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The Difference a Year Makes: Liveblogging the "Deluge" (Hint: There isn't one)
This post is both a look back at ten years of Geotripping, but is also an update on snow and precipitation conditions in California right now, and that picture is not pretty. My backyard rain gauge had...
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A Look Back at Ten Years of Geotripping: Dealing with the Dangerous Rays of...
One of the greatest thrills of digital cameras is how easily they allow the documentation of celestial events. A 60x zoom is telescope grade, and yet is available on cameras costing less than $400. My...
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A Singular Moment...Okay, Three of Them: A Total Eclipse, Ten Years of...
At last, the exploration through ten years of geoblogging is complete! I've been going through the archives looking for my favorite posts and we've reached the end of 2017. I was trying to decide what...
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Standing in the Cold Fog So You Don't Have To: The Superduper Blue Blood Moon...
That's the chance you take living in our Great Valley in Central California. The Tule Fogs are a way of life, and this is their time of year. If you want to be guaranteed an atmospheric/astronomical...
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The California That Once Was: The San Luis National Wildlife Refuge
Great Blue Heron at the entrance to the San Luis NWRI live in an extraordinary place, a place that does not always receive the respect that it deserves. In much the same way that travelers refer to the...
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Homing in on the Grand Places, or the Grandness of the Home Places? The...
It was just one of those moments...I was taking my near daily walk along the river trail that lies a mile from my house. It winds for two miles along the Tuolumne River where it emerges from the Sierra...
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Historical Geology Laboratory in 1930, with a Few Personal Twists
I admit it. I miss a lot. I've noticed that a lot of colleges and universities are very proud of their history and traditions, but in my experience at three community colleges, the memory of a...
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Geotripper Missing in Action? Nah, Just on the Road.
If you've noticed a distinct lack of blog updates lately, it's not been for lack of creative ideas. I've actually been in the wild hinterlands of the eastern California desert, specifically Death...
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Former Seas and Oceans: Searching for the Past in the Great Valley
The world changes. It changes minute by minute as events happen in human society, the disasters, the eruptions (such as Sinabung this last weekend), the wildfires, the earthquakes. Other changes are...
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Seeking the Savanna instead of Seas: "Saturday Night Live" and Geology??
Historical geology is a real head trip (remember that term?). Stick geologists in the desert against a cliff like the one above, and they will make a few observations, pick up a few stones (and/or...
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The Sounds of Science (with apologies to Paul Simon): Kids are More Talented...
Strange things were afoot on Saturday at Modesto Junior College, where I've been teaching for the last thirty years. There was a Tyrannosaur flipping burgers, and a very cool Triceratops taking orders...
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The Struggle for Life in a Harsh Desert: The Living Fossils of Fossil Falls
Fossil Falls, the Bureau of Land Management site near Little Lake and south of Owens Valley, is one of the strangest sights in the California Desert. The ironic point of Fossil Falls is that it has...
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Yosemite's Half Dome Makes an Appearance...in the Central Valley
Once a week, my errands take me past the intersection of Keyes and Hickman Road on the floor of California's Central Valley. There is usually nothing much to be seen there in the late afternoon hour,...
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How Low Can You Go? Badwater Basin, and a Real Hell on Earth
Salt flats at Badwater, -282 feet. The snowcapped mountain in the distance is Telescope Peak, 11,049 feet. How bad could it be? On our recent trip to Death Valley, we made the rather mandatory...
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Waves on Fire at the Devil's Slide near Half Moon Bay
Even though Geotripper is a geology-based blog, it seems ocean waves don't make an appearance all that often in my posts. Try as I might, I don't photograph them very well, or very creatively. I love...
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All My Faults are Normal, But Not Really: Travels in Death Valley
Death Valley is the ultimate expression of the extensional forces that have ripped apart the crust of the western United States. The affected area reaches from northern Nevada and Oregon, east to...
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Mrs. Geotripper Faces Down the Wolf: Musings on the Canids of the Great Valley
Note: I know this is a coyote, not a wolf. But read on to see why I used the termThey've always been here.They've always been here, even though we declared war on them, and have tried to exterminate...
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The Rise of the Turtles and a Flat Earth: Musings on Science and Death Valley
One of the ominous turtles rising from the crust in Death ValleyI've been dismayed to say the least at how gullible Americans have become, in so many ways. We could of course get mired in a discussion...
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Liveblogging the Deluge: 2018 Short Version
High water on the Tuolumne River, February 2018, about 15,000 cubic feet per second.Why "short"? What deluge? Hasn't this been another dry year?Tuolumne River on January 19, 2018, flow at about 300...
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In the Red HIlls Area of Critical Environmental Concern, a Promise of Spring...
We saw exactly two poppies blooming. In a few weeks there will be thousands.It has a clumsy name that only a bureaucrat could love, but the Red Hills Area of Critical Environmental Concern is a...
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