Well, it’s that time of the year again. Tomorrow morning, I pack up the car and head west. I’m giving myself five days to drive out to Bozeman, Montana, with three stops along the way to see people I like and talk about interesting stuff. Next week, my family flies out to join me. It’ll … Read more
The week before last, I showed you the Boulder Batholith, as it crops out southeast of Butte, Montana. Today, I’ll share a few more photos of xenoliths (or perhaps microgranular mafic enclaves?) from that same outcrop: Man, I miss that old Swiss Army knife. The damned security actors at Calgary Airport confiscated it last summer. … Read more
The Friday fold, delayed by a week from last week’s contest, appears in Yoho National Park, British Columbia, near the “Natural Bridge” over the Kicking Horse River.
Today is the first day of class for the fall semester at Northern Virginia Community College. For the first time in seven years, however, I won’t be in the classroom. For the 2012-13 academic year, I’ll be on sabbatical. Sabbatical is a magic word in my mind. It’s a brilliant idea to allow motivated professors … Read more
Callan presents a mystery rock found in blocks of sedimentary rock on a talus slope near the Consolation Lakes in Banff National Park, Alberta. Are they orange oncolites? Or alien embryos? 🙂
Given that I’m leaving tomorrow for the Canadian Rockies, I’ve been inspired to look through some of my photos from last summer, and to realize how few of them I’ve blogged so far. So let me show you some folded things today that Lily and I saw the afternoon we arrived at Waterton Lakes National … Read more
Last summer, my wife and I spent some time in the Canadian Rockies. One of the things we did was to take a three-day backpacking trip to Floe Lake, in Kootenay National Park, British Columbia. We picked a rough couple of days for hiking – We got a lot of Canadian Rockies precipitation out there: … Read more
Happy fourth of July! Here’s two scenes that are emblematic of America, as seen from my airplane window last March flying from Reno to Minneapolis. Here’s the scene in the central Powder River Basin of eastern Wyoming: If you zoom in, you’ll see what caught my eye – regular rectangular excavations into the surface. These … Read more
I’m headed off Saturday to the Canadian Rockies for two weeks. My colleague Pete Berquist and I are leading a regional field geology course up there. It’s a new gig for both of us, and I’m sure the trip will be quite a learning experience. As I was preparing for the trip today, I drew … Read more
I wanted to pick up where I left off months ago with some airplane photos as I was flying back from my California field class (over spring break). All views are to the north (out the left side of the airplane as we flew from Reno to Minneapolis). We crossed from northern Nevada into Wyoming, … Read more