As the US National Park Service celebrates its Centennial this year, we thought we’d celebrate with it by sharing some of our favorite photos from the national parks we have visited in the era of digital photography.
Congaree National Park
Hydrogeology students measuring streamflow and groundwater levels in the midst of a very impressive floodplain forest.
Crater Lake National Park
Wizard Island, a volcano within a volcano.
The hydrologist very much enjoyed seeing the USGS lake level gage perched above Crater Lake’s cold, deep water.
Cuyahoga Valley National Park
We are super lucky to have a local National Park, especially one that is free to everyone, all year long. We keep finding new places to explore in this park, but here’s a picture from our most recent adventure.
Anne and Geodog explore the Ritchie Ledges in Cuyahoga Valley National Park
Grand Teton National Park
Grand Teton is very pretty when the cloud base is high…
Anne and Geokid venture into the heart of Grand Teton.
Great Smokey Mountains National Park
Two of our favourite things: water flowing over ancient rocks, Great Smokey Mountains.
GeoKid never takes the boring route. Can’t imagine where she got that attitude from.
Hawaii Volcanoes National Park
Exploring a pahoehoe lava flow.
John Day Fossil Beds National Monument
The fossil rich Blue Basin. Anne’s proud that she spotted a fossil embedded in the rock, and she doesn’t want to think about how many she probably missed in passing.
The Painted Hills unit with its spectacular paleosols is near where Anne went to field camp and is where she went to celebrate defending her PhD (nearly 10 years ago now!)
Mammoth Cave National Park
Spectacular curtain of stalactites, Mammoth Cave National Park
GeoKid finds the going much easier than the adults in a slightly less Mammoth Part of Mammoth Cave.
Olympic National Park
A field trip in Anne’s tectonic geomorphology class in graduate school provided an all too brief glimpse of the Olympics – and a chance to recover from her comprehensive qualifying exams.
So. Much. Wood. On Pacific Northwest Beaches.
Redwood National and State Park
Big trees. Incredibly hard to get a sense of scale in a single photograph.
Fern Canyon is absolutely magical, and absolutely not a place I’d want to be in a rainstorm.
Rocky Mountain National Park
In the valley below, there’s an alluvial fan formed during a catastrophic dam break flood. And behind that there are some mountains. This picture was taken on a Geological Society of America Quaternary Geology and Geomorphology Kirk Bryan field trip, so Anne was in good company ignoring the mountains for the valleys.
Shenandoah National Park
Spectacular columnar basalts (and impressed students), Shenandoah National Park
Thomas Jefferson Memorial
TerraTyke explores the Jefferson Memorial (run by the NPS. Totally counts.)
Yellowstone National Park
The first National Park outing for the Allochthonous family was a 2010 trip to Yellowstone (and Grand Teton). Not a bad starting point.
GeoKid learns that hot springs were worthy of close examination.
Colourful life thriving in hot, silica rich water at Grand Prismatic Spring.
Yosemite National Park
Gorgeous granite galore.
That’s 15 national parks in the last 12 years. More in the pre-digital era. But so many more yet to see. This year, GeoKid is in 4th grade, which means that she gets to take part in the fabulous “Every Kid in a Park” program that gives free park passes to families of every fourth grader. Where should we go next?
Nice plan for content warnings on Mastodon and the Fediverse. Now you need a Mastodon/Fediverse button on this blog.