On vacation, part 2

I have a really annoying camera. Its biggest flaw is that it doesn't automatically flip the pictures when you take them sideways (seriously?), but it's also really annoying to change the settings, which means that in most cases it's just not worth fiddling with them.

So, here are my vacation pictures taken with my cheapo camera!

On June 18 and 19, we visited Lassen Volcanic National Park, which is kind of a mini Yellowstone but not as pretty. Here is some boiling groundwater. There used to be a large stratovolcano here, a volcano that towers high and is composed of layers of ash and lava. The volcano has been blown apart, but there is still heat underground. While Yellowstone's heat is an enigma, Lassen's is not. The oceanic plates are subducting underneath the continent, and water in the ocean floor messes with the mantle and makes magma come up into the continent, feeding the volcanism of the Cascade Mountains.

 We visited a lake called Emerald Lake. It gets its green color because it is shallow, thus allowing green algae to grow. The lake is in a cirque, a bowl-shaped feature carved out by glaciers.

 This is the only picture I got of Lassen Peak. It is a plug dome, meaning that very viscous lava came out and just kind of piled up, creating a dome instead of a peak (like a stratovolcano such as Mount Rainier) or instead of a shield (like Hawaii). It erupted in 1914 and 1915. We saw photographs of that eruption, which was 100 to 200 times smaller than the eruption of Mount St. Helens but was still very big.

 This is the only picture I got of all three of my nephews, Franklin (6), Nathaniel (4), and Preston (9). Nathaniel is prone to having funny pictures taken of him.

 You're lucky to get pictures of Franklin, because he hates having his pictures taken and tells you to delete him. He's a cute kid. Last year I described him as an "adorable, shy five-year-old who sometimes gets possessed by the devil."At age six, I think he's a little less shy. The kids got little books to be junior rangers, and one of their requirements was to ask a ranger four questions. Some of Franklin's questions were, "How much do you sleep?", "How many naps do you take?", and "What is your mother's name?" I think he gets possessed a little less often, although he still has the same sense of entitlement. His speech has really improved. On one car ride, I had a funny conversation with him in which we spoke in weird inhaling voices.

 We went and saw some waterfalls, although I can't remember what they were called. They were pretty waterfalls. Here, you can see where the water is falling from off the surface in some places, and where it is seeping out of the rocks next to it. The water coming out of the rocks seeped into the porous rock layer on top, but then it hit an impermeable layer and traveled underground until it came out here.

 After Lassen, we went to see Mount Shasta, which is the largest stratovolcano in the Cascades in terms of volume. We couldn't get very close to it, however, because the road was closed.

 On our way up, we saw some conical trees.

 On Monday, we went to Big Basin Redwoods State Park. Redwoods are really big trees. Often the trees will grow in rings around where a previous tree existed.

 One of the trees had a hole in the top of it! I think this one was actually dead, but a lot of them look like they could be dead but they're not.

 A little bluejay kept following us around.

Later, we went to Fitzgerald Marine Reserve to observe the tidal pools. When the tide is down, you can see all sorts of interesting marine life. I was interested in the rocks, especially these limestone rocks that have little holes in them. While I'm not positive, I think that these holes form from shelled creatures taking the calcium from the limestone to incorporate it into their shells. I think it's pretty cool that millions of years ago, shelled creatures deposited the calcium from their shells as limestone, but today, they take it back.

 We saw sea birds and their tracks.

 I was interested in a distant piece of driftwood, not realizing that there was a colony of harbor seals right next to it. That's the first time I've seen seals in the wild.

 Qi-en makes a lot of funny faces.

 This rock outcrop here is some kind of mudstone. There is obviously a limestone layer underneath it.

 On Tuesday, we went back to the tide pools. The tide was lower, but it was a lot colder. We saw lots of little marine life, including snails, hermit crabs, and anemones.

 On Wednesday, my parents, my sister, and I left the kids behind to go see some cool places. We visited a Petrified forest. Not only was this a place of geologic specimens, it was also a place of grammatical specimens. Notice the unnecessary quotation marks around "concretions of iron." That's not a particularly unusual term. I mean, I would probably say "iron concretions," but I don't see why "concretions of iron" has the quotation marks. Also, I'm annoyed that it's all caps, because that makes it harder to read.

