June 2022 Program Information
June 2022 Program
Marcia Morris, a club member, has done 3 trips with GeoWorldTravels.com. The group studies the geology of an area & Marcia also loves to photograph the flora and fauna of the places they visit.She visited Oman on the Arabian peninsula in March for 10 days. She prepared a wonderful PowerPoint presentation with background music.
She took thousands of photos and had to choose and label those included.
She said they stayed in a hotel and had boxed lunches on the excursions, but got to enjoy local food for dinner.
She was allowed to collect rock samples on some sites, but not all. The lead guide used to be in the oil industry, and when he retired, he decided to share his travels by forming this tour group. He works with local guides in the visited area. The tour was of NW Oman where the desert meets the sea.
There was a great variety of photos from Lepidoptera (striped, spotted, multi-colored butterflies); Diptera (flies, large and small); Coleoptera, (black & brown beetles); Aves (egrets, vultures, sparrows, herons, gulls, cormorants); Reptiles (all sorts of lizards); and Mammals (fox and dolphin).
Interspersed with pictures of rocks and the animals were photos of flowering plants- cactus and some trees. There were many fossil shells on the beaches, and in the rock layers, as this area was under water millions of years ago.
The group visited the Wahiba sands - 112 x 50 mile area. The sands were blown in from Yemen over time. The Bedouin nomads make this area their home. They saw an area where the MOHO (the layer between the crust and mantle) was visible, a closed copper mine, a closed manganese mine, a prominent syncline, volcanic basalt columns, and an area of kimberlite.
Marcia got to see the Sultan's Rock, Elephant Rock, and the Grand Canyon of Arabia - the Wadi Ghul (a wadi is a dry river bed). They visited the Beehive tombs, an important archeological site, believed to be 4 to 5000 years old.
The country is ruled by a Muslim Sultan who controls the lives of the Oman people. There are very strict rules about public speaking, the role of women, and crime. There are very limited freedoms there. Marcia said everyone she met was very friendly and welcoming.
THANKS SO MUCH FOR SHARING YOUR TRIP WITH US! .......and we even got to hold some pieces of Oman in our hands with the samples she brought for us to see.
Columnar Basalt
Cormorant & Herons
Metamorphosed Permian Schist
Oman Rocks
Spiny-tailed Lizard