Glacial Erratic

We had gone out to breakfast this morning and on the way back to Neil's house, he said "Do you want to see something really ancient?"  "You bet I do" I said.  So we drove for about 10 minutes and ended up here!  This huge boulder was deposited here by the glacier at the end of the Ice Age, about 15,000 years ago.  It is known as a "glacial erratic."  An "erratic" is a boulder found in a place other than its original parent rock's location.  That means it is not sitting where it was formed.  This Wallingford, Connecticut landmark is one of the largest glacial erratics in the state.  It was moved to this place by a glacier, and it is believed to have traveled from Meriden Mountain, about 6 miles away.

It is a magnificent thing to see and examine.  This photograph gives you a better sense of size than the first photograph, above.  It is a huge chunk of rock, right by the side of the road.  There is a wonderfully informative plaque on the site that gives more details, such as "Lava erupted about 200 million years ago across the Connecticut landscape forming "traprock" layers."  What a fascinating thing to see on a visit to my home state.