 There were lots of trees here. During the Pliocene Epoch, about 3.4 million years ago, volcanic ash buried this forest. The silica content of the ash leached into the trees and replaced the organic structures, turning them to quartz and silica. There are lots and lots of petrified trees here.

 This is Mount St. Helena (not to be confused with Mount St. Helens), the offending volcano.

 This is an outcrop of the ash-flow tuff, with some large "concretions of iron" in it. (See what I did there?)

 Here, a living tree is growing out of a rock tree!

 This is another grammatical specimen. Notice number 3. There should be an apostrophe after "geologists" to indicate that the pick and brush belong to geologists. But without the apostrophe, it creates a sentence that leads you "down the garden path," because you think "pick" and "brush" are verbs, but they're actually nouns. You start to read the sentence one way, but it's actually going another way.

 This shows a partially excavated tree, so you can see how much ash there was.

After the petrified forest, we went to the Charles M. Schulz museum. As a longtime Peanuts fan, I really liked the museum. They had lots of original Peanuts strips on display and had different Schulz factoids and artifacts. Even the restrooms had Peanuts themes; the tiles were comic strips. We also saw the giant mural of Peanuts strip tiles.

 

Outside, they had different Peanuts sculptures. One of them was supposed to be Woodstock's birdbath, and it had cool holograms of Snoopy and Woodstock playing hockey. I think there were six different holograms which you could see when you walked around it. 

When we came home, we found the kids playing outside. Nathaniel stuck his scooter in the fence and stood on it. "I won't wall down," he said, still not able to master his consonants.

These are about all the details of the trip I have time for, but I've included the most relevant pictures.

On vacation

I got a vacation!

I was frustrated with a lot of things. People, mostly. None of my assistants in my calling responded to an email I sent out. My "sweet bro" roommate/home teaching companion didn't respond to me about when he would be around. My other roommate left the state but he's too good for us so I didn't know it until someone else told me. My FHE group leaders didn't communicate to us. My roommates are very irresponsible with the food they keep in the fridge; I filled up an entire garbage bag of old food. I've become a bit of a tree hugger and recycle things, but I didn't recycle the containers because some of them were half food and half mold.

So it was good to forget about those Provo jerks for a time.

On Tuesday, I drove through September-esque rain to head home, first to go to my cousin Quin's setting apart for his mission. On my mom's side of the family, he's the first missionary since me. It weirds me out that I was in my last area five years ago at this time.

On Wednesday, I left with my parents, my sister, and my niece to head to California to visit my brother and his family.

On Thursday, we headed to Lassen Volcanic National Park, which I believe is the fourteenth national park I've been to, and the third one I've been to this year/in the last month. We met my nephews and their parents there. Unfortunately, we didn't get to spend much time there. Lassen has all four kinds of volcanoes (stratovolcanoes, cinder cones, plug domes, and shield volcanoes), but we didn't get to see much. Cinder cones are my favorite, but we didn't see any.

My youngest nephew, Nathaniel a.k.a. Qi-en, formerly known as Baby, is four years old and he kept asking where the lava was. We told him the rocks used to be lava, but I'm not sure he understood.

Lassen is a small national park, so I was surprised at the quality of the t-shirts. They actually had shirts I would want to wear. Some national parks, such as Zion, have just terrible t-shirt designs, ones that use the Papyrus font and are just plain ugly. I only imagine old people wearing them. (Disclaimer: I have nothing against old people, but I don't want to dress like something I'm not.) Last August I found a decent shirt at Bryce Canyon, but after I bought it I realized it was a woman's shirt, so I gave it to my niece. (Disclaimer: I have nothing against women, but I don't want to dress like something I'm not. Besides, it didn't fit me.)

At Lassen, there was lots of andesite, some basalt, and even some pumice. But I generally prefer sedimentary rocks; they tend to be easier to identify, and I think they tell better stories.

 We stayed in a rental cabin in Lassen, and then we drove to Mt. Shasta, which apparently is the largest stratovolcano in the Cascades. Before we loaded our stuff into our very fancy hotel rooms (my parents have gotten spendy), we needed to go get lunch. And having four kids in tow, they all wanted to go to McDonald's. I don't understand why McDonald's is the default favorite of kids, because it is awful. Even their decent food isn't that good. Anyway, my overly indulgent parents agreed to go to McDonald's six miles away in Weed, CA. That's what it's really called. On our way back, my mom decided she didn't want to go on the freeway again (yes, we went on the freeway to go to McDonald's). So we went on this little road that was quite adventurous. The paved part was really bumpy. Then it wasn't paved anymore. We passed numerous sites with old mattresses, dilapidated couches, and destroyed TVs, just sitting out in the middle of nowhere. Our road ended up going right next to a train track. It was bizarre and slightly terrifying.

Then we came down to Albany, CA, in the Bay Area, to visit my brother and his wife and my three nephews, Preston, Franklin, and Nathaniel. Today we went to the Berkeley Ward. They have an old chapel built in the 1930s; it is very ornate. That would have been back in the day when local members had to erect buildings themselves. It sure is different from all the cookie cutter churches we usually see.

At the end of this week, I'll be back to Provo with all its jerks. (And its nice people, too.)

Current events

I don't always talk about things that are going on in the world. But when I do, I'm glad that my blog is so unknown so that I don't get a lot of backlash.

Another day, another shooting. I share Obama's frustration about America's attitude about guns. Wake up, America! Is this the kind of country you want, where school shootings are commonplace events? Congress refused to pass very neutral policies last year. Opponents of such measures say, "To take our guns away will make only the bad guys have them and is unconstitutional." Well, guess what? No one was trying to take your guns away! The opponents say, "We should try to focus on mental health issues to prevent shootings." Well, guess what? You blew your chance there, because the plan was going to address mental health! You cannot look me in the eye and tell me that existing gun laws work. Because they don't. We need to try something else. Even if it's wrong, it can't be worse than what we have now.

Ordain women. The Mormon community has been abuzz that the founder of Ordain Women was summoned to a Church disciplinary council. Now, first of all, she hasn't been excommunicated, at least not yet. There are four possible outcomes of disciplinary councils: excommunication, disfellowship, Church probation, and no action. The council hasn't happened yet.

Now, I don't think that she is facing excommunication because she wants and is advocating for the priesthood. I don't think that's what it's about. It's about the way the Ordain Women movement is handling their desires. They asked for tickets to a priesthood session and were denied. They're not satisfied until they get what they want. They were respectfully and politely asked not to protest at general conference, and asked that if they did, that they not enter Temple Square. They refused to follow both of those requests. It's the antagonism of their behavior, not their desire for the priesthood, that is leading to Church discipline, in my opinion.

Also, I feel that the implication from them is that women who don't want the priesthood are ignorant, brainwashed housewives who are too dumb to think for themselves. (For examples of this attitude, see this Facebook page, which may soon be taken down.) If that's not demeaning to women, I don't know what is. I know plenty of women who do not want the priesthood--I have personally heard them say it--and here Ordain Women is trying to tell them what they want.

There has been a lot of discussion that we shouldn't judge the women who are seeking the priesthood. That's true. But there hasn't been as much talk for not judging the bishop who called for the disciplinary council. He deserves not to be judged just as much as everyone else.

Elbow room. Recently I heard an opposing opinion to that of the world becoming overpopulated. I don't know whether that is true. But one day I was curious about something I had read for work, and I stumbled across census data for the U.S. population from 1900 to 1999. It does look like the population isn't increasing as fast as it was (at least, that was the case fifteen years ago...). The biggest increases in population were in 1947, with the start of the Baby Boom, and 1950, when Alaska and Hawaii were counted in the population. The population actually decreased in 1918, with WWI.

I kind of hope the population quits growing so fast. Yesterday I was going on a walk to find some goatheads to pull up, and I thought I would go on the trail at the dead end on Constitution Way in North Salt Lake. I remember going on that trail as a kid, and I remember going there in Cub Scouts and finding cactuses, a sego lily, and a snake skin. Imagine my surprise when I got up to the dead end and discovered it's not a dead end anymore--there's an entire neighborhood where that trail used to be! No more cactuses and sego lilies.

All these things that I've done. Wait a minute. You mean to tell me that Brandon Flowers is the lead singer of the Killers and a football star?

