Good Times Great Places

27/05/2025

You ever noticed those balls of foam that looks like spit on plants in the forest? It's not actually spit, but p*e :).This comes from bugs called Spittlebugs. They're called this when they're young and underdeveloped. When they develop into their adult form, they're called Froghoppers. They make this foam after sucking sap from the xylem in a plant. Xylem brings water from the roots into the plant; it has water but not many nutrients. The Spittlebugs consume a great deal of xylem, so they urinate a ton. The bug creates bubbles within its urine by poking its abdomen out to get air to breath. It repeatedly does this and creates bubbles. Why does it do this? They think it's to prevent drying out and to protect it from predators while it's developing. After the bug reaches its adult form, it becomes one of the best jumping insects in the world. https://youtu.be/jyeUIbayehY?si=hhloeKUcvo3Bw4lP

23/05/2025

Good times great sunset in Eugene, Oregon tonight. Instead of saying how old we are in years, maybe we should say our age in the number of sunsets we've experienced.

30/04/2025

Ferns are cool. I captured some neat images of the "fiddleheads" of ferns. They're called that, because they look like the curled end of a stringed instrument. They unravel to open up to the full branched sporophytes. Apparently, it is common among Asian cultures to cut the fiddleheads before they open up to consume as vegetables in various dishes. Check out this impressive and kinda freaky time lapse video in the comments with fiddleheads opening up.

23/04/2025

I recently attended an Atlanta Braves baseball game at their home stadium Truist Park. The Braves are actually the oldest professional sports franchise in the USA. They started as The Boston Braves way back in 1871. In 1953, they moved to Milwaukee, where Hank Aaron played for them. In 1966, they moved to Atlanta. They have been one of the most successful baseball teams ever, especially between 1991-2005. This is when they won 14 consecutive national league pennants! A stadium was built for the 1996 Olympics that was converted to Turner Field, where the Braves played for 20 years. After a while, the stadium was in need of expensive repairs. Also the lack of parking and other problems with the downtown location led to a need for a new ballpark. They built a new ballpark through a private-public partnership, which involves private-funded government projects mixed with additional taxes and user costs. The Braves contributed greatly as well: the park and mix-used development around there added up to $1.1 billion. The stadium's name was SunTrust Park. After the name of SunTrust Bank was changed to Truist Financial, the stadium was named Truist Park.

19/04/2025

I visited the awesome Georgia Aquarium today. When it opened in 2005, it was the largest aquarium in the world until 2012. It's now the largest in the U.S.A. It has many awesome exhibits and shows. It's most known for hosting the biggest fish in the world: whale sharks. It's also only 1 of 4 sites in the world that host manta rays. They turned down my request to ride a dolphin and wrestle an alligator, but I had an overall great experience :) Good times great aquarium!

18/04/2025

'Twas an interesting day exploring Georgia's unfortunate and absurd history of race relationships. It was good to see they set up a great historical park for MLK, Jr.; it was neat to see the cool house he grew up in. On the other hand, we also visited the controversial Stone Mountain. If anything, it is impressive sculpture work. The mountain itself is really interesting. It's a huge random monolith of granite standing over 250 meters above the mostly flat surroundings. This is intrusive rock, so magma seeped into a previous rock stucture. Most of the original rock eroded away, but this intrusive rock stayed. The best thing about it is you can get to the top by foot or tram. It was an excellent view up there.

15/04/2025

Bryce Canyon National Park is an incredible place. Beautiful landscape, awesome geology, and the largest display of Hoodoos in the world. Hoodoos are the towers of rock formed from erosion and frost wedging. This entire area was once under an inland sea. This led to a layer of marine life that eventually hardened into limestone. In addition, there were sand dunes that led to sandstone. Water gets into cracks in the rocks during warmer days. At night it often freezes, and the water expands after it turns to ice. This expansion puts pressure on the rocks. When this happens repeatedly, pieces of the rock break off and eventually towers are left. When there is rock on top of towers that doesn't erode as well as the rest of the tower, the top rock will appear to be a large boulder balanced on top.

10/04/2025

I recently visited the northwest part of Zion National Park for the first time, and it didn't disappoint. It's interesting that it's right off I-15, but you wouldn't know it driving by. Too many people blow by this place on the interstate without knowing these incredible canyons are so close. This area includes the Kolob Canyons. They consist of 2000 feet high cliffs of Navajo Sandstone. This sandstone used to consist of huge sand dunes that eventually turned to rock. These canyons were initially formed by vertical movements along the Hurricane Fault. Erosion of those rocks led to various interesting formations, such as hanging valleys.

05/04/2025

05/04/2025

Good times hiking up Angel's Landing on Zion National Park today. It's a unique hike with the famous "Walter's Wiggles" and the narrow path with a chain at the top. Was great to walk around beautiful sedimentation layers between 120 and 270 million years ago.

18/03/2025

We climbed to the top of this 230 foot tree! There is a cool tree climbing business at beautiful Silver Falls State Park. Tree climbing is challenging, but you get rewarded by chilling in a beautiful tree in nature with a good view. Good times Great Places!

05/02/2025

I just booked my flight for a trip to Europe in October! Brussels, Amsterdam, Cologne, Luxembourg, and Paris. Hopefully, they'll still let people from the USA in by then :)