PFF: Mount Rainier National Park

Thank you to our hostess Beth at The Best Hearts are Crunchy for hosting Postcard Friendship Friday.

For the next few National Park postcards, we are going to take a tour of the American West, as if you had plenty of time, money, and a good car. Today it’s Mount Rainier National Park. Its location close to Seattle and Tacoma and relatively easy access by car makes this a very busy park, along the main roads and at the visitor's centers anyway.

Giving credit where credit is due:
The back of this card says:"Works Progress Administration (WPA) circa 1939, Artist Unknown. Between 1935 and 1943 the WPA's Federal Art Project printed over two million posters in 35,000 different designs to stir the public's imagination for education, theater, health, safety, and travel. Due to their fragile nature only two thousand posters have survived. The National Park image shown here is also available in the original poster format from many National Park bookstores." Published by Ranger Doug Enterprises. http://rangerdoug.com/index.php Seattle, WA.

“At 14,410 feet [4392 m], Mount Rainier is the most prominent peak in the Cascade Range. It dominates the landscape of a large part of western Washington State. The mountain stands nearly three miles higher than the lowlands to the west and one and one-half miles higher than the adjacent mountains. It is an active volcano that last erupted approximately 150 years ago.”
When I was a bit younger, just starting in geology, Rainier was considered dormant, but the re-awakening of Mt. St. Helens changed all that. Its proximity to the Seattle-Tacoma area makes this volcano one of the most dangerous, in terms of potential harm to people and property. The US Geological Survey maintains active monitoring of this area.


Mount Rainier does not have the classic cone shape of a typical stratovolcano (think: Mt. Fuji in Japan) because it has lost an estimated 1000 feet due to volcanic explosions and landslides. The top now has two overlapping craters, and much of the mountain is covered in glaciers and snow.


This volcano is labeled active, with good reason. From the USGS page on earthquakes:


Cross section of Mt. Rainier, South to north, with earthquake foci plotted. Data from 2000- 2010. Most earthquakes are tiny and would not be felt.
Red dots represent events occurring in the past month.
Green dots represent events occurring less than a year ago, but more than a month ago.

Volcanoes show many signs of changing activity before they really erupt. If Rainier gets active, it will be in the news.
viridian

PFF: Glacier National Park

 Thank you to our hostess Beth at The Best Hearts are Crunchy for hosting Postcard Friendship Friday.

For the next few National Park postcards, we are going to take a tour of the American West, as if you had plenty of time, money, and a good car. Today it’s north to Glacier National Park, then looping west to Washington and California, and ending up at the Grand Canyon.

Giving credit where credit is due:
The back of this card says:"Works Progress Administration (WPA) circa 1939, Artist Unknown. Between 1935 and 1943 the WPA's Federal Art Project printed over two million posters in 35,000 different designs to stir the public's imagination for education, theater, health, safety, and travel. Due to their fragile nature only two thousand posters have survived. The National Park image shown here is also available in the original poster format from many National Park bookstores." Published by Ranger Doug Enterprises. Seattle, WA.
Glacier National Park was designated our nation's 10th national park on May 11, 1910. (It’s their centennial!)

“By the late 1800s, influential leaders like George Bird Grinnell, pushed for the creation of a national park. In 1910, after 15 years of negotiations and debates, Grinnell and others saw their efforts rewarded when President Taft signed the bill establishing Glacier as the country’s 10th national park.”

Glacier National Park is in the extreme Northwest of the state of Montana.

Waterton Lakes National Park (see map below) in Canada borders the park, preserving many square miles of pristine wilderness. You can even take a beautiful boat ride on Upper Waterton Lake and pass from one country into another (no fences!) – this area is also an International Peace Park , a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and a Biosphere Reserve. Even with all this, you can get to this park by public transportation. Amtrak trains run to East and West Glacier, and there are shuttles to locations in the park.

Below: Photo collage from the Glacier website. The photo in the lower left corner should look familiar!

The rocks here are sedimentary, made of sediments deposited in long-ago seas.

