A Little Here a Little There
Just Bouncing about these days The first image in this random series is Five of the 42 (at current count, they hope to have 350 eventually) radio telescope dishes at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory. These telescopes can be pointed at individual targes. or they can all point together at a single point Giving greater resolution of their. or capture a wider patch of the sky. One of the many cool projects they are used for is SETI.. When the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence finds something, the age of Homo Sapiens thinking they are the only game going in this universe will be over... and won't that be interesting?
Up in the Sierras... Climb up on a ridge... look down on a lake.
Or you can climb another ridge and look over at the Sierra Buttes
Old Weathered pine snag... sun-bleached to bone white
An old, wind-conditioned pine at the top of a ridge... I like how the contours of the tree seem to follow that of the hill
Lots of glacial lake basins in this part of the Sierras.
The Sierra Buttes, North from a bit closer. the color of the nearest lake was spectacular that day. You can see an immense, house-sized boulder in the lake. Imagine the noise & splash it made when it came rolling down the cliff.
One of the things I notice from up high on a ridge is that the world gets very flat and straight... sky... horizon... land. Hmmm.
And while I am on top of the ridge, that dramatic ridge I was looking at from below becomes rather boring. It is suddenly one of those bits below the horizon.
But, if you have the time, you might as well enjoy the view.
Jumping around now. We are now in the hills west of the Sacramento Valley. In this land of many fault lines the hills have their own, unique beauty.
Often framing wide flat valleys, the hillsides are almost sinusoidal in their regularity.
Still golden in late October, if it doesn't burn first, it will quickly turn grey with the first damp nights.
Driving through these hills and valleys make for a lovely day, but I really don't recommend it. you would be better off staying home.
As you move through the hills westwardly from the Sacramento Valley you you pass through a lot of interesting & changing geology.
A bit north for the previous pictures but in a similar part of the range, here you can see all of the horizontal sedimentary layers of what once was an inland seabed interrupted by an intrusive magmatic dyke. There is so much fun to be found at the edges of tectonic plates!
Walker Fire Plume Viewed from Smith Peak.
I drove through partsa of the Mendocino Complex fire, that burned nearly a half-million acres a year earlier. Lots of charred trees.
and charred posts marking the underground telephone lines.
A whole mountain side burnt up by the fire a year earlier.
Groves of charred trees.
Indian Valley Reservoir is about 15 feet low. When full it goes right up to where the rust on that bridge begins. Behind you can see the burnt hills.
Back up in the Sierras. I thought the mineralization of this seepage area was interesting.
Up by Mount Lassen there are enitre mountains of the red lava rock they sell in garden supply stores... Of course there are... But why do I get a thrill out of seeing one in the wild?
While we are on the subject of Volcanos & such, There are some lava you can walk through... You need to bring your own flash light... but the fun part is when you get right into the very middle of them and turn off your light. Dark, yes, very dark. and very quiet, (especially if you manage to be there off-season... but you don't want to do that) It is so dark and quiet that you start hearing things creeping up behind you! Ooh! Thrills!
Out of the lava tubes and up on a ridge. you can look over the Hat Creek area.
Here is another magmatic dyke. Over on the other side of the state. this one is more sinuous.
On the Oregon coast, at the northern edge of Brookings You can find Rainbow Rock. These are bent & twisted layers of an ancient sea bed about 500 million years old. This just shows the things that can be accomplished with a little perseverence!
Rainbow Rock is at the southern edge of the Samuel H. Boardman State Scenic Corridor in Oregon. It is worth the effort to experience.
The Oregon Coast looking North from Cape Ferrelo.
A Little Here a Little There