Ireland: Mizen Head Peninsula, Skibbereen, and Baltimore

Trip Date: August 2, 2011

I woke up early the next morning - my first in Ireland - and while everyone was still sleeping, I put my shoes on and took a little walk along the road which went up the hill behind our cottage. It wasn't cold, but it wasn't yet hot, either, even though the sun was already high in the sky. I'm not entirely sure about the rest of the Irish year, but it sure seemed like we picked the right time to go because the flowers were all in bloom and just amazing!

Foxglove

Spear Thistle

Fuchsia

A little bit of everything

I walked only for about half an hour before returning to Agma, our cottage, and began making noise to get everyone else up. Once everyone was up, washed, and breakfasted, we packed into our two cars for our first day-trip. That's what my family does on vacation: we find somewhere to make our base camp and then we take day-trips to all sorts of locations rather than constantly being on the road. Well, Britta had been to this region of Ireland before and one of the things they did was drive out to the end of the most southwestern of all the Irish peninsulas jutting out into the Atlantic Ocean.

It was a little bit grey as we made the drive to the end of the Mizen Peninsula, but we stopped a few times for some photo ops, but by the time we got to our destination, the light station at the end of the peninsula, Mizen Head, the sun was back out. The Mizen Head station has a neat museum in the visitor center (which you do not need tickets to see, even though they sell tickets before the museum entrance) and explains some of the shipping, geology, and ecological histories of the Irish coast. I was mostly interested in the geology, since we saw so many rocks alongside the roads.

Roughly 400 million years ago, a mountainous region in what is now northwestern Ireland was slowly eroding and rivers were depositing numerous sedimentary sequences into a warm shallow sea. Then, about 100 million years later, Europe and Africa collided, causing a shortening of 50% of the Earth's crust. All that material had to go somewhere, and typically when two continents collide, material ends up moving upward, so the Irish landscape suddenly became extremely mountainous once again as the older sedimentary sequences deformed. Over time, this very large mountain belt wore down until there was more sediment than river systems could carry. Then, about 150 million years ago, the land was flooded by rising seas again, and shells from dead organisms created a new layer of limestone. Glaciations began to inundate Ireland about 120,000 years ago from the north and a smaller ice cap over the southwest corner of Ireland. A rigorously eroded landscape emerged from under the ice nearly 10,000 years ago and since then has become soaked with rain, allowing for the wet, green landscape Ireland is famous for today.

A brief walk from the museum takes you out to the end of the peninsula where there is a walking bridge that carries you over a deep cove to a large rocky island where the light station is located. Only once you get to that light station do you actually need to show anyone a ticket, and for the few exhibits out in the buildings there, it's not really worth it. The views along the walkways and to different viewing points on the way out to the light station are the real draw! But the little exhibits about all the different ships that became victim to the ocean's ravaging waves and submerged shoals, and how ships communicated to each other using flags, and the various whales in the area, and how Marconi set up his famous wireless telegraph system were mildly educational. Again, though, it's the scenery you want to see out here!

My brother Ryan, my Dad, my sister Lizzie, and me on the Mizen Peninsula

At Mizen Head this was a demonstration of how the foundations for the Fastnet Rock Lighthouse were constructed. Each granite block is individually carved and notched such that every single block is interconnected with every other block around it. Once everything is loaded into place, it is impossible to move the block foundation in any direction other than up. This makes the foundation design ideal for lighthouses that are constantly being bombarded horizontally by brutal ocean waves!

Walking bridge out to the Mizen Head light station

Looking back on the Mizen Peninsula

View of the rocky cove walls at Mizen Head

Me at the Mizen Head light. This isn't really a lighthouse, per se, but it does help ships figure out where they are!

THIS is the lighthouse on Fastnet Rock where the keepers would stay for months on end during all sorts of weather

Mizen Bridge from above.

Looking north along the rocky shoreline from Mizen Head.

Sea arch carved into the rocks at Mizen head.

Bell heather

From Mizen Head, we drove back inland and stopped in the town of Skibbereen where Irish Independence leader, Michael Collins, had his last pint before being ambushed and assassinated near Bandon in County Cork. It is also famous for being hardest hit by the infamous Irish Potato Famine (1845-1850). We ate dinner at a great Irish restaurant/pub/cafe called Annie May's before continuing through to the coastal town of Baltimore. Britta suggested Baltimore because you could watch the sunset while sipping down a pint at the harbor, and though we did not have enough time, you can also take a quick ferry ride out to Sherkin Island and explore a monastery in ruins. With a pint down, and the sun beginning its descent, we left Baltimore and headed back to Bantry while there was still light to drive by (you don't want to be on Irish country roads at night! They are poorly lit, narrow, and windy!). Going back through Skibbereen, though, we stopped at a cemetery just to the west of town and visited a mass burial site for victims of the Potato Famine.

Small church in Crookhaven

Lizzie on the streets of Skibbereen

Great place for dinner!

Pubs, restaurants, and lodgings right at Baltimore Harbor

Plaque at Abbeystrewery, a cemetery where there is a mass-grave site where 9,000 victims of the Great Potato Famine are buried.

 

Collecting Rocks in the Appalachian Mountains (Part 1)

Presently, I am sitting in front of my computer waiting for some data processing to finish in ArcGIS (a geospatial mapping software package) and going over edits to a paper manuscript I am getting ready to submit for publication. The paper is essentially Part II of my Masters Thesis which I finished this past January at the University of Vermont. My project was fairly simple in scope: determine the erosion rate for bedrock outcrops in the central Appalachian Mountains. Turns out they are slowly eroding away at only a few millimeters per thousand years, so don't worry - the ground will not just drop out from under your feet!

