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20 June 2013
Headin’ west
Well, it’s that time of the year again. Tomorrow morning, I pack up the car and head west. I’m giving myself five days to drive out to Bozeman, Montana, with three stops along the way to see people I like and talk about interesting stuff. Next week, my family flies out to join me. It’ll be Baxter’s first plane ride! We’ve rented a condo in Bozeman for a month, and …
6 December 2012
More xenoliths from the Boulder Batholith
The week before last, I showed you the Boulder Batholith, as it crops out southeast of Butte, Montana. Today, I’ll share a few more photos of xenoliths (or perhaps microgranular mafic enclaves?) from that same outcrop: Man, I miss that old Swiss Army knife. The damned security actors at Calgary Airport confiscated it last summer. 🙁
31 August 2012
Friday fold: Natural Bridge area, Yoho National Park
The Friday fold, delayed by a week from last week’s contest, appears in Yoho National Park, British Columbia, near the “Natural Bridge” over the Kicking Horse River.
22 August 2012
First day of class
Today is the first day of class for the fall semester at Northern Virginia Community College. For the first time in seven years, however, I won’t be in the classroom. For the 2012-13 academic year, I’ll be on sabbatical. Sabbatical is a magic word in my mind. It’s a brilliant idea to allow motivated professors to work on things they wouldn’t ordinarily get the time for, and to take time …
9 August 2012
Orange oncolites from Consolation Lakes
Callan presents a mystery rock found in blocks of sedimentary rock on a talus slope near the Consolation Lakes in Banff National Park, Alberta. Are they orange oncolites? Or alien embryos? 🙂
6 July 2012
Friday fold: scenes from the trail to Bertha Lake
Given that I’m leaving tomorrow for the Canadian Rockies, I’ve been inspired to look through some of my photos from last summer, and to realize how few of them I’ve blogged so far. So let me show you some folded things today that Lily and I saw the afternoon we arrived at Waterton Lakes National Park in southernmost Alberta: Here’s a fold on the side of a mountain on the …
5 July 2012
Floe Lake hike
Last summer, my wife and I spent some time in the Canadian Rockies. One of the things we did was to take a three-day backpacking trip to Floe Lake, in Kootenay National Park, British Columbia. We picked a rough couple of days for hiking – We got a lot of Canadian Rockies precipitation out there: we got rained on, hailed on, and snowed on during those three days. Here’s our …
4 July 2012
Plane views: Powder River Basin and Black Hills
Happy fourth of July! Here’s two scenes that are emblematic of America, as seen from my airplane window last March flying from Reno to Minneapolis. Here’s the scene in the central Powder River Basin of eastern Wyoming: If you zoom in, you’ll see what caught my eye – regular rectangular excavations into the surface. These are strip mining operations for coal laid down in the Paleogene period of geologic time. …
2 July 2012
Where I’ll be next week
I’m headed off Saturday to the Canadian Rockies for two weeks. My colleague Pete Berquist and I are leading a regional field geology course up there. It’s a new gig for both of us, and I’m sure the trip will be quite a learning experience. As I was preparing for the trip today, I drew this cartoon to clarify in my mind the distinguishing characteristics of the three main physiographic …
31 May 2012
Plane views: Wyoming
I wanted to pick up where I left off months ago with some airplane photos as I was flying back from my California field class (over spring break). All views are to the north (out the left side of the airplane as we flew from Reno to Minneapolis). We crossed from northern Nevada into Wyoming, and started encountering Laramide uplifts. Here is a look at bedding dipping off to the …
Callan Bentley is Associate Professor of Geology at Piedmont Virginia Community College in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America. For his work on this blog, the National Association of Geoscience Teachers recognized him with the James Shea Award. He has also won the Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia, and the Biggs Award for Excellence in Geoscience Teaching from the Geoscience Education Division of the Geological Society of America. In previous years, Callan served as a contributing editor at EARTH magazine, President of the Geological Society of Washington and President the Geo2YC division of NAGT.