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Posts treating: "Great Valley"

Tuesday, 12 February 2019

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It Was That Kind of Day: Half Dome from the Central Valley 

Geotripper [2019-02-12 05:18:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (204 visits) info
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It doesn't happen often. I usually pass the right intersection once or maybe twice a week, but the most important factor is the air quality. It's almost always poor. Dust and smoke in the summer, fog and clouds in winter. There is a spot on the floor of the Great Valley (some call it merely the Central Valley) where one can see Half Dome and the other peaks around Yosemite Valley in the

Half Dome Makes a Surprise Appearance on the Floor of the Great Valley Today 

Geotripper [2017-02-09 03:40:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (57 visits) info
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It doesn't happen for me all that often, maybe because of air pollution, or the fact that I characteristically drive past the spot only once a week, but I can occasionally spot Half Dome in Yosemite Valley from the floor of the Great Valley (some people call it the Central Valley, but we know better). There's a narrow line of sight that passes through Denair and Turlock where the iconic

A Treasure in my Back Yard: Grand Opening Celebration for the Tuolumne River Parkway, May 21st 

Geotripper [2016-04-16 08:26:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (149 visits) info

 US
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It's been a long time coming, but it looks like the Tuolumne River Parkway trail in Waterford will be completed soon. There will be a Grand Opening celebration on May 21 at 10 AM at the parking area at the end of S. Reinway Avenue. I hate to say it, but I can't be there, but I hope that many of you will stop by, or give the trail a look soon. I've been writing about the trail for many

Ego-systems and the Great Valley: No, that's not a misspelling, it's poetry 

Geotripper [2016-03-06 08:20:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (152 visits) info

 US
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I've been meaning to get to this for awhile. I had the privilege a few weeks ago of attending the 2016 Gala fundraiser for our local treasure, the Great Valley Museum of Natural History at Modesto Junior College in California's Central Valley. The museum building is new, having opened only two years ago, but the museum has existed for more than thirty years in less than favorable quarters.

Another Moderate Earthquake in Central California: 4.9 Magnitude...in the Great Valley??? 

Geotripper [2016-02-24 09:02:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (157 visits) info

 US
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The Wasco 4.9 earthquake, as recorded at Modesto Junior College California has been shaken by another near-magnitude 5 earthquake, and this one is a bit odd. It hit in the Great Valley, one of the few places in California NOT known for having faults and earthquakes. It occurred near the south valley town of Wasco, and had a magnitude of 4.9, along with a couple of aftershocks as high

Treasures From the Earth in the Great Valley: What the heck was living here? 

Geotripper [2016-02-22 07:05:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (139 visits) info

 US
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Standing on a barren hillside east of Bakersfield, one looks over a dry landscape peppered here and there with oil drilling rigs. Because of the recent rains, the grass is green, but roasted brown is normal for these badlands. It's hard, standing in this desert, to visualize that this was once a shallow sea, a sea that was filled with life. 15-16 million years ago, there were ancient species

These Lands Belong to All of Us - Domestic Terrorism and National Wildlife Refuges 

Geotripper [2016-02-07 09:50:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (150 visits) info

 US
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Beauty and ugliness... A Meadowlark is singing in the breeze...it's early February in California which actually means that spring is practically here. In other places, biplanes are spraying pesticides and fungicides, beekeepers are setting out hives in the almond groves, and fields are being plowed and readied for planting. About 95% of the floor of the California's Great Valley is

You CAN See Half Dome from the Central Valley. But You Have to be in the Right Spot 

Geotripper [2016-02-04 08:08:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (176 visits) info

 US
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A field in the Central Valley! Living in California's Great Valley has moments. Some good, some bad. It's really flat, and that isn't of much interest to a geologist (except the drilling kind). But on some days, when the storms have blown through, and the wind has pushed all of the smog and dust to other places, the valley is beautiful. The best days are when the snow-covered Sierra Nevada

Dreams of Summer: The Bad Star Strikes! What happened at Canyon Diablo 50,000 Years Ago 

Geotripper [2016-01-11 02:55:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (156 visits) info

 US,AO
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It might be heresy for me to say it, but there are some places where the geology appears to be kind of...monotonous. Flatlands covered by soils are sometimes not all that interesting. I can even be accused of thinking this way about my very own home valley, the Great Valley of California. I've spent a long time teaching my students that our valley isn't actually boring at all. It's just

Driving to the Center of the Earth in Del Puerto Canyon...Sideways 

Geotripper [2015-12-15 07:25:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (204 visits) info

 US
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Okay, not really to the center, but deeper than any drill or mine shaft ever went. Del Puerto Canyon in the California Coast Ranges provides a window into the Earth's mantle, while passing through more than ten miles of crustal material. Allow me to explain! We were there last weekend, a group of our students gathered together after finals to explore the canyon. The Great Valley began as

