Some days, you need goofy musical fun.
Not into the Kirk/Spock myself, but this song always cheers me up.
Category: random
Our 20-or-so-hour road trip from Ithaca to Orlando (not counting stops) took us through several different ecoregions: 11 of them, according to the EPA classification (see map below). We also went through several parts of the Appalachian Mountains, from the northern Plateau, through the Ridge and Valley Provience in PA, along the Blue Ridge Mountains, down the Piedmont, along the eastern Coastal Plain, and finally onto the Great Sandbar (Florida).
The Appalachian range is a venerable, ~480 million year old mountain chain. However, with great age comes great erosion. I like my mountains dramatic, rising abruptly from the plain (or ocean), not so much a series of lumpy big hills. Although living in Florida, I shouldn’t complain. But there was another aspect to the scenery that was less than thrilling to gaze upon for hour upon hour: the trees.
While this is oversimplifying, most of the eastern U.S. used to be covered with hardwood forest. While most of that forest was logged out and used for farmland starting in the 1700s, large portions of it are now reverting to forest because agricultural operations have been moving farther west. This means that secondary forests are springing up, though these patches are broken up by remaining farmland and urbanized areas.
While there are some fairly big differences between the ecoregions we drove through, they mainly fall into one large category: eastern temperate forests. So guess what most of the scenery from New York to Florida involves? Trees. Trees on hills, trees on plains, some farms surrounded by trees, and cities and suburbs with no trees. The occasional stream or river, overhung by …trees. And mostly broadleaf trees: oaks, elms, maples, etc. Lovely species all, but not terribly exciting to look at after about hour number 10.
Most of my distance driving has been done either in the plains, western U.S., or on Hawaii (assuming 2 hours at a time counts for distance…). Granted, the plains are none too thrilling in places (corn or soybeans?). But at least you can see for long distances- none of this broadleaf brushy stuff blocking your view of everything more than 10 feet from the road (I’m talking about you, I-26 through South Carolina). No distant mountains to gauge your progress against, very few dramatic changes in elevation, and always this leafy temperate forest underbrush. We were glad to get back to Florida, where even though half of what you see on I-95 is pines and palmettos, there’s a lot of short-distance variation- saw palmetto, pine flatwoods, prairie, and marsh, all determined by very subtle elevation and moisture differences.
Our drive from Ithaca back to Orlando took a bit more than 20 hours. Driving north, we’d broken it up into two overnights (Charlotte, NC, and Scranton, PA), with a stop in Harper’s Ferry, WV. We decided to take it a bit slower on the way back, stopping just outside Philadelphia (taking the train into town to do some sightseeing), near Reston, VA, and finally just south of Charlotte in South Carolina. That worked out better psychologically, because we drove less and did more fun stuff along the way.
In Philadelphia, we visited the Academy of Natural Sciences, a mecca for diatom studies 🙂 While not the largest natural history museum I’ve visited, it did have some interesting and well-crafted displays. There was clearly a large emphasis on interactivity in the newer displays, though they also have some more traditional dioramas with stuffed megafauna. It was interesting to see three eras in museum philosophy represented in the same building. At the entrance, there was a sort of “curio cabinet” display of a mix of pressed plants, stuffed animals, and fossils presented without context in a series of cubbyholes, typical of early museum displays. Next, more modern dioramas situate stuffed animals in the context of the plants and scenery of the ecosystems in which they are (or were) found. Finally, there were the more (postmodern?) interactive and hands-on exhibits, like a glass globe which could show CO2 emissions, temperature, sea levels, continental drift, etc. over time, depending on what the user selected. I’ve always seen the more interactive exhibits as more part of science museums than natural history museums (the latter usually being attached to active research institutions so less a “learn about electricity” sort of emphasis than a “learn about the ecology of our river”).
(The trilobite and Tiktaalik from the title of this post came from the Academy. Several trilobite fossils were on display, as well as a cast and recreation of Tiktaalik. We also bought a fossil trilobite and Tiktaalik poster at the gift shop. Trilobites are an extinct group of arthropods who lived probably from 550 to 250 million years ago- a very long time span! They looked somewhat like big isopods (do not click on this link if you are afraid of giant bug-like critters), though weren’t closely related. Tiktaalik is an extinct fish from the Devonian period (~375 mya), with many features of early amphibians. It is one of a series of supposedly “missing links” between fish and amphibians that creationists like to pretend don’t exist.)
In Philadelphia, we also went to the Museum of Art. This is a huge museum, and we didn’t really have enough time to see everything because we wanted to get back on the road. The highlights I thought were interesting were several reconstructions of buildings in different rooms: a Japanese Buddhist temple and teahouse, a Chinese manor house entry and Buddhist temple, an Italian cloister courtyard, part of an Indian Hindu temple, and a European chapel. Very different experience being able to walk into a room and be surrounded by the works, rather than just viewing them on the walls. There were also a lot of paintings, many famous (Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, a bunch of Monets, that sort of thing…)
The next day, we stopped at the Udvar-Hazy Center in Dulles, VA, part of the National Air and Space Museum. This is essentially a series of giant Quonset huts full of aerospace artifacts: planes, helicopters, replica satellites, missiles, and… the Enterprise! The space shuttle, not the starship, but still, it was pretty cool (and the Trek of the post title- hey, I did need another “T” word…). After having been to Kennedy Space Center, I was probably less impressed with the various space-related artifacts than I would otherwise have been, but KSC doesn’t have a shuttle in their museum. More sobering were the various missiles on display, as well as the Enola Gay (which is probably the single artifact responsible for the greatest number of human deaths that’s on display pretty much anywhere in the world).
Overall, it was nice to be able to catch a few museums along the way. Philadelphia would be interesting to visit for a longer period- we didn’t get to see any of the really historic areas. We also stopped in Savannah (GA) for lunch on our last day driving, and walked a bit in the historic district- it would be cool to spend a weekend there some time. Though maybe not in the summer…
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Hello world!
So, I’ve decided to finally take the plunge and start a blog. I’m not sure how this will work, but we’ll see!
I plan to use this space to put out some thoughts on science communication, grad school, the environment, and probably the occasional mention of my pet rabbit. For now, I’m just planning to get used to putting stuff out there.
One of the things I hope to do is use this space to help me get my thoughts organized for my upcoming qualifying exams. So, I’ll be summarizing and synthesizing my ideas on the texts I’ll be reading over the next few months. Let’s see how it goes!