The train leaves from Munich Hauptbahnhof and doesn’t stop again until Salzburg, just over an hour later. Three stops later you’re in Vienna (the train carries onto Budapest). The journey is spectacular going through the Alps, the views of snow capped mountains and alpine villages (complete with solar panels) breathtaking. I was in 1st class as it was €20 more expensive, this meant I got a welcome drink and snack, free newspapers and magazines and at seat dining service. Amusement on the outward journey was provided by a toddler taking a cat for a walk up and down the aisle. The return journey was probably equally amusing but I slept for most of it.

The week before Easter I took time off in one of my favourite places in the world: West Coast of Scotland. A day was spent exploring Loch Arkaig, pictured below.

As seen as Classic Detritus amongst other places.

MJC Rocks over at Geotripper decided to turn the more generic 100-things-meme that was going around into a geologist’s 100-things-meme. What a great idea! Several others have joined in — I wonder if the collective geoblogosphere has seen all 100?

The things I’ve seen are in bold – and commentary is in (paranthetical italics).

1. See an erupting volcano
2. See a glacier (Switzerland)
3. See an active geyser such as those in Yellowstone, New Zealand or Iceland
4. Visit the Cretaceous/Tertiary (KT) Boundary. Possible locations include Gubbio, Italy, Stevns Klint, Denmark, the Red Deer River Valley near Drumheller, Alberta.
5. Observe (from a safe distance) a river whose discharge is above bankful stage (the Rivers Nene, Ouse in York, Ouse in Bedford )
6. Explore a limestone cave. Try Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, Lehman Caves in Great Basin National Park, or the caves of Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia.
7. Tour an open pit mine, such as those in Butte, Montana, Bingham Canyon, Utah, Summitville, Colorado, Globe or Morenci, Arizona, or Chuquicamata, Chile. (Coppermine Zambia)
8. Explore a subsurface mine (Big Pit South Wales).
9. See an ophiolite, such as the ophiolite complex in Oman or the Troodos complex on the Island Cyprus.
10. An anorthosite complex, such as those in Labrador, the Adirondacks, and Niger.
11. A slot canyon. Many of these amazing canyons are less than 3 feet wide and over 100 feet deep. They reside on the Colorado Plateau.
12. Varves, whether you see the type section in Sweden or examples elsewhere
13. An exfoliation dome, such as those in the Sierra Nevada
14. A layered igneous intrusion, such as the Stillwater complex in Montana or the Skaergaard Complex in Eastern Greenland.
15. Coastlines along the leading and trailing edge of a tectonic plate. (North America)
16. A gingko tree, which is the lone survivor of an ancient group of softwoods that covered much of the Northern Hemisphere in the Mesozoic. (in California)
17. Living and fossilized stromatolites
18. A field of glacial erratics
19. A caldera
20. A sand dune more than 200 feet high
21. A fjord
22. A recently formed fault scarp
23. A megabreccia
24. An actively accreting river delta
25. A natural bridge
26. A large sinkhole
27. A glacial outwash plain
28. A sea stack
29. A house-sized glacial erratic
30. An underground lake or river
31. The continental divide (Rocky Mountains, Colorado)
32. Fluorescent and phosphorescent minerals
33. Petrified trees
34. Lava tubes
35. The Grand Canyon. All the way down. And back. (Only from rim)
36. Meteor Crater, Arizona, also known as the Barringer Crater, to see an impact crater on a scale that is comprehensible
37. The Great Barrier Reef, northeastern Australia, to see the largest coral reef in the world.
38. The Bay of Fundy, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, Canada, to see the highest tides in the world (up to 16m)
39. The Waterpocket Fold, Utah, to see well exposed folds on a massive scale.
40. The Banded Iron Formation, Michigan, to better appreciate the air you breathe.
41. The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Tanzania (seen from a plane)
42. Lake Baikal, Siberia, to see the deepest lake in the world (1,620 m) with 20 percent of the Earth’s fresh water.
43. Ayers Rock (known now by the Aboriginal name of Uluru), Australia. This inselberg of nearly vertical Precambrian strata is about 2.5 kilometers long and more than 350 meters high
44. Devil’s Tower, northeastern Wyoming, to see a cassic example of columnar jointing
45. The Alps. (in southeastern France, many times)
46. Telescope Peak, in Death Valley National Park. From this spectacular summit you can look down onto the floor of Death Valley – 11,330 feet below.
47. The Li River, China, to see the fantastic tower karst that appears in much Chinese art
48. The Dalmation Coast of Croatia, to see the original Karst.
49. The Gorge of Bhagirathi, one of the sacred headwaters of the Ganges, in the Indian Himalayas, where the river flows from an ice tunnel beneath the Gangatori Glacier into a deep gorge.
50. The Goosenecks of the San Juan River, Utah, an impressive series of entrenched meanders.
51. Shiprock, New Mexico, to see a large volcanic neck
52. Land’s End, Cornwall, Great Britain, for fractured granites that have feldspar crystals bigger than your fist.
53. Tierra del Fuego, Chile and Argentina, to see the Straights of Magellan and the southernmost tip of South America.
54. Mount St. Helens, Washington, to see the results of recent explosive volcanism. (from the Johnson Observatory, its an amazing landscape)
55. The Giant’s Causeway and the Antrim Plateau, Northern Ireland, to see polygonally fractured basaltic flows.
56. The Great Rift Valley in Africa (have flown over it several times though).
57. The Matterhorn, along the Swiss/Italian border, to see the classic “horn”.
58. The Carolina Bays, along the Carolinian and Georgian coastal plain
59. The Mima Mounds near Olympia, Washington
60. Siccar Point, Berwickshire, Scotland, where James Hutton (the “father” of modern geology) observed the classic unconformity. (my geoscience related geekness started early)
61. The moving rocks of Racetrack Playa in Death Valley
62. Yosemite Valley
63. Landscape Arch (or Delicate Arch) in Utah
64. The Burgess Shale in British Columbia
65. The Channeled Scablands of central Washington
66. Bryce Canyon
67. Grand Prismatic Spring at Yellowstone
68. Monument Valley
69. The San Andreas fault (2003 we drove especially to see it along a cool piece of road where we could see the anticlines and synclines on the side of the road)
70. The dinosaur footprints in La Rioja, Spain
71. The volcanic landscapes of the Canary Islands (Fuerteventura 2002, some crazy driving involved)
72. The Pyrennees Mountains (gone through bits by road, train, and walked bits of them)
73. The Lime Caves at Karamea on the West Coast of New Zealand
74. Denali (an orogeny in progress)
75. A catastrophic mass wasting event
76. The giant crossbeds visible at Zion National Park
77. The black sand beaches in Hawaii.
78. Barton Springs in Texas
79. Hells Canyon in Idaho
80. The Black Canyon of the Gunnison in Colorado
81. The Tunguska Impact site in Siberia
82. Feel an earthquake with a magnitude greater than 5.0. (5.2 in the UK then similar magnitude in LA this summer)
83. Find dinosaur footprints in situ
84. Find a trilobite (or a dinosaur bone or any other fossil)
85. Find gold, however small the flake
86. Find a meteorite fragment
87. Experience a volcanic ashfall
88. Experience a sandstorm
89. See a tsunami
90. Witness a total solar eclipse (2000 UK)
91. Witness a tornado firsthand.
92. Witness a meteor storm, a term used to describe a particularly intense (1000+ per minute) meteor shower
93. View Saturn and its moons through a respectable telescope.
94. See the Aurora borealis, otherwise known as the northern lights (this is on the to do list)
95. View a great naked-eye comet, an opportunity which occurs only a few times per century. (Hale-Bopp in 1997)
96. See a lunar eclipse (the best one was on Lundy Island)
97. View a distant galaxy through a large telescope
98. Experience a hurricane (1987 I remember watching bits of the garage roof flap odd)
99. See noctilucent clouds
100. See the green flash 

I’m used to heat hitting me when I leave an aeroplane (in Zambia you walk across the tarmac to the terminal building) but even at 8am the humidity hit. I promptly crashed out for quite a few hours then borrowed Bradley’s car to visit Heather at her new school. Elementary school children will be subjected to the view of my construction paper leaves on the tree in the campfire reading area of Heather’s music classroom for the rest of the school year!

Friday is games night in the Hartman family. We got pizza and played random board games with Elizabeth and Dustin, Ben popped in and I played on a Wii properly for the first time. Needless to say I came last in the Mario game we were playing, but did beat all three of them in one of the challenges.

Saturday morning after a lie in, we went for lunch at Chik-fil-a. Hearing Christian music in a fast food place seems a little weird to me. Heather and I did a little shopping. I got the badly needed pair of jeans that actually fit me and a new portable hard drive. We went to Stone Mountain, a mountain which has carvings of key figures in the Confederacy during the Civil War. We went on the train, pottered around the shops, brought fudge and chatted lots. After Mexican (where Bradley and Keira joined us) we went to the Stone Mountain 25th Anniversary laser show. Joined by Ben, Dustin and Elizabeth we listened to the prelude of mid-90s cheese and other stuff. The hills were full of people on rugs who had eaten picnics. The laser show is basically French style son et lumiere with fireworks. I had my own Riff Trax/MST3000 commentary throughout. These fireworks set a couple of trees on fire so the end of show entertainment was firemen putting out the burgeoning forest fire.

