In Red Rocks State Park, where we lounged for a few minutes under the spectacular mars-like red formations, I said, "Does anybody know the history of these rocks? I'll give it a try. Okay, this is petrified sand from the Triassic and."

"Unlikely." Antonin said. "There is hardly any Triassic rock in California and this looks more like lake sediments."

He then went on to describe how the JPL Mars airplane team was testing their equipment here just a few weeks ago.

"They tested their airplane here because it looks like Mars," he said.

The airplane, he described, is a model for a NASA bid that would fall out of a pod like a ball, detach from a parachute and unfold wings, and will be able to film more surface area than ever before. As we neared the Owens Valley in Central California, we all began talking about how it was formed into what it is today.

The Owens Valley is a giant lowland greeted by two unrelated mountain ranges - the Sierra Nevada's to the west and the Inyo mountains to the East. This is North-Central California; the Eastern rift that separates this state from Nevada. The Inyo mountains were the ancient Coastline of America. As the Atlantic tectonic plate pushed west, all of America was pushed west, created an uplift and a new coast.

The Sierra Nevada's were the result of these separate blocks of land churning up against each other. In Lone Pine, a frontier town at the base of some of the highest mountain ranges in the world, we drove up the Whitney Portal and into the contortions of the Alabama Hills. We circled through the intense rock formations until I feared for the Jeep. Then it was up, to the base of Mount Whitney, the tallest mountain in the forty-eight contiguous states.