Lily and I took our son to the Virginia Scottish Games on Sunday. This is an annual competition of events in traditionally Scottish feats – throwing heavy things, mainly. There is also fried food, whisky, and some terrific music. The event is held at the Great Meadow, south of The Plains, Virginia. I had never … Read more
Two years ago, I took a trip to the Phoebe Hall Knipling Outdoor Lab, which is Arlington, Virginia’s outdoor education facility in the Pond Mountains (southern continuation of the Bull Run Mountains), on the eastern edge of the Blue Ridge geologic province. I was invited back last week to look at some new exposures. I … Read more
Callan and his colleague Jay Kaufman (University of Maryland) go to extraordinary lengths to document an intriguing block of rock in northern Virginia’s Blue Ridge province. Great images and a lot of fun result – but what do these rocks tell us?
I took a trip down to Charlottesville this week for a couple of meetings, and I made time along the way to capture two new GigaPans of the lovely exposures of Catoctin Formation greenstone at Rockfish Gap, where Interstate 64 traverses the Blue Ridge. This is very close to the southernmost tip of Shenandoah National … Read more
Yesterday, I took five new GigaPans at Thoroughfare Gap, a water gap where Broad Run cuts through Bull Run Mountain, the eastern limb of the Blue Ridge Anticlinorium at my latitude. The rocks here are the Cambrian-aged Chilhowee Group, with bedding tilted moderately to the east during Alleghanian mountain-building in the late Paleozoic. To the … Read more
Callan and two colleagues find a “textbook” unconformity on a field trip in Virginia’s westernmost Blue Ridge.
On Saturday, Lily and I went out for a date. It was only the second time since Baxter was born that we were able to get away for quality time, just the two of us. We headed up to Doukénie Winery near Hillsboro, Virginia. Here it is on a topographic map: Here’s what it looks … Read more
Dan Doctor of the US Geological Survey contributed this week’s Friday fold. It’s a lovely view of the asymmetric folds in the Cambrian-aged Weverton Formation (part of the Chilhowee Group, a Sauk-Sea passive margin transgressive sequence), exposed on the western flank of the western limb of the Blue Ridge Anticlinorium. It’s a LIDAR image, and … Read more
Last week, I finished reading Living in the Appalachian Forest: True Tales of Sustainable Forestry, by Chris Bolgiano. It’s a grab-bag of stories from the forested mountains of the south-central Appalachians, ranging from Pennsylvania down to Kentucky and maybe Georgia, too. West Virginia and Virginia get the most attention. The driving question behind the book … Read more
Callan attends the Geological Society of Washington’s fall field trip, examining the relationship between grape-growing and the underlying geology of two provinces in northern Virginia: the Blue Ridge and the Valley & Ridge. With GSW compatriots, Callan visits Hume Vineyards in the Blue Ridge basement complex and North Mountain Winery in the Shenandoah Valley. This is part I.