We use various chemical procedures to extract a form of the element, beryllium, from rocks and since the rocks we needed were in the Appalachian Mountains, someone had to go get them. This someone happened to be me!

Two summers ago (2009), my classmate, Charles, and I spent two weeks traipsing around the central Appalachians hiking up mountains and collecting rocks from the uppermost parts of rock outcrops. Charles was doing field work in that region as well, so we also spent time collecting sand from streams and rivers for his research.

We touched down at BWI with our advisor, got our rental car (a nice little Chevy Colbalt) and were off! The first place we went was to Harpers Ferry National Historical Park at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers. We hiked up to a small segment of the Appalachian Trail and got our first few samples (NOTE: I have documented permission from the NPS staff at Harpers Ferry to collect samples. In this and any other State and National Park, the removal of any material is prohibited and in many cases a federal offense!). My advisor showed me what kind of rock outcrops I wanted to sample, how some were better than others, and how to get the sample.

Harpers Ferry is a quaint little town with a storied history seeped in trade, bloody battles, and industry. Many American Civil War battles were fought here and some of the trenches dug out by the soldiers and battlements are still visible.

Civil War battlements on the Maryland Heights side of the Potomac at Harpers Ferry NHP.

Civil War battlements preserved on the Loudoun Heights side of the Potomac at Harpers Ferry NHP.

Civil War battle trenches preserved on the Loudoun Heights side of the Potomac at Harpers Ferry NHP

Our advisor was only with us for a few days and so the next day we moved further north to Maryland. It was mid-May and Spring had come to the central Appalachians. Fortunately for us that meant the hiking would be beautiful! Unfortunately for me it meant learning the hard way that I have allergies... The first hike of that day was in Cunningham Falls State Park and it was a long, sunny walk through a dogwood forest. The trees had just begun to bloom and except for my constant sneezing, it was perfect.

Dogwoods in bloom in Cunningham Falls State Park, MD

More pollen-producing sneeze machines

The nice thing about this time of year was that the wildlife was also just starting to come alive. In Cunningham Falls SP, we came across many animals we would frequently run into during the two weeks following. But only here at our sampling site did we see a snake, sunning itself in the hollow of a tree!

Red spotted newt (it's about 2 inches long!)

These millipedes were everywhere, all over the hiking trails

The only snake we saw!

With four new samples collected, we went up to Catoctin Mountain Park, a unit of the National Park Service in Maryland. I had never really heard much about Catoctin before, other than Camp David - the Presidential Retreat - is nearby. I was pretty astounded with the size and grandeur of this small little Appalachian Park and though we only had a little bit of time there, I plan on going back and exploring more of it!

Rock formations in Catoctin Mountain Park

My classmate exploring the rocks at Catoctin

My advisor had to get to his folks' house that evening in Baltimare, so Charles and I drove him back to the city and then we parked downtown and got a delicious seafood dinner at Eat Bertha's Mussels in Baltimore's back-bay. I was still in my picky-eating phase, so I stuck with fish 'n' chips while Charles opted to go for the restaurant's namesake - mussels. Charles and I spent the next few days collecting rocks again at Harpers Ferry NHP as well as in South Mountain State Park in Maryland.

Taking notes at a sampling site at Ravens Rock in South Mtn. SP

Then it was Charles's turn. We had an agreement that while I was collecting samples, I would navigate to the next sample site and he would drive and then our roles would be reversed when he was collecting samples. So the next few days I spent driving around the greater Washington DC area. While most of his sampling sites were out in the countryside, a good few of them were in suburban neighborhoods where we had to suspiciously cross private property to gain access to a creek to collect the sediment. Another good few of them were very near government properties like...Andrews Air Force Base or the Department of Agriculture's Research Facilities.

I'll be honest: I was nervous. We would leave our rental car at the end of some cul-de-sac, put on our muck boots, and go tromping through forested plots of land where I could all but help think about the number of dead bodies that may or may not have been dumped after unfortunate mob encounters or something fantastical like that. I became increasingly aware of Big Brother's presence everywhere around Washington DC. This feeling was most heightened around Andrews AFB (where Air Force 1 lives) and I could actually see the thin barbed-wire boundary just strung between trees with little tags that read, "WARNING: Government Property! Do not cross!" But this boundary was not always marked and my worst fear was that we would unknowingly step onto government property, be detained, and have to explain ourselves to intimidating officials, who wouldn't buy our "we're-grad-students-doing-research" story, and ship us down to Guantanamo Bay where we would be water-boarded and forced to bunk up with real terrorists. Luckily, my worst fears were unfounded and sampling in DC was complete without a hitch.

We left the DC area for the sandy flat-lands south of the City on the peninsula between the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay. I could tell from driving around that this area was very seldom traveled by tourists but I was amazed at how beautiful the landscape was - and we were just a few hours from the city! It was mostly flat and sandy with towering shady pine trees. If I didn't know any better, I would have thought I was up in the woods near my family's cabin in northern Michigan!

Another day was spent crossing back over to the Alexandria side of Washington DC where we collected more stream sediment and tried collecting some more rock samples for my research, but nature thwarted us again, and in fear of being gassed out, we drove on.

Stupid gypsy moths...ruining my research!