks that we will see. Even the geologists disagree on how these rocks were formed. These rocks were originally sediments lain down between 500 to 400 million years old and are now highly metamorphosed. The original sedimentary rock is highly contorted and fragmented and partially melted.
Dikes of younger igneous rocks cross cut the metamorphic rocks. The geology of the igneous dikes is complex with granite and basalt partially melting and intermixing within the dikes.
Wednesday Oct. 11 (rain date Friday Oct. 13) • Owls Head
OWLS HEAD LIGHTHOUSE STATE PARK
At Owls Head, we will be looking at sediments originally deposited by an ancient volcano. At the cobble beach located adjacent to the Lighthouse Bluff, we will be looking at 500 million year old volcanic basalts, rhyolitic tuffs and breccias.
Wednesday, Oct. 18 (rain date Friday, Oct. 20) • Georgetown
REID STATE PARK
Here we will focus on looking at the rocks of Reid State Park, near Griffith Head. The rocks at Reid State Park are very similar to those at Pemaquid. The Cape Elizabeth formation, a metamorphosed sedimentary rock, is the original country rock. We will see local areas of younger igneous rocks granitic migmatites and pegmatites intertwined with the sedimentary country rock. The pegmatites here are more extensive than at Pemaquid and may actually be an intrusion rather than a product of metamorphism, especially at Griffith Head.
Wednesday, Oct. 25 • 10:30-4:00 PM • Bethel
MAINE MINERAL AND GEM MUSEUM
If there is interest among class members and a student who is willing to help with coordination, the class will take a trip to the Maine Mineral and Gem Museum (MMGM) in Bethel for a guided tour.
The MMGM houses the finest collection of Maine minerals and gems. It includes the famous Perham Collection, viewed by generations in a local mineral store that operated for ninety years. The museum also displays one of the world’s foremost collections of extraterrestrial rocks – meteorites from Mars, the Moon and the Asteroid Belt. The museum contains nineteen interactive exhibits over a 15,000 square foot space on three floors.
Cheryl Fontaine retired from the Maine Department of Environmental Protection as a Senior Geologist in 2016. While there, she advised technical staff on remediating underground oil and gasoline contamination and locating replacement drinking water wells. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Cheryl took on a task that she always wanted to do: learn more about the origin of Maine’s bedrock. She spent a year researching the latest information on the geologic evolution of the State of Maine and visiting innumerable bedrock outcrops.
Cheryl lives in Sidney with her husband, Louis. Her other interests include music, quilting, languages and, of course, rock collecting.