Fly Geyser

Fly Geyser is a small geothermal geyser that is located approximately 20 miles (32 km) north of Gerlach, in Washoe County, Nevada. The Geyser is located in Hualapai Flat less than a mile from State Route 34. The Geyser is about 1/3 miles from the road and is large enough to be seen from the road.

Fly Geyser is located on the private Fly Ranch and is accessible only by a small private dirt road. The ranch is currently owned by Todd Jaksick. There is a high fence and a locked gate with several metal spokes on the top to keep trespassers out, but despite the booby traps, many people still prefer to jump the fence to get a better look. Several organizations have tried to purchase the land for conservation, and make it open to the public, but have been denied.

Fly Geyser is a very little known tourist attraction, even to Nevada residents. It is located right near the edge of Fly Reservoir and is only about 5 feet (1.5 m) high, (12 feet (3.7 m) if you count the mound on which it sits). The Geyser is not an entirely natural phenomenon, and was accidentally created in 1916 during the drilling of a well. The well functioned normally for several decades, but then in the 1960s geothermally heated water found a weak spot in the wall and began escaping to the surface. Dissolved minerals started rising and piling up, creating the mount on which the geyser sits, which is still growing to date. Today, water is constantly squirting out reaching 5 feet (1.5 m) in the air. The geyser contains several terraces discharging water into 30 to 40 pools over an area of 30 hectares (74 acres). The geyser is made up of a series of different minerals, including sulfur dioxide, which gives it its magnificent coloration.

There are two additional geysers in the area that were created in a similar way as Fly Geyser. The first geyser is approximately 3 feet high and is shaped like a miniature volcano. The second geyser is cone shaped and is of the same approximate size as Fly Geyser. Like Fly Geyser, these geysers are continually growing.

The Floating Islands of Lake Titicaca Tours

The Floating Islands of Lake Titicaca is a lake located on the border of Peru and Bolivia. It sits 3,811 m (12,500 ft) above sea level, making it the highest commercially navigable lake in the world. By volume of water, it is also the largest lake in South America (Lake Maracaibo has a larger surface area, but it is often disregarded as it is directly connected to the sea).

A unique tourist destination, is a must. These island are made and re-made from the totora reeds which provide home, sustenance and transportation for their residents. About a two hour boat ride from Puno, on the Peruvian side of the lake, the largest of about 40 islands and the main destination is the island of Santa María. See map showing location of Uros islands and Taquile island off Puno, Peru.

Source : About

Ischigualasto National Park | The Valley of the Moon

Ischigualasto is a geological formation and a natural park associated with it in the province of San Juan, north-western Argentina, near the border with Chile. The Ischigualasto Provincial Park is located in the north-east of the province (30°S 68°W), and its northern border is the Talampaya National Park, in La Rioja, both of which belong to the same geological formation.

It has an area of 603.7 km2 (233 sq mi), most of them within the Valle Fértil Department, with a minor part in the Jachal Department of San Juan, at an altitude of about 1,300 m (4,265 ft) above mean sea level. The park is part of the western border of the Pampean Hills, and it features typical desert vegetation (bushes, cacti and some trees) which covers between 10 and 20% of the area. The climate is very dry, with rainfall mostly during the summer, and temperature extremes (minimum -10 °C, maximum 45 °C). There is a constant southern wind with a speed of 20-40 km/h after noon and until the evening, sometimes accompanied by an extremely strong zonda wind.

The Ischigualasto Formation contains Late Triassic (Carnian) deposits (230 million years before the present), with some of the oldest known dinosaur remains, which are the world's first with regards to quality, number and importance. It is the only place in the world where nearly all of the Triassic is represented in an undisturbed sequence of rock deposits. This allows for the study of the transition between dinosaurs and ancient mammals; research is ongoing.

The arid badlands around the formation are known as Valle de la Luna ("Valley of the Moon") due to their rugged, otherworldly appearance. In the Carnian this area was a volcanically active floodplain dominated by rivers and had a strongly seasonal rainfall. Petrified tree trunks of Protojuniperoxylon ischigualastianus more than 40 m (131 ft) tall attest to a rich vegetation at that time. Fossil ferns and horsetails have also been found.

Rhynchosaurs and cynodonts are by far the predominant findings among the tetrapod fossils in the park. Dinosaurs comprise only 6% of the findings, but these include early samples of the two major lineages of dinosaurs (ornithischians and saurischians). The carnivorous archosaur Herrerasaurus is the most numerous of these dinosaur fossils. Another important putative dinosaur with primitive characteristics is Eoraptor lunensis, found in Ischigualasto in the early 1990s.