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This is a view of the cooling towers of the geothermal power plant we visited. This plant injects water at up to three kilometers into the ground and the resulting steam is used to power turbines. It is built on the site and using similar technologies to that of the very first geothermal power plant built in Italy during the early twentieth century.
We saw a demonstration of purging of one of the old wells, which is now only used for demonstration purposes. This steam cloud is the result of only four atmospheres of pressure applied to water injected only 700 meters into the earth, a fraction of the the pressure, depth, and resulting temperature of the wells drilled today.
A marble company is pictured in front of the mountains that supply marble to much of Italy and the world for decorative uses.
This is the mine that supplied the Sculptural Carrara marble that Michelangelo used to sculpt his David and many of his other works. Taken from the overlook at Mt. Pizza with the Tyrrhenian Sea (Western Coast of Italy) in the distance and Pisa in the top left corner of the picture about 60 kilometers south along the coast.
The whole gang at the overlook on Mt. Pizza overlooking the marble quarry.
Fall starts to show its colors on the hillsides of Tuscany.
The ethereal hills of the late afternoon looking from our chalet balcony at the monastery where we stayed.
The chalet all us students stayed in at the monastery.
The sunset from the chalet balcony.
We return to the main building of what used to be a monastery where we stayed and ate our breakfasts and dinners while in Tuscany. Although it is no longer functioning as a monastery, there was a small chapel and a pair of priests staying at the monastery while we were there, one of who was quite good at ping pong and who nearly beat Alex in a best of three game tournament.
Alex and Robbie play Colin and Alyssa at the foosball table (biliardino), which seem to be ubiquitous across Italy for entertaining youth and the population generally.
The Alpi-Apuane peaks from the field above the monastery (Alpi refers to the Alpine look of this short sub-range of the Apennines and Apuane refers to the mountains actually being part of the Apennines).
A raw milk vending machine located at a local gas station. Because ya' know...that's a thing.
We head into an unmarked cave next to the road to explore some karst geology, or the formations resulting when rainwater interacts with limestone formations.
Sandro looking serious as he talks about a stalactite that used to be joined to a stalagmite here and river deposits in the cave from a time when a river actually ran into this cave.
Alyssa and Alex looking for bats.
Praying mantises were everywhere. One time when we told Sandro he had a praying mantis on his hat all he said was, "I'm not Catholic."
Cows near a summit.
All the summits in Italy have crosses to mark the most visible point near the summit.
Jordan inspects his kingdom.
Alex checks out a reservoir near one of our roadside outcrops.
A stream bed afforded us a look at an incredible variety of colored rocks from a number of formations including these purple, green, and grey limestone pebbles all from the Scaglia Toscano formation, which I used to make a cairn.
It is totally normal to see ruined and abandoned buildings throughout Italy. Here is one leading up to the marble quarries.
Sandro stands in the bottom of a marble quarry that we were given permission to check out and explore when it was closed over the weekend. It was much bigger than can even be seen here and cranes hung over it and machinery was scattered everywhere. This particular quarry does a lot of business with the Vatican and the Catholic Church.
A little house near the bottom of the valley the marble quarry was in.
Travis, my roommate, peaks his head out of the little stone house.
We had our last Italian class in this mountaintop glacial terrace.
Another beautiful reservoir in the mountains.
We did some bouldering as well as geology in this stream bed in a very deep gorge surrounded by volcanic pillow basalts.
Alyssa watches Alex jump down from a boulder to make sure he doesn't break anything.
A cairn I made in a different streambed.
Sandro traces the profile of pillow basalts cut by this perfectly smooth road cut as we leave the Tuscan Apennines and head home.
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