International Space Station's View of the Susquehanna and Appalachian Ridges

From ninety miles up. For Penn Staters: on the left side of the image you can see the 322 bridge across the river at Duncannon, where it then starts following the Juniata. You can appreciate how what SEEM like conical mountains as you're driving along are revealed to be just the ends of ridges, dissected by one of the oldest rivers in the world. There is a mountain in central-western PA you can see from the turnpike - only westbound - which looks like a conical mountain that my family officially named "Tit Mountain", which turned out to be another ridge. (There are conical mountains in PA but they are very old and at this point very very worn-down, and they are indeed volcanoes - but there's really only one of them that you can notice as stand-alone.)

Bridalveil Falls,Yosemite; Plus Cloudy Spring Day on Clarksburg Branch Line Trail, West Sacramento

The falls in Yosemite were roaring after this wet winter and on this first warm day. I've never seen Bridalveil like this. You really couldn't stand at the observation point for any length of time because of the wind and spray from the base of the falls.







Then the next day I went to the converted rail trail in West Sac. This was the most like Pennsylvania a place in California has ever seemed to me, like a late spring day (in fact much like when I ran the upper Schuylkill River Trail in Berks County.) High sixties but breezy and overcast and just a little humid, with flat green fields and the smell of recently cut vegetation. The occasional palm tree broke the illusion.















And finally, below: a beautiful spring day on the American River Trail (where I saw a young rattler crawling across the trail - seen any? Add to the rattlesnake encounter map) and some old school liver and onions at, where else, Lil Joe's in Del Paso Heights, Sacramento.

Auburn Trails, Confluence Area, March 2019

The first spring weekend. Wildflowers aren't yet out in profusion but they will be in a week or two. I still caught some.


(Here are the fully sprung wildflowers last spring. I'm hoping this year outdoes last year.)




(Here and here is the Confluence area in the winter.)




(Here's the North Fork of the American River in autumn.)




(Here's the whole Central Valley in all four seasons.)


It struck me as odd today that these falls (so far as I know) have no name, since they are clearly the best falls. But maybe that's fitting.

Feather Falls

I finally got to this gem, the highest in Northern California at 420 feet and the sixth highest in the US. It was well-subscribed considering it's so out of the way, but I guess I shouldn't have been so surprised as it was a warm sunny day, and after a wet winter it finally feels like California around here again.

I keep thinking I've seen every corner of California (I mentioned this after my Channel Islands trip) and then again I get somewhere I've never been, have never heard the names of the towns or the numbers of the highways. Feather Falls is at the southwestern corner of Plumas National Forest on a tributary of the similarly named Feather River. Plumas NF is interesting because it's at the northern end of the Sierras, and it's here that the Sierra ecosystem transitions to the Cascades. Below, you'll see why the Frey Creek crossing is well-known as a ladybug gathering site, quite common at smallish stream valleys in the Sierras. At the end you can make out flakes of pyrite in the mud.

Earth's Seasons

Unsettled Winter Day at Confluence Area, Auburn, Sierra Foothills

Below: the various shades of the American River at the Confluence Area on a winter weekend, filled with silt and rockmilk. Most of the color variation is from light rather than water content. One of the samples is from a holly berry (and to the expert, it will be obvious.) Average colors of California and of forest around the world can be seen here.



Every year I say "I'm glad we're getting all this rain because we need it" and also I say "I'm really sick of this rain." Today was no exception, as I uttered both during my quickly aborted attempt to get a run in at Auburn. (But it made for some great photos.) For those curious: it was actively raining on 2/17, the trails around Auburn were quite muddy (except maybe on the way from No Hands to Calcutta Falls) and of course No Hands itself had a lake in the middle. But there were a lot of falls and creeks going that are normally just gullies. In this first image you can see the mud slide in the parking area across the road from the lower gate.

Suffice it to say, a much different mood than the warm sunny day in October a bit downriver documented at this link Here is the confluence area in multiple seasons.














True black and white vs grayscale, take your pick. If you like, pretend the one above is from an indie album from the 90s or a scary movie poster. Of possible interest: Rohrschach tests don't have a ton of evidence behind them, but for what it's worth, people with psychosis or learnings there-toward often perceive color in the black-and-white images. When I look at the grayscale version of the photo, I have a strong suggestion of color and have to remind my eyes it's black-and-white.