Erratics

A few days ago, I posted about North Salem Balanced Rock and talked about how geologists view it as a glacial erratic rather than a man-made object.

Here are a few more glacial erratics in the Mid-Hudson Valley.  Whenever you see huge blocks of rock sitting atop cliffs in isolated places (meaning no one pushed them there with a bulldozer), they're glacial erratics - rocks once carried by glaciers during the ice age - that got dumped when the glaciers melted away.

 Above is a large block of cross-bedded sandstone on top of the cliff at North-South Lake - a NYS DEC campground and beautiful place with a lot of interesting geology and history.

Yours truly resting on Patterson's Pellet, a partially balancing erratic in Lake Minnewaska State Park.

Indian Rock at Sam's Point Preserve above Ellenville.

And there are many others around - some in farmer's fields and even people's yards as you drive around the Hudson Valley.