Kennedy Dells EarthCache EarthCache
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Welcome to Kennedy Dells Park! The below three paragraphs are an excerpt from the County website.
GENERAL DESCRIPTION: Flat rolling topography. The extreme westerly portion is heavily wooded consisting of Hemlock, White Pine, Beech, Maple, Black and Red Oak, White Ash, and Black Locust. A portion of the land's forty acres is farmed by George Smith and Sons Inc. growing some of Rockland's finest Sweet Corn, and preserving the fields for future active sports development. Crum Creek bounds the Park on the westerly side along which winds a hiking trail that looks down at the stream below.
HISTORY: Owned in the early part of the century by the well-known movie producer Adolph Zukor. New City was at one time to be the Hollywood of the east. Remains of the bridge across Crum Creek to the teahouse still exist. 80 acres purchased 1969; 97 acres added 1975.
PRESENT USE: Parcourse Fitness Trail, hiking trails, off-leash dog area, horse corral, nature study, soccer, cross country skiing, picnic tables, pavilion and forestry and wildlife conservation practices. Guided tours and lectures are available by the Park Rangers.
This cache is an Earth Cache. You will not be leaving anything, but you will be taking away a lesson in geology and participating in enjoying nature at its best. The below is an excerpt from Wikipedia[1]
Sandstone is a sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-size mineral or rock grains. Most sandstone is composed of quartz and/or feldspar because these are the most common minerals in the Earth's crust. Like sand, sandstone may be any color, but the most common colors are tan, brown, yellow, red, gray and white. Since sandstone beds often form highly visible cliffs and other topographic features, certain colors of sandstone have been strongly identified with certain regions. Some sandstones are resistant to weathering, yet are easy to work. This makes sandstone a common building and paving material. Because of the hardness of the individual grains, uniformity of grain size and friability of its structure, sandstone is an excellent material from which to make grindstones, for sharpening blades and other implements. Non-friable sandstone can be used to make grindstones for grinding grain (e.g. gritstone). Rock formations that are primarily sandstone usually allow percolation of water and are porous enough to store large quantities, making them valuable aquifers. Fine-grained aquifers, such as sandstones, are more apt to filter out pollutants from the surface than are rocks with cracks and crevices, such as limestones or other rocks fractured by seismic activity.
ORIGIN: Sandstones are clastic in origin (as opposed to organic, like chalk and coal, or chemical, like gypsum and jasper). They are formed from cemented grains that may either be fragments of a pre-existing rock or be mono-minerallic crystals. The cements binding these grains together are typically calcite, clays and silica. Grain sizes in sands are in the range of 0.1 mm to 2 mm (rocks with smaller grain sizes include siltstones and shales and are typically called argillaceous sediments, as too are clays and rocks with larger grain sizes include both breccias and conglomerates and are termed rudaceous sediments).
The formation of sandstone involves two principal stages. First, a layer or layers of sand accumulates as the result of sedimentation, either from water (as in a river, lake, or sea) or from air (as in a desert). Typically, sedimentation occurs by the sand settling out from suspension, i.e. ceasing to be rolled or bounced along the bottom of a body of water (e.g. seas or rivers) or ground surface (e.g. in a desert or sand dune region). Finally, once it has accumulated, the sand becomes sandstone when it is compacted by pressure of overlying deposits and cemented by the precipitation of minerals within the pore spaces between sand grains. The most common cementing materials are silica and calcium carbonate, which are often derived either from dissolution or from alteration of the sand after it was buried. Colors will usually be tan or yellow (from a blend of the clear quartz with the dark amber feldspar content of the sand). A predominant additional colorant in the southwestern United States is iron oxide, which imparts reddish tints ranging from pink to dark red (terra cotta), with additional manganese imparting a purplish hue. Red sandstones are also seen in the Southwest and West of England and Wales, as well as central Europe and Mongolia. Deposition from sand dunes can be recognized by irregular and fluidly shaped weathering patterns and wavy coloration lines when sectioned, while water deposition will form more regular blocks when weathered. The regularity of the latter favors use as a source for masonry, either as a primary building material or as a facing stone, over other construction.
[1] "Sandstone." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 4 Nov 2007, 16:07 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 5 Nov 2007 .
To get credit for this cache, please provide the following:
1. If you’d like (it isn’t required as of 1/1/2011) post a picture of the sandstone on the opposite shore (slightly downstream).
2. Please describe the color and texture of the sandstone. As you cannot feel the sandstone as it is on the opposite shore, please describe how you think it would feel or look around where you are to see if there is more nearby.
3. Pertaining to the texture, what do you think made the stone in the shape that it is now?
4. Can you find any other types of rock in the sandstone or nearby that you can identify (quartz, granite or anything else that just looks cool)? If you are a kid or have kids, I bet you or they can beat the adults in finding cool, colorful rocks!
If I do not have the answers emailed or messaged to me in 24 hours, your found log will be deleted.
I would also recommend going to the following waypoint along the route (you will have to pass it anyway using this entrance) N41° 10.467 W073° 59.593. Here you will find the clue to solving the riddle on the Rockland County Steps Program. I highly recommend this program. As with geocaching, it will bring you places you may not have even know existed. The guided walks are excellent as well.
If anyone has seen the trailer for Splinterheads, they will have noticed that there are coordinates right in the beginning. They are N41° 10.259 W073° 59.758. That is in Kennedy Dells, but there isn’t anything there.
A trail map can be found here.
Congrats to Outdoors Lady on FTF!
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