Joshua Tree National Park
Joshua Tree National Park is located in southeastern California. Declared a U. S. National Park in 1994 when the U. S. Congress passed the California Desert Protection Act and it is named for the Joshua trees native to the park. It covers a area of 790,636 acres —an area slightly larger than the state of Rhode Island. A large part of the park, some 429,690 acres, is a wilderness area. The Little San Bernardino Mountains run through the southwest edge of the park, in 1950, the size of the park was reduced by about 265,000 acres to exclude some mining property. The park was elevated to a National Park on 31 October 1994 by the Desert Protection Act, the higher and cooler Mojave Desert is the special habitat of Yucca brevifolia, the Joshua tree for which the park is named. It occurs in patterns from dense forