Another Sable Dunes Hike

Yesterday the temperatures began to drop out from Fall to Winter.  During the day it was in the 30s and right now it is a little above 20 degrees.  Not bad, though, considering that at this time last year there was more than three feet of snow on the ground.  Winds today were intense, too.  Despite the wind, Lois and I hiked the dunes for exercise. 

Bright green moss and dune grass...

Pine cones and fall leaves.....

Looking northwest across the dunes...

Looking north from close to Sable Lake...

Lois heading back toward Sable Lake...

Agate Close Ups

I have spent the past day and a half implementing an agatelady/Gitche Gumee Museum webpage update.  I used to update the webpage every month, but now just do it a few times a year.  This is in part because of posting on social media for free, as compared to paying my webmaster to format and install the update, but also because the webpage is so large in content already.  I sent the files late this afternoon, so the new www.agatelady.com update should be posted in the next few days.

Because of all the computer time required to do the update, and due to the cold and rainy weather this past two days -- I have not been able to get out and exercise.  So for today's blog post I will include a few close up photos I took of Brazilian agates using my USB microscope camera.

Sable Lake and New Driveway

Yesterday I was feeling well enough to go on a good hike in the dunes by Sable Lake.  It was very warm for mid-November.  Later this week the bottom is supposed to drop out of our temperature, but this warm fall has been much appreciated!

For a decade I have struggled with my driveway.  Since I would like to start conducting workshops at my house, it is absolutely necessary to repair my driveway.  There is a bed of sandstone that lets out in the middle of my driveway.  Thus, in the spring the snow melt water runs across that sandstone and lets out in the middle of my driveway.  This year, and many years in the past, it is a good thing that I have a Suburban with high clearance and four wheel drive so that I can successfully maneuver the ruts and get up my driveway.  However, it has been difficult for people with regular passenger cars to make it up the severely rutted slope of my 400 foot driveway.  This is what the driveway looked like this past spring.  The mud was an absolute quagmire.  For weeks I had to park at the bottom of the driveway and walk up the mud to my house.

Since spring I have had to deal with the ruts, each and every day.  This picture does not adequately show the rough terrain.

So I decided that I can no longer deal with it.  This year I decided that I have to get it fixed.  The contractor finally came yesterday.

First they leveled the ruts and re-contoured the slope.

To prevent future erosion, they next put down geotextile fabric.

Then the gravel......

As it was getting dark, the contractor arrived with more gravel to finish the bottom section.  Today they are coming back to dig a few drainage channels.  Over the winter I will plan possible retreats and classes that I'll conduct at my house in 2016 so that I can get a return on this investment.

Beach Time

I was feeling a bit better yesterday so I went on a beach hike with friends and their dogs.  We  walked from Agate Beach as far west as the beach allowed, given the erosion that has occurred this past two years.

Looking west.....

Looking east....

Rocks, rocks, and more rocks....

Yet another teepee has been built by beach goers....

More black sand has been exposed....

End of our trek west.  We did not want to get wet.....

We have been seeing big chunks of clay on the beach.  We found the source where clay is being eroded out of the bluff.

Chunks of clay on the beach...

More Photos of Earth from Space

I caught a virus and have not been able to get out hiking this week.  I started feeling a bit better yesterday and feel even better today, so I do plan on going out hiking this afternoon.  So for today's blog post I decided to check in with the NASA website http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/.

Using a high-magnification lens, an astronaut photographed almost the entire 10.5-kilometer long (6.5 mile) Manihiki Island, which lies in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Manihiki is one of the larger islands in the remote Cook Island chain.

From space, Manihiki has the hallmarks of a classic atoll, with its fringing coral reef and a central lagoon. The coral lives in the warm, shallow waters which appear as the light blue zones around the main coastline and the numerous small islets within the lagoon. Most of the main atoll is made of sandy beaches without vegetation; it appears white or cream due to dead coral broken up by waves. Soils develop on the highest parts of these beaches, supporting dense stands of dark green trees. A few clouds cast shadows on the water.

Two small towns—Tauhunu and Tukao—appear as clusters of small bright patches etched into the forest. Aircraft land at the runway in Tukao after flying from New Zealand, which is 3,650 kilometers (2270 miles) to the southwest. Tourism is the main economic activity on the atoll, with diving in the lagoon and fishing in the waters outside it as the major attractions. Manihiki also produces rare black pearls, which are harvested from the local species of oyster.

