My regular readers are probably quite used to my occasional bouts of silence on this blog, but my low internet profile in the past fortnight has been for the quite justifiable reason that I was away on holiday. I had a blast, and unsurprisingly I quite blatantly indulged my inner geo-nerd when selecting my destination, which means several cool blog posts are in the pipeline. As a teaser, I give you the following two photos, and invite you to guess their geographical and geological provenance.
No prize in on offer save kudos for your geo-sleuthing skills, which will hopefully discourage those of you who communicate with me via other channels, and therefore already know where I’ve been hiding, from cheating. Guess away!
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Geotweetage
Siberia? Alaska? Mt. St. Helens? Montana?
Yellowstone.
Yeah, I’m thinking Yellowstone, too. The first looks like a tree killed by encroaching thermal water (Norris Basin, maybe?), and the second looks to be a big pile of rhyolite. Can’t place the location, but by the sulfur smell wafting out of my computer, my vote is for Yellowstone.
My guess is Western British Columbia. I like Yellowstone as well, but the shade and apparent speed of the water would make me guess that you were well downstream from any glacier, not to mention that the mountains in the background are all under the tree line.
Plus, if I see it correctly, there has been clear-cutting in the background as well, and I suspect that logging of this type is verboten in Yellowstone Park.
So I am only going to narrow it down by saying that you were en route to something like the Burgess Shale.
I’ve gotta go with steamy scenes and hot exhalations at Yellowstone. The apparent logging is actually stretches of forest that burnt in the superwildfire a few decades ago.
You’ve got the scale wrong, folks. Chris has been to Isengard – that first photo is of Orthanc. As you can see, Peter Jackson too considerable artistic license in the films.
Definitely Yellowstone.
@steve actually, some time back there were major fires in Yellowstone. As a result, there are large patches of it that are covered with only younger, small pine trees.
Pictures look like Yellowstone to me, as well. I’d go so far as to agree with Lockwood that the the first picture does indeed look a lot like I remember the view from the Norris Basin area.
My last batch of pictures from the area are mainly of the signs around the walkways and don’t include a view that I can compare to, though.
I remember there being quite a few places that look more or less like the second picture, too. Among the many of them, there’s a little loop road that I seem to recall is off of the main highway from West Yellowstone into the park – I want to say it’s called “Firehole” something-or-other (its main attraction as I recall is one of the few official “swimming hole” spots in the park – or maybe the ONLY one) but I don’t remember now. Anyway, I seem to remember that location having spots like that.
Definitely Yellowstone. The 2nd picture is volcanic tuff along the Madison river between the west entrance and the southern loop road. It’s pretty close to where the Firehole river joins the Madison. I’m going to guess that the first picture was up near Mammoth hot springs, but it could be any number of places.