Me-yow! Remember the story of the cat who attacked a family's baby and held the family hostage in their bedroom? In a rare instance of watching TV last night, I just happened to catch an episode of My Cat from Hell on Animal Planet, and I found out that that cat was generally a good cat, but it has a disorder that occasionally puts it in some kind of spinal pain and makes it want to attack people. The cat trainer on the show didn't think it would be safe in a house with a baby (it wouldn't be safe for the baby), so a cat foster family adopted it. It's on medications now to try to stop it from attacking.

Second chances. I found it kind of heartwarming to read an article about inmates graduating from high school. I think education is one of the best things for the criminally inclined. A lot of criminals--maybe even most of them--deserve second chances.

But not all of them. I read a story of a man who followed two eight-year-old girls and told them he was a police officer, out of uniform to make it easier to catch bad guys. Then he told one girl to go home, and he threw the other over a fence and sexually assaulted her. This "man" is just too depraved to deserve a second chance. When they catch him, he should be castrated, first of all, then he should be tied to the back of a truck and dragged down a gravel road, then dropped in some boiling saltwater, then thrown in a patch of poison ivy.

Next week, tune in for your regularly scheduled program.

A dumb post

I went to another Rooftop Concert this weekend. I feel like there are basically four different levels of quality of performers you see: 1) Forgettable, 2) Good for a local band, 3) Good, 4) My favorite music ever. I have seen artists of all four levels at the concerts, and on Friday I saw one of each of the first three categories. It makes me realize how hard it is to become famous, because there are so many talented people. I wasn't induced to buy any of their music, however.

I went with my former roommate Bryton, who is probably my favorite roommate I've had, although we have different ideas about things. My friendliest current roommate is out of town, but he's a good guy. (He is, however, the messiest roommate I have ever had; while I may miss him being around, I certainly don't miss the messy kitchen.) Another roommate used to be really friendly, but something this past semester made him decide he was too cool for us, so he quit attending our ward and quit talking to us. The same thing happened with one of my roommates last year. Both of these too-cool roommates wear fine and costly apparel, and since I no longer see them on Sundays, I can only assume they attend the Rameumptom Ward, because they think they are better than us. My room-roommate replaced my previous one, because they were friends. Both of them are what you would call "bros" or "sweet bros." They are nice enough, but they have their South Carolina buddies and don't have room for any more.

One thing I have often struggled with is making comments during Sunday School and priesthood meetings. A few times, people have told me that they wish I made more comments because they like my comments, but sometimes I don't have anything to say. Other times, like today, I feel like the New Testament cripple at Bethesda, who can't make it to the angel-troubled waters before someone else does. Sometimes I think that my comments won't be that meaningful. However, now I kind of feel a bit of an obligation to comment, but I don't think it would be proper for me to explain why on a public post.


I have had lots of weird dreams this week, dreaming that I was part of a Hogan's Heroes episode (we were trying to trick Colonel Klink into putting mouthwash instead of dressing on his salad), that my paternal grandmother had been shrunk to the size of a leprechaun to be treated at a hospital, and that I stopped in at a gift shop/convenience store on the beautiful, mountainous Antarctic coast.

We are in the Fourth of July season, and Fourth of July candy is interesting. There's not much of it, and it's very inconsistent--you never know what you will get from year to year. Yesterday, I found patriotic Tic-Tacs, which was not something I expected to find. Also this year, I have had red, white, and blue Twizzlers, flag-wrapped Tootsie Rolls, and star-shaped, colored marshmallows. I have also seen (but not bought) patriotic Tootsie Roll Pops and Peeps. (I really don't get Peeps anymore. They're an Easter thing; what do chicks have to do with Halloween, Christmas, Valentine's Day, or the Fourth of July? Ten years ago, they made them stars, which makes more sense than the Peep/chick design.)

(Also, I find it a little strange we associate red, white, and blue so much with America, since those colors are also used on the flags of the UK, France, the Netherlands, Russia, Australia, Taiwan, and Samoa, and those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head.)

This was a dumb post. I almost wanted to just erase it all and start over. But I didn't want to do the work of writing a new one.

Igneous and sedimentary

This past week, I spent time in two national parks, one in Wyoming (and Idaho and Montana) and the other in Utah.