The Cook Islands are an independent nation, in “free association” with New Zealand. The population is small (15,000 people in 2011) and situated mostly on Manihiki and the 14 other large islands.

An Earth-observing satellite has observed one of the largest landslides not caused by an earthquake that scientists have observed in a decade. The landslide occurred in Chin, a remote state in western Myanmar (Burma), after slow-moving Tropical Storm Komen drenched the area in July 2015.

The Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) core observatory observed rain rates of 150 millimeters (5.9 inches) per hour as Komen moved ashore from the Bay of Bengal on July 30. The intense rainfall triggered destructive flooding and numerous landslides. According to some estimates, more than 17,000 homes were destroyed in Myanmar, 46 people were killed, and hundreds of thousands of people were affected by the storm.

For months after the storm, monsoon clouds prevented satellites from collecting visible light imagery of Chin, however scientists found evidence of three large slides, including an exceptionally large event that moved 395 million tons of material.

On October 23, 2015, clouds cleared enough for a satellite to capture a view of several landslides in Chin, including a massive slide northeast of Tonzang. In the second image above, soil and debris from the landslide appears tan/brown in contrast to the green forests. Streams appear as narrow strips of brown because of mud and sediment washed away by the floods. The first image shows the same area on November 8, 2014.

Hawaii’s Mauna Loa is the largest active volcano on Earth. The shield volcano rises gradually from sea level to 4,169 meters (13,678 feet). The flanks of the mountain extend another 5 kilometers (3 miles) below the surface, and the massive volcano pushes Earth’s crust down another 8 kilometers. Overall, Mauna Loa’s summit stands about 17,000 meters (56,000 feet) above its base. For comparison, Mount Everest stands 8,848 meters (29,029 feet) above sea level.

Though it has been quiet during recent decades, Mauna Loa has a long history of volcanic activity. Geologists estimate that the hotspot that feeds Mauna Loa first started to erupt about one million to 700,000 years ago. After underwater eruptions built up a seamount for hundreds of thousands of years, lava emerged above the Pacific surface about 400,000 years ago.

On average, Mauna Loa has erupted roughly every six years for the past 3,000 years. The most detailed eruption records are available for the past few centuries. Eruptions usually begin in the summit caldera with lava flowing down one of the volcano’s two rift zones: the Northeast Rift Zone and the Southwest Rift Zone. The rift zones are chains of craters and fissures that extend from the summit to the sea.

The Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 acquired this image of Mauna Loa on December 20, 2014. The elongated crater in the center is the summit caldera. Lava flows appear black; as they age, they fade and become gray. Very little vegetation appears on the summit of Mauna Loa because of the frequent lava flows and the high elevation. One of the largest flows in modern times occurred in 1950, when some 376 million cubic meters flowed out from the volcano and spread across 112 square kilometers (43 square miles) of the island.

Mauna Loa last erupted in 1984. In September 2015, volcanologists raised an alert after detecting an increase in the number of shallow earthquakes near the summit and the upper Southwest Rift Zone. However, Mauna Loa is not yet erupting. Rather, magma reservoirs beneath the summit and upper Southwest Rift Zone are filling.

Grand Sable Dunes and More

For yesterday's exercise, Lois and I went down and up the steps at Sable Falls twice and then we hiked into the dunes.

The water level in Sable River is down.  The photos below were taken from the footbridge located just up river from Sable Falls.

We hiked over to the bluff, which is still eroding.

A local resident getting ready for winter....

This past weekend I went to Wisconsin to visit with my son and his family.   We took a few different walks.

Ducks on a local lake....

Colorful....

Interesting vessel on the lake....

This raven was yelling at us...

Grand Marais Beach Changes

Yesterday I went for a walk on the beach with friend, Lois Fite, and her dogs.  We parked at Agate Beach and walked east toward the breakwall.  Simply amazing.  The beach is much different than it was before the last storm.

Just east of the boardwalk, there is a channel that formed from the wave remnants.

As we walked east, we noticed the erosion.

Even next to the breakwall there has been erosion.