The geology, from the park's web page:

"A mountain-building episode, known as the Laramide Orogeny, affected the Rocky mountains upward from Alaska to Mexico. The force of this pressure folded and uplifted rocks, and in the case of the Lewis Overthrust, pushed a giant slab of older (precambrian) Belt series rock (50 miles by 200 miles) over much younger Cretaceous Era formations. The pressure of colliding plates raised the land to great heights, well above the glacially-carved peaks remaining in the park. Glacial scouring and erosion has diminished the size of Glacier's mountains over time. Mt. Cleveland is the park's tallest peak, listed at 10,466 feet, and more than one hundred other summits rise above 8,000 feet. . . . The shapes of Glacier's peaks were carved relatively recently. Visible to the observer today are stunning amphitheater-like cirque basins and broad U-shaped valleys, formed initially through glacial activity dating to the last ice age, and knife-edged aretes and pyramid-shaped peaks shaped by more recent erosional forces."

The glaciers of Glacier National Park are quickly melting away. Not on a geological time scale, but in our lifetimes. The following two pictures of Grinnell Glacier were taken first, in 1940:

And from the same spot in 2004:
These two photos are from this article on Live Science. It is depressing, but instructive, to click through all the photo pairs.

viridian

Postcard Friendship Friday: Jenny Lake Museum

Since we are in the area, let's visit Grand Teton National Park and John D. Rockefeller Memorial Parkway. This map is from the Park website.


There is WPA poster aesthetic and then there is Paint by Number aesthetic, and this postcard is over the line, in Paint by Number territory!

Giving credit where credit is due:
The back of this card says:"Works Progress Administration (WPA) circa 1939, Artist Unknown. Between 1935 and 1943 the WPA's Federal Art Project printed over two million posters in 35,000 different designs to stir the public's imagination for education, theater, health, safety, and travel. Due to their fragile nature only two thousand posters have survived. The National Park image shown here is also available in the original poster format from many National Park bookstores." Published by Ranger Doug Enterprises. ( 1-888-972-7678 ) Seattle, WA.

A beautiful valley is dominated by tall mountains on the west - jagged peaks rising almost straight from the valley floor, or so it seems. You have seen pictures of this place. A meadow with a zigzag fence with sharp rocky peaks in the background? A stream in a grassy valley, again with those peaks?

A beautiful large lake with impossibly steep mountains in the background?



Yes, that is the Grand Teton National Park, and Jenny Lake is the name of that lake.

The museum is now called the Jenny Lake Visitor Center. It is open from May 14 to Sept. 22, and offers walks and talks with the rangers.

I have visited here, and pictures capture only a little of the beauty, majesty and just the air and the light of this place.
Thank you to our hostess Beth at The Best Hearts are Crunchy for hosting Postcard Friendship Friday.

Viridian

Movie Star Postcard

Who is this? For a split second I thought it might be Robert Pattinson - do I need to say what movies he's in?

No, the top postcard image is of James Dean, photograph by Roy Schatt. The copyright to this photo (or the postcard, or both) is held by the James Dean Foundation.

It's not our normal image of Dean, and this profile shot, of his left side, is not common. Nor is it a common pose for Pattinson.

Hmm, maybe I am beginning to understand the the Robert Pattinson frenzy.

Viridian

New look for Viridian's postcard blog

OK after the excitement of Postcard Friendship Friday calms down,
let's shake things up.

The new look is from *Cute 'n' Cool* Blog Accessories by Itkupilli (She is Finnish). I'll still be refining the look but I think it's a nice change from the standard Blogger templates.
Viridian

Postcard Friendship Friday: Yellowstone

Today is Postcard Friendship Friday, hosted by Beth at the Best Hearts are Crunchy.
Let's stay in Yellowstone for another week, as it is so delightful here.

Once again I am repeating the publisher information because - well maybe you might be interested in purchasing some postcards or postcards? The graphics are fantastic.
The back of this card says:"Works Progress Administration (WPA) circa 1939, Artist Unknown. Between 1935 and 1943 the WPA's Federal Art Project printed over two million posters in 35,000 different designs to stir the public's imagination for education, theater, health, safety, and travel. Due to their fragile nature only two thousand posters have survived. The National Park image shown here is also available in the original poster format from many National Park bookstores."Published by Ranger Doug Enterprises. (1-888-972-7678) Seattle, WA.

To see the Lower Falls of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone from this angle, you'd have to hike down into the valley - I read that it is a strenuous hike. I've only seen the Lower Falls from a convenient highway pullout. The falls are 308 feet tall. See the Park's webpage on the Falls for more information.

The National Parks Service at Yellowstone has a great website at http://www.nps.gov/yell/.

viridian61