On Sunday, I took Heather along when I went service ringing in central Atlanta. We then went around the High. Lots of amazing photography documenting the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

I discovered on Sunday night that the museum I was planning to visit on the Monday is open Tuesday to Saturday so did all the little things on Monday. I got presents for people and packed. Bradley, Heather and I went for a picnic on the farm (at the spot where they got married). Tuesday I went to the Carlos at Emory University. I forgot how much I like the atmosphere at American campus universities (based on experiences at Amherst, Colgate, UTAustin, Emory, vaguely Columbia). The Carlos has lots of ancient Egyptian, Nubian, Roman, Greek, Americas things and some modern African artefacts. All with lots of explanation so I discovered rich Greeks were buried in their baths to allow them to travel across the sea to the afterlife. There are lots of Mummies there which weren’t as freaky as I thought it may be.

Delta managed to mess up again, as for some unknown reason I couldn’t check in online. However, at the airport I was through everything in about 10 minutes flat. It then hit me, when I was walking across the international terminal food court, I was really leaving the US. And I really didn’t want to leave. Fighting back the tears, a  chocolate mint blended coffee didn’t really help, but chocolate slightly did. However, more than any other time it feels like I’ve returned to the UK to finish off my thesis so I can go back, that this is temporary return. OK in the real world its probably 1-3 years until I move over, but its a definite goal (and its been my plan since I was 16 or so to spend a couple of years living and working in the US).

Seeing as Atlanta-Heathrow is a new route for Delta (part of Open Skies) you’d think they’d have decent planes. No, its a domestic plane with overhead screens. None of which I could see unhindered, so I read, listened to my iPod and slept. I slept over half the flight including through breakfast service.

Arriving into Heathrow and surprise, surprise it was grey, cold and rainy. After waiting for BA plane to leave its gate at T4 (remnants that haven’t moved over yet) we disembarked. I’m on the IRIS system, for which there was no queue (but I got some strange looks from people who hadn’t seen someone use it before, you walk into a booth, it scans your eyes and if thats you the booth doors open the other side). Coffee with Dad before the trip home meant I didn’t crash out until 5ish.

I’m definitely in post-trip slump. This happens after every trip, but for a myriad of reasons I’m feeling it more than normal. Chocolate and Danish liquorice have helped but I’m missing people like crazy and pining. I’ve chatted with more of my friends from the US since I’ve been back than friends in the UK. I’m not sure how i’m going to cope in the next couple of weeks but have something to focus on.

Someone stole my airline blanket, luckily I had my Quillow which meant I slept about half the flight. However, I am in possession of a gate pass for Hartsfield-Jackson airport as I left it on the plane and had to get it back. For some reason I didn’t get the flight would be so quick as it took 6 hours from Philly to LA during the day, but at night and the fact that Atlanta is pretty much in a straight line from LA it took 4 hours.

So my last day in LA included diner brunch, Pleasantville, swimming in the pool, cool conversations including the surprising resurgence of a previous topic that really made me smile. I was less upset that I thought I would be when I left. Perhaps because I had another frustration vent in Delta, or because I knew it as coming (staying longer would have made it worse), or because I know this time is different. Plus I get to spend a weekend with Heather and the Hartmans

As I finished up the book and lay back in the sun waiting for the track to finish I realised how much and easily I’ve settled in here so quickly. People are a large part of that, but its a lifestyle difference that I like and although I know I have to go home (and get to go via Atlanta to see Heather) it really confirms what I’ve thought for a while about where I want my life to be in the next few years.

Joshua Tree was amazing. We had just entered the park boundary when a small furry animal scurried across the road in front of us. We saw a hare cross our path when we were walking along a wash in near Cottonwood Creek. Joshua Tree National Park is known for its Joshua Tress, but there are none in the South end of the park (where we entered). There are amazing other vegetative types including cacti but I was starting to think it was all a lie and the U2 album cover was carrying on the illusion. However, when you get to a geologic incursion and you start seeing rocks so smooth you want to stroke them (probably not a good idea due to the number of rattlesnakes around) they start appearing and stretch as far as the eye can see. We went to Key View point and could see into Mexico, various water engineering and the LA smog route between mountains. It wasn’t too polluted and therefore hazy but it wasn’t clear by any stretch of the imagination. I know the area is cooler between October and May (and is 10 degrees cooler than the valley where Palm Springs etc are located) but I don’t know why anyone would try to settle there as they did.

Trees

The herb garden at the Getty Villa