A Visit to a Remaining Piece of America's Serengeti: A Great Valley Love Story 

Geotripper [2015-12-13 05:50:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (697 visits) info

 US,TZ
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Red-shouldered Hawk at entrance to the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge Every so often, I remember what an extraordinary place I live in. It's sometimes easy to forget while dealing with the air pollution, the lingering drought, and the seemingly non-ending recession, but California's Great Valley is one of the most important provinces in the United States. It provides something like

A Small City Recognizes Her Greatest Treasure: Tuolumne River Parkway Trail Nears Completion (update) 

Geotripper [2015-11-21 08:19:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (202 visits) info

 US
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I've been providing occasional updates on the progress of the Tuolumne River Parkway trail that is being constructed in Waterford, California, where the river leaves the Sierra Nevada behind and flows into the Great Valley. It's been a source of some community pride that the city has finally come to realize the value of the river. It used to be a dumping ground. Now it will become a

One of Those Precious Days, Seeing Half Dome from the Great Valley 

Geotripper [2015-11-05 09:14:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (148 visits) info

 US
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Sometimes, it is the context that makes something precious. A drink of water on a hot day in the desert, for instance. A few drops of rain in a crippling drought. In our valley, a clear day is a precious thing. The Great Valley of California is surrounded by mountains. The Sierra Nevada rises to an elevation of nearly three miles on the east side, while the Coast Ranges to the west approach

Fixing What We Broke: A Few Scenes From America's Serengeti Plain 

Geotripper [2015-11-04 09:41:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (170 visits) info

 US
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I live in California's Great Valley, also known as the Central Valley. It's one of the most important agricultural regions on Earth, in that it produces around a quarter of the nation's produce. It's an extraordinary geological province, 400 miles of almost perfect flatness. When I moved to the valley nearly thirty years ago, I thought I was moving to a boring place, featureless, and

Unusual Sunrise over the Sierra Nevada Today 

Geotripper [2015-09-23 02:58:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (804 visits) info

 US
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Sometimes there are just unusual things. I was driving into work early this morning just before the sun broke out over the Sierra Nevada. From my vantage point on the floor of the Great Valley, the rays of the sun were casting shadows on some of the smoke from the horrific wildfires that have afflicted our state in the past few weeks. The sight stopped me in my tracks. The ridge line looks

Can You See It? Seeking a Natural World in an Urban Setting 

Geotripper [2015-09-16 03:15:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (170 visits) info

 US
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Can you see it? Look carefully, it's easy to miss... We have a drainage pond on our west campus at the edge of town. It's been a mostly neglected corner of the campus, used occasionally to graze sheep from our agricultural unit. I've been exploring it for the last two years looking to photograph birds (forty species and counting). It's not far from our Science Community Center and Great

Strange Skies over the Great Valley Today 

Geotripper [2015-07-23 09:31:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (208 visits) info

 US
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Tell me this isn't one of the stranger looking skies you've ever seen. I would have been rather freaked seeing this without having known the origin. It's not clouds. We were driving home after our latest journey, and could see a wildfire burning on the west side of the Great Valley north of Sacramento. We couldn't get details until we got home, but it turns out to be burning in the

Driving Through the Most Dangerous Plate Boundary in the World: In the Pleistocene, a Different Kind of Danger 

Geotripper [2015-05-20 09:51:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (155 visits) info

 Quaternary; US
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An Egret and Tule Elk at the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge near Los Banos The Great Valley began as a shallow sea (a forearc basin) between the Mesozoic subduction zone and the Ancestral Sierra Nevada volcanic arc. As noted in the previous post, the sea filled with thousands of feet of sediments, and as the subduction zone transitioned to a transform boundary, the sea gave way to

Driving Through the Most Dangerous Plate Boundary in the World: The Alien Bursts Forth in the Diablo Range! 

Geotripper [2015-04-29 08:36:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (140 visits) info

 US
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The strange alien terrane bursts out of the core of the Diablo Range! The next stage of our journey through the most dangerous plate boundary on the planet takes us across the Coast Ranges from the Bay Area to the Great Valley. There are freeways that make the trip easy, but they don't go through the interesting parts. Traveling Interstate 580 at 65mph, one mostly just sees grassy

California's Precious Disappearing Prairies: A trip to the Willms Road Pond 

Geotripper [2015-03-04 02:10:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (598 visits) info

 US
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One of California's precious landscapes is being lost, again. The state once had a vast prairie extending for 400 miles from Redding to Bakersfield. The grasslands were of course put to the plow, and agriculture rules the environment today. Less than 5% of the original grasslands of the Great Valley remain, and they've been under renewed assault in just the past few years. The problem
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