Climate kicks on Route 66

[Scootard]

Steller's Jay: Watch out for those little bandits. if you have any food lying around the will steal it when you turn your back. They are shameless. if you turn to talk to someone at the picnic table they'll steal the sandwich right out of your hand......little thieves!!

Merced River: I remember playing in the Merced when I was a wee gaffer. That was when they still did the Firefall by igniting a pile of bark and then using long rakes to push it over the edge of Glacier Point.

Great pics. Bring back a lot of memories...

[Isotope]

After leaving Yosemite, we traveled north on Hwy 395 out of Lee Vining. Because of the drought fireworks were banned in most areas. Stopping to sample Topaz Lake, a really nice lakeside property owner came out to see what we were up to. He encouraged us to jump into the lake to cool off and offered us a beer. We graciously turned down the offers, and I asked where the good fireworks were going to be tonight. He said Lake Tahoe for sure, but I didn't want to go there, so he agreed that Carson City would be pretty good too, so we made off for Carson City for the night. Three guys on Harleys snagged the luggage cart and after 45 minutes had it loaded to the hilt...seemed like a lot of baggage for a trip from Phoenix to Carson City, but who knows...

In the morning, our bikes were roped in for some upcoming BBQ contest. The people setting up the generators were curious as to where we had been and what we were up to. We gassed up on the corner and hit the road on Highway 50, "The loneliest road in America".

The shoe tree near Middlegate Nevada on Highway 50




Eureka Nevada where I spent a month one week a few years back doing some geology fieldwork on the Vinini Creek Formation. The formation contains the Hirnantian glacial event that took place 440 million years ago at the end of the Ordovician Period, one of 5 great mass extinctions in geologic time. Geochemical models have suggested that CO2 levels were perhaps 16-20 times higher than today based on carbon isotope stratigraphy. The major glaciation that took place suggests that either the Earth can undergo a glaciation with very high levels of CO2, or that the common interpretation of carbon isotope stratigraphy is wrong. We believe that the latter is the correct interpretation.

Gold mining waste on the edge of Eureka









Utah after a thunderstorm

Dog bowl and aragonite truck stop rest are on I-80

[BOBaloo22]