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Inside the Pinnacles Volcano: the Talus Caves of Bear Gulch
How does a cave originate? Most often, solution of limestone or marble is a cause, and lava flows will sometimes develop lava tubes. Coastal waves will carve out sea caves. There are a few other kinds...
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Giving Thanks for Beautiful Things: Dawson Lake
It's a strange feeling...NOT traveling for the Thanksgiving holiday. But it didn't keep us from taking a little excursion the other day. The Sierra Nevada foothills, which rise just a short distance...
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The Abandoned Lands...A Journey Through the Colorado Plateau: A day in the...
The nice thing about blogging is that one gets to set one's own rules and deadlines. I'm easily distracted and can drift from one project to another, and then drift back. So it is with this project on...
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The Abandoned Lands...A Journey Through the Colorado Plateau: A day in the...
So what happens in a single day of one's life? Somehow, today involved a medical appointment, brunch with Mrs. Geotripper, watching the rain fall (it's rare enough here to be a spectator sport),...
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What To Do on a Rainy Day? Explore the Mother Lode Underground!
So what does one do when an atmospheric river storm is barreling towards your region, with an expected 10"-20" of rain in some places? If you are among the intrepid members of the Geology Club at our...
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It's a Dog's World...and Ours, Too
A coyote in Yosemite National ParkThis is a story of the evolutionary journey from the first furry things to Fifi the toy poodle...the story of the dog clan on Earth and how a group of sometimes...
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It's a Dog's Life...and a Wolf's, too. Why does it matter?
This post includes two stories of death and one of salvation...it's a long post, but I hope you'll bear with me. Geotripper is usually about geology and the sciences, but today is a bit of politics,...
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From the New Great Valley Museum: Learning from a different perspective (many...
I took a few hours away from grading final exams to get some training at the Great Valley Museum's new facility that will take up most of the bottom floor of our nearly completed Community Science...
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Introducing Geotripper Images: Finding Geology-Themed Digital Images on the...
It is just three weeks to the fifth anniversary of Geotripper (that's upper Paleozoic in Internet time). As I noted in my first blog entry, I've taken a lot of digital images and I wanted to use the...
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Watching a Slow Motion Apocalypse: The Relentless Erosion of the Sea
Now that the apocalypse is over and the world is ended we can get back to life and celebrate what is beautiful about our planet. I wasn't going to take the chance that the world would end with me...
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Happy Holidays from Geotripper!
It's a big beautiful world out there, and all I can think of for this day is to share a little corner of it with you all, and to wish you all a happy and safe holiday season in all your travels and...
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A Bit of River Perspective: The Eel River in Northern California
I was driving home from our Christmas visits with the family in central Oregon today. Since we were following Highway 101 through northern California's Redwood Country, we had a chance to look at the...
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Revisiting the Geologist's Life List: The Resolution I Make Every Year
Many thanks to Andrew Alden over at About.com Geology for the idea to start my sixth year of geo-blogging (my blogoversary comes on January 7). I'm not one for making resolutions on New Year's Day, but...
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Introducing Pinnacles National PARK!
One of our nation's oldest national monuments is set to become our nation's newest national parks, and I couldn't be happier about it! Assuming the legislation is signed by President Obama, Pinnacles...
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The Return of the Airliner Chronicles! The San Andreas Fault in San Francisco
I love flying. Well, I don't like airports. Or security lines. Or airliner food. Or uncontrollably crying babies (though I have sympathy for the poor parents sometimes). Or the incredibly small seats....
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Dangit! There's a Jackass Tailgating Me! A Day in Oatman Arizona
How many puns can a man take (or tell)? Today we were on the road again, and true to my resolution, I went someplace new. We were traveling into Arizona, and I knew that there was a stretch of the...
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Science on Screen: Contact, January 27
For those of my readers in the Modesto vicinity, I would like to let you know of an interesting cinema series taking place over the next few months at the State Theatre. Science on Screen is an effort...
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Searching for the Lost (not actually lost) Dutchman (not actually Dutch)...
I've been to Phoenix quite a few times over the years, but somehow until last week had never taken Highway 88 to one of the most familiar sights in Arizona, the Superstition Mountains, home of the...
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The Abandoned Lands...A Journey Through the Colorado Plateau: We had to save...
"We had to destroy the village in order to save it."Legendary Vietnam War statement attributed to an unidentified U.S. Military officialThis freeway roadcut was once the largest Fremont village ever...
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The Abandoned Lands...A Journey Through the Colorado Plateau: A Hell of a...
No wonder he abandoned the place...the best that Ebenezer Bryce could say about the national park that now bears his name was "It's a hell of a place to lose a cow". Ebenezer had a ranch for a few...
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