Good Times Great Places

09/16/2026

Stawamus Chief Rock in Squamish baby! What an intense hike: 540 meter climb in 1.5 km!

08/21/2026

Bryce is nice! Last April, I had a great time touring the awesome lands of southern Utah. Let's talk about them hoodoos!

08/12/2026

I had the privilege of visiting Gudvangen, Norway. It's an awesome village at the end of the Nærøyfjord. This is one of the many beautiful fjords in Norway. Fjords were created after glaciers carved out valleys during ice ages about 2 million years ago. When glaciers retreated around 11,000 years ago, sea water moved inland and flooded the leftover valleys. There are approximately 1700 fjords, and the longest one reaches 205 kilometers inland!

07/19/2026

In Norway, on the Flam railway near Myrdal, the train stops at the awesome and powerful KJOSFOSSEN waterfall. They let us off the train for five minutes to check it out. After a minute, music was played, and a woman in a red dress danced above a cliff. She dropped out of sight, and then she immediately appeared down below. Magic baby! (Well played ladies)

07/09/2026

I made it to "The Land of the Midnight Sun!" 23 hours of travel and 15 minutes of sleep, so I'm feeling great baby!

07/08/2026

I have a long travel day today (over 20 hours) to start an epic adventure through the beautiful fjords of Norway! I'll also spend a couple days in Copenhagen, Denmark. Gonna be a rad time with a lot of sunlight. In Norway, I'll be around 60 degrees north latitude, so the sun will rise around 0400 and set around 2300. Here's the journey:

05/25/2026

I had a great time camping at Suttle Lake in Central Oregon. Suttle Lake, at an elevation of 1,048 meters (3,438 feet) above sea level, is about 10km east of Santiam Pass. Native Americans used to stop there to hunt and gather when they would traverse trails to get between the Willamette Valley and central Oregon. In the 19th century, European settlers arrived. The Willamette Valley and Cascade Mountain Military Wagon Road was built in the mid 1860s. John Settle was a principle investor and supervisor of the wagon road construction. Suttle Lake was named after him. It's funny they misspelled his last name, but the name stuck. It's interesting that most of the lake water comes from groundwater seepage; there is only one stream that brings water into it. The basin where the lake exists formed during the Pleistocene Epoch, when the Cascade Mountains were buried in ice. A glacier carved out the valley leaving a moraine where it stopped. The moraine trapped water. The Suttle Lake Lodge is nice. It's interesting there were three previous lodges that all burned down.

05/19/2026

Forty-six years ago today: Mt. St. Helens erupted! Magma began moving under it for two months. This caused many earthquakes to occur, so Geologists started monitoring the mountain. Relatively small eruptions, gas and heat flows, and phreatic blasts (steam blasts due to the magma heating groundwater) started occurring. Because of magma moving upwards, a large bulge grew on the north side of the mountain, indicating an eruption might occur. On May 18th, an earthquake led to the bulge area sliding, followed by a volcanic blast, and then the largest landslide in recorded history occurred. Hot gas and volcanic material rushed down the hill (referred to pyroclastic flow) with speeds up to 670 mph. The extreme heat of the eruption melted glaciers and snow, causing huge mudflows (called lahars) to flow down the 3 of the 4 drainage systems off the mountain. All of this contributed to mass destruction, thousands of animal deaths, obliterated forests, and 57 human deaths.

Sequence of Mount St. Helens photos of the colossal landslide and ensuing lateral blast following the Mw 5.1 earthquake, 1980. Timestamps indicate the time following the earthquake.

04/14/2026

I made it to Las Vegas, Nevada! This is what you picture when you think Vegas, right? :) These Spring Mountains are actually less than an hour's drive from Vegas, but it's a world away up here over 8000 feet above sea level. You can find Ponderosa Pine trees and incredible limestone here. Mt Charleston, at nearly 12,000 feet ASL is the highest peak. Its limestone was formed millions of years ago after an ancient sea bed existed here. The remains of marine life accumulated and it eventually turned into rock. Tectonic forces forced this limestone up thousands of feet. Wild huh?