Journey Across America

Uncategorized

  • Theodore Roosevelt National Park

    Theodore Roosevelt As President, Theodore Roosevelt established approximately 230 million acres of public lands between 1901 and 1909, including 150 national forests, the first 55 federal bird reservation and game preserves, 5 national parks, and the first 18 national monuments;… Continue reading

  • Glacier National Park: Mountains, Glaciers and Lakes

    Glacier National Park consists of sedimentary rocks deposited in layers some 1.5 billion years ago. About 150 million years ago, plate tectonics pushed up and moved the sedimentary rocks forming a four-mile-thick slab of rock. About two million years ago,… Continue reading

  • Seattle Departure

    After the Yellowstone entry in this Blog, I visited four National Parks in Canada (Banff, Jasper, Yoho and Kootenay) before traveling to Seattle for an extended summer stay with my Washington daughter’s family. On September 19, I departed from the… Continue reading

  • Yellowstone: The First National Park and the Most Active

    Yellowstone National Park sits on a massive hot spot: This is the source of most of the local geological activity including the spectacular geysers and magnificent hot springs. There was an enormous volcanic eruption here 630,000 years ago, which left… Continue reading

  • Grand Teton National Park – Picture Perfect

    If an AI was asked to compose an alpine scene that was maximally appealing to the human eye, it might well come up with something like this: This is a view of Grand Teton National Park from a highway passing… Continue reading

  • Craters of the Moon – A “Moving” Hotspot

    A geologic “hotspot” is an area of the Earth’s mantle from which hot plumes rise upward, forming volcanoes on the overlying crust. Hotspots generally do not move with respect to the Earth’s mantle, but overlying crustal plates move over the… Continue reading

  • Great Basin National Park – Mountains, Forests, Caves and Ancient Trees

    The Great Basin is a region lying northwest of the Colorado Plateau bounded by mountain ranges with no external drainage. The Great Basin National Park lies close to the border between Nevada and Utah, on the Nevada side; it overlooks… Continue reading

  • Capitol Reef – A Fold in the Earth

    Another great exposure of the Colorado Canyon’s stratigraphy, this one caused by an ancient fault, reactivated during a time of tectonic activity. The western side of the fault was elevated more than 7000 feet higher than the eastern side but,… Continue reading

  • Canyonlands—Island in the Sky

    The Canyonlands lie at the confluence of the Green and Colorado rivers, each of which has eroded a deep canyon into the Colorado Plateau, creating a sort of “peninsula in the sky,” which is called Island in the Sky The… Continue reading

  • Arches National Park – Uplift, Fins and Arches

    Arches National Park has one of the highest concentrations of natural arches on earth. The rock strata here were uplifted by the underground motions of a massive salt dome. This caused deep vertical fractures in the rock. These cracks were… Continue reading

  • The Journey Resumes: (Colorado Plateau)

    I left San Antonio on May 30; my first destination was several National Parks in the Colorado Plateau. The Colorado Plateau was formerly the site of a shallow inland sea which periodically rose and fell depositing layered rock formations. Where… Continue reading

  • Guadalupe Mountains National Park—Ancient Reef and Canyons

    Geology The Guadalupe Mountains are part of the geological area known as the Permian Basin, an inland sea connected by a narrow channel to the surrounding ocean. The Delaware sea covered the present-day Guadalupe Mountains National Park where the deposition… Continue reading

  • Carlsbad Caverns National Park—A Visit to the Big Room

    Geology Carlsbad Caverns consist of solutional limestone or “karst” caves. They are generally formed when water containing dissolved carbon dioxide (forming a mild acid) seeps down through the limestone to the top of the water table, where they dissolve part… Continue reading

  • Saguaro National Park—Big Cactus

    Sonora Desert The Tucson area, where the Saguaro National Park is located, has more than three hundred days of sunshine per year. Yet the Sonora desert here is quite lush compared to the section of the Sonora desert in the… Continue reading

  • Joshua Tree National Park—The Sculpture of Nature

    Joshua Tree is my favorite desert park; it owes this distinction to its two principal elements: Joshua trees, which arise like sculptures from the dessert floor and its granite boulders—sculpted into fantastic shapes by natural forces. The park contains the… Continue reading