Alluvial Fans

Death Valley National Park

Alluvial Fans.  Alluvial Fans.  My travel buddy and I found ourselves repeating these words often as we drove nearly 500 miles through Death Valley.

"Look.  Another alluvial fan."

"Wow.  Look at that one.  That alluvial fan is massive."

"Is that an alluvial fan over there?"

I swear the older we get, the more nerdy we become.   But "alluvial fan" has such a nice rhythm to it.  The words roll over our tongues with alliterative buoyancy.

Alluvial fans are fan-shaped deposits of gravel, sand and loose rock that are swept down the canyons in flash floods.  Consequently, most of them are found in desert areas where the precipitation is higher on the mountains.  By the time the water hits the valley floor, the stream is mostly silt.

It is the thrill of learning a new definition that made us repeat "alluvial fan" so much.  Death Valley is an amateur geologist's dream vacation.  Thanks to President Bill Clinton who signed the Desert Protection Act in 1994,  Death Valley is now the largest national park in the lower states.  It covers 3.4 million acres of land.  It has volcanic craters, salt fields, sand dunes, brightly-colored badlands and, of course, alluvial fans.

We'll take "Alluvial Fans" over "Elysian Fields" any day!