Boulder Loop

I am glad Marina Anderson offered to take my picture and I was spared making myself another pathetic selfie shot. I was hiking with Maestro Magellan and revisiting Daley Ranch. I first visited this "jewel of Escondido" almost four years ago. https://gopluckyourself.blogspot.com/2012/08/hikers-with-cause.html
We all came with hats. We couldn't help but the defy the alerts for an upcoming days of heat wave. I am glad the leader, Maestro Magellan is not up to raise funds for children's cancer research. I have been joining his hikes for years and his hikes had always been more of nature walks to me.
Maestro Magellan sort of warned everyone to climb the boulders at their own risk but not during his hike. Up close, it is so tempting to climb the boulder free solo. The boulder, about 12 feet in height, is the largest one I saw in the Boulder Loop Trail. Described with an "elephant skin" appearance because perhaps of the smooth and greenish discoloration in most areas, the boulder is just one among the big boulder outcroppings all over Daley Ranch.
According to the Daley Ranch website, these boulders are called granodiorite. These boulders have been around long before God created the world in six or seven days.  Genesis 101, remember?
Kidding aside, these big granite boulders formed from blobs of magma during the Cretaceous Period some 80 million years ago. According to Encyclopedia Britannica (where most of Wikipedia copied and pasted its materials, INMHO), Cretaceous Period began 145 million years ago and ended 66 million years ago and then followed by Jurassic Period. The blobs of magma came from down under and erupted into the  surface.
These blobs of magma eventually revealed themselves when God said "let there be rain!" Rainwater subsequently eroded some of the soil that covered the huge blobs of magma that became  granite boulders of varying shapes and sizes.
.http://www.daleyranch.info/Rocks/daley-ranch-rocks.html

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