Last weekend, I went to Yellowstone with my aunt, five cousins (and their families, where applicable), and my grandparents. It was good to spend time with my grandparents, but the antagonism of my cousins was a little too much for this peace-loving guy.

Yellowstone is really the greatest place. I know of no other place with such abundant wildlife. But even better than that, I know of no other place with such active geothermal activity. Yellowstone is a supervolcano situated above a hotspot, where the mantle melts and comes up into the crust as a magma chamber.

When I was on my mission in Spokane, and even some in Lewiston, ID, some people would talk about seeing the ash fall from Mount St. Helens, even though they were on the other side of the state. If Yellowstone were to erupt, it would be really bad. Past eruptions of Yellowstone have deposited 1000 to 2,500 times the amount of ash of Mount St. Helens! If there are indications of it erupting again, I will move to Alaska or Hawaii. I used to think that I'd have to go to South America, but seeing maps of the ash flows makes me think that our youngest states would be safe, and I wouldn't have to adapt to a new culture. Of course, nowhere would be safe, as all that ash in the atmosphere would be wreaking havoc on the climate, but we'd probably survive. Fortunately, there are currently no indications of an impending eruption, and even an eruption in the near future, geologically speaking, could be long after we're gone.

The last major eruption at Yellowstone was 640,000 years ago, but there are all sorts of thermal activity today, as the magma chamber heats the ground and the water in it.

I was pleased with the things I saw in Yellowstone. I always get excited to see basalt columns; they naturally form when the iron-rich (mafic) lava hardens. There are differing rock layers in Yellowstone, but they are all igneous, whether it's basalt columns or ash-flow tuff. 

I think this was the first time I've ever seen bighorn sheep in Yellowstone (my previous visits being in 2006, 2005, 2004, 1996, and 1991 or 92).

Buffalo are always the most abundant wildlife. They get in the road and cause traffic jams. And some clueless new tourists actually stop on shoulders to take their pictures, not knowing they are abundant. That's why I refused to get out the first time everyone stopped.

There are few sedimentary rocks in Yellowstone, but the travertine at Mammoth Hot Springs is probably the most notable exception. Water dissolves the calcium carbonate from limestone (probably buried deep beneath the volcanics), and then it deposits it again when it comes out as a hot spring.

But I was kind of distracted at Mammoth from seeing a bear walk by a herd of elk. (We had earlier driven past a mother bear with three cubs, quite close to the road, but it was impractical to stop.)

We stopped for what we thought was an otter, but upon zooming in I think it was a marmot. Since we were such a big group (thirteen of us, counting the three-year-old and the baby), people saw us and stopped too and caused a traffic jam.

 

I always like the boiling pools of water, and especially the blooping mud pots. 

 I think this was the first time I had seen a snake there, as well.

Waterfalls are pretty, but you can see those anywhere. I'm amazed at all the volcanic materials.

Later, we saw another bear, and this time we were able to stop to take pictures. I was impressed with my dumb, cheap camera's zoom, even with the pictures as blurry as they are. 

 The bear approached some buffalo. One of them had been lying down but got up when the bear approached. No showdown, though.

It was early in the season, so there was lots of snow, and even some ice on the water.

 

On Memorial Day, our last day, we went to Old Faithful. It's not the biggest geyser, but it's still enormous, and it's amazing how consistent it is. At this point, my camera had died, but that's not too disappointing because 1) it's not much better than my phone and 2) I got a good wallpaper photo for my phone. Geysers provide another example of sedimentary rocks, as the water deposits silica from the volcanic materials when it comes out. I hadn't even heard of siliceous sinter (the deposit) until this trip.

Then it was time to leave the igneous rocks.

On Friday, I left to go to Capitol Reef with my ward. It was actually the first time I've gone camping with a singles ward.

