What a Geologist Sees - Part 27 [Original Post Date 2/27/09]

[Updated to 2022.]  Yeah, this is a long one.

100 Things a Geologist Should See or Do For the source of this list, see this link at Geotripper. To see the entire list, visit the link. Printing the entire list is too long, so I will list the things I have done or seen and the things that I consider in the realm of possibility of doing sometime in the future. 

Been there/done that: 

3. See an active geyser... such as those in Yellowstone 

4. Visit the Cretaceous/Tertiary (KT) Boundary. Raton, NM - 2015

6. Explore a limestone cave. Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, Luray Caverns, VA, Raccoon Mt., TN; Cumberland Caverns, TN; Mammoth Cave, KY 

7. Tour an open pit mine,... a copper mine in Santa Rita, NM, a uranium mine in Sierra Peña Blanca, Chihuahua, a Kaolin Mine and a Marble Quarry, Georgia. 

8. Explore a subsurface mine - a coal mine in Mexico, an old WWII-era "tin mine" Franklin Mts., and others. 

13. An exfoliation dome, such as those in the Sierra Nevada - or Stone Mt., GA. 

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. - Had one in my side yard. 

17. Living and fossilized stromatolites (Glacier National Park is a great place to see fossil stromatolites - or the Franklin Mts., El Paso area while Shark Bay in Australia is the place to see living ones) - done 1/2 of that 

19. A caldera - Valles Caldera, Los Alamos, NM, several calderas in West Texas 

18. A field of glacial erratics - Individual Glacial Erratics in Central Park, NYC - 2009

20. A sand dune more than 200 feet high - Sleeping Bear Dunes, Leelenau Peninsula, Michigan 2021

26. A large sinkhole - Silver Springs, FL 

31. The continental divide - Crossed it numerous times

32. Fluorescent and phosphorescent minerals - Collected several Fluorescent Minerals, including a diamond in Arkansas

33. Petrified trees Bisti Badlands, San Juan County, NM (see this post) 

34. Lava tubes Aden Crater, NM 

35. The Grand Canyon. All the way down. And back. 1/2 of this, I have been on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon 4 times. 

36. Meteor Crater, Arizona, also known as the Barringer Crater, to see an impact crater on a scale that is comprehensible - 1978 

51. Shiprock, New Mexico, to see a large volcanic neck - 2015, as well as others in the Navajo Volcanic Field

58. The Carolina Bays, along the Georgia coastal plains 

62. Yosemite Valley - 1974 

63. Landscape Arch (or Delicate Arch) in Utah - camera crapped out on both visits 1977 & 1979, success in 2016 

68. Monument Valley - 2015

76. The giant cross-beds visible at Zion National Park - 2016

80. The Black Canyon of the Gunnison in Colorado - 1977, 1979

83. Find dinosaur footprints in situ - I didn't find them, but I did visit two dinosaur track locales in 2015. 

84. Find a trilobite (or a dinosaur bone or any other fossil) - found plenty of fossils, including dino bones, but haven't found a complete trilobite, yet. 

85. Find gold, however small the flake - numerous times in GA and CA 

88. Experience a sandstorm - Salt Lake City and Phoenix - 1974 and El Paso, 1977 and other times 

90. Witness a total solar eclipse - in Georgia, 2017

95. View a great naked-eye comet, an opportunity which occurs only a few times per century - Don't recall the name
96. See a lunar eclipse - Several times, don't recall exactly when

So, it looks like I have done 33 of these things (or been 33 of these places). That is not to say I haven't seen a countless number of interesting things, but they might not be interesting enough to put on a Top-100 list. 

Might go there/do that someday: 

1. See an erupting volcano - I would like to visit either Iceland or Hawaii 

2. See a glacier 

5. Observe (from a safe distance) a river whose discharge is above bankful stage (I have watched a rather intense flash flood near Hillsboro, New Mexico, I don't know if that would qualify or not) 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. Among the best are Antelope Canyon, Brimstone Canyon, Spooky Gulch and the Round Valley Draw. 

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 (check out The Dynamic Earth - The Story of Plate Tectonics - an excellent website). 

22. A recently formed fault scarp 

23. A megabreccia 

24. An actively accreting river delta 

25. A natural bridge 

27. A glacial outwash plain 

28. A sea stack 

29. A house-sized glacial erratic 

30. An underground lake or river 

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. 

44. Devil's Tower, northeastern Wyoming, to see a classic example of columnar jointing 

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. 

50. The Goosenecks of the San Juan River, Utah, an impressive series of entrenched meanders. 

54. Mount St. Helens, Washington, to see the results of recent explosive volcanism. 

59. The Mima Mounds near Olympia, Washington 

61. The moving rocks of Racetrack Playa in Death Valley 

64. The Burgess Shale in British Columbia 

65. The Channeled Scablands of central Washington 

66. Bryce Canyon 

67. Grand Prismatic Spring at Yellowstone 

69. The San Andreas fault 

75. A catastrophic mass wasting event 

77. The black sand beaches in Hawaii (or the green sand-olivine beaches) 

78. Barton Springs in Texas (will try to do that next time I am in Austin) 

79. Hells Canyon in Idaho 

82. Feel an earthquake with a magnitude greater than 5.0. 

86. Find a meteorite fragment 

87. Experience a volcanic ashfall 

91. Witness a tornado firsthand. (Important rules of this game). (We were in our basement at 1 AM when we got hit by a tornado in 1998, it is probably not the same thing as watching one cross the plains of Oklahoma or Kansas) 

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 - (I was in Wisconsin in the summer of 1982, but I was enjoying the local beer and I forgot to look for the Northern Lights at night).  On the Michigan Upper Peninsula, it was cloudy in 2021. 

97. View a distant galaxy through a large telescope 

98. Experience a hurricane 

99. See noctilucent clouds 

100. See the green flash 

I would add a couple more things: 

101. Go to the Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas and stay there until you find a diamond. I found one my first trip there in 1973. 

102. Stand on the platform of an operating oil drilling rig. I have sort of done this, we visited a couple of drill rigs in SE New Mexico on a Geology field trip in 1982, both were operating rigs, but they had suspended drilling for safety reasons while we were there (or else some maintenance was going on).