Geology rocks

I admit that I sometimes mock tourists, but today hypocrisy bit me in the ass: I couldn't help myself and so I took fifteen minutes to be a tourist. To my credit, I was a geologist-wanna-be tourist, which is way cooler than obnoxious Americans or teenagers of any nationality.

I stopped at my new favorite place - where the biggest fissures I have seen are. Every so often we have to slow down because there are dips or drops in the road. All from the earthquake. But this point just blows me away. The driver laughed when I tried to explain how impressed I was. It's a little hard to explain, even here, in English.

I am such a geek. I dare not show my lack of actual geology knowledge, despite my degree (I studied the water in the rocks, not so much the rocks). Of course I studied basic geology too, and saw photos and learned about faults and earthquakes and the wrath of plate tectonics. I lived in California where you have the San Andres, but the signs of creep I saw there are nothing, I tell you nothing, compared to this.

Geologist friends, please enlighten us.

Holy shit. (Expletives! YAY!) There is nothing else to say. I mean really? This happened in seconds. Imagine.

On the left you see the driver looking into the crack that opened up. This is close up, but the fissure goes on forever. See the photo on the right is only about half of it. (And yes, it is full of trash... we are eight months after.)               

These two are looking the other way up the road. The crack on the right side of the pavement is the same fissure as above, from the other direction. But that is not what I am trying to show here: you see how it is wavy. This used to be flat. Flat. Flat. And now, it's wavy. Awesome.

I am reminded of an ironic geology bumper sticker that encourages us all to "Stop Plate Tectonics!"