We left about 7:00 p.m., and there were two cars in our group, most people having left earlier. I was in the car behind. About fifteen miles past Richfield, we rounded the corner and saw that the car in front of us had hit a deer; they were pulled off on the side, while the deer lay twitching in road. The deer eventually started lifting its head and gasping in pain. Pretty soon, Trailer Trisha from Wayne County pulled over and went over to get the deer out of the road. She (along with David Jones, our EQP, who was in the victim car) tried to kick it off, but when it wouldn't budge, "Trisha" grabbed it by its legs and dragged it off onto the shoulder of the road. Then she drove off to a place where she could get reception to call the police. Soon, another Wayne County-ite showed up to see if we were fine. Since the deer was clearly in misery, someone asked her if she had a gun. She said, "Not big enough to take down a deer." We found it funny that 1) she had a gun and 2) she knew it wouldn't work on a deer. Pretty soon, Bambi got up and walked away into the bushes. It didn't look very sturdy, though. After the hick women left, the friendly Mormon police officer with the Utah accent showed up. He wasn't concerned about the deer; he was sad it was still alive, because then it could make more deer, but he seemed happy when we said we didn't think it would be able to do that. To make a long story short, the damaged-car group went back to Provo. But those of us in the other car learned about the disdain of the cop toward deer. There were lots of deer next to the road, and one was standing in the middle of the other lane. Having just seen the results of a hit deer, we were paranoid and drove really slow. Some people already at the campsite had contacted the deer group, and then they came out to find us. They found us and led us to the campsite, which was good because we would have undoubtedly missed it, and it was midnight at that point, due to our delays waiting for police and watching for deer.

The next day, I tried to identify the rock formations. Capitol Reef has seventeen geologic formations, whereas Zion National Park only has three. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to recognize them that well, despite Geology 210. But we went on a hike that was undoubtedly Navajo Sandstone.  I think I may have misidentified some Wingate Sandstone as Navajo, but I'm positive our hike was through Navajo.

 We saw a little den of mammals of some kind (notice the one on the bottom sticking its head out). Then we began our hike.

I was impressed to see this little group of Moqui marbles, iron concretions deposited by groundwater, which confirms to me that we were in the Navajo Sandstone, because Wikipedia tells me that's where they occur. My family has some, because at one point they liked to collect rocks, but I never liked rocks as a kid. (I know, right?)

 They have them on Mars, too, where they are known as blueberries. (You can see them in the foreground of this picture.)

What made me sure then that we were in the Navajo was the markings. During part of the Jurassic, Utah was like the Sahara Desert, covered in giant sand dunes. Groundwater came up and solidified the bottoms of the dunes, creating sandstone. On this hike, lots of people asked me about the holes eroded in the rock. I think it was from water dissolving the cement keeping the sandstone together. I was a little annoyed that that was the one question everyone kept asking me, because it was the one I didn't know. When I said I didn't know, the first counselor in my bishopric (who initiated the trip) said, "What kind of geologist are you?" But I'm not a geologist; I'm an editor.

Just as Yellowstone has some sedimentary rocks, Capitol Reef has some igneous rocks. All over the park are these basalt boulders (you expect them to get up and sing something about true love), which came from a volcano 4 to 5 million years ago and then were carried and rounded by a river. 

Later, we walked along a stream to a little waterfall. If I had known how long it was, I don't think I would have continued, as I was barefoot the entire way and I had to walk slow so that I wasn't in too much pain. I was thinking of the term "tenderfoot," which originally meant someone was inexperienced because they had tender feet.

That led me on a tangent in my head about the word literally. Recently, there was a hubbub about literally being used in a figurative sense. Most of the arguments for it were that it has been in dictionaries for a long time in the figurative sense. But something I didn't see anyone observe is that there are varying degrees of literalness. For example, if I said, "I am literally a tenderfoot," the literally could mean several things: 1) I really am inexperienced, and I'm not just casually saying so; 2) I am a Boy Scout of the rank of Tenderfoot; 3) I have tender feet; 4) I am in fact a foot and not an entire body. In each of these examples, I think literally serves a valid purpose. But according to the strictest sense, only the fourth is valid, and that one is nonsensical.

I felt accomplished for having made it all the way to the waterfall and back in my bare feet, even though I literally walked slower than everyone else. Today I could feel where I had stepped on pebbles yesterday. They have parks in Taiwan for that kind of thing, but I will never understand why.

We also saw where Fremont Indians had carved into the desert varnish about 1000 years ago. Desert varnish comes from groundwater absorbing materials and then depositing it again when it comes out of the sandstone. 

Then we drove home. The drive home was much faster, since we didn't have to wait for policeman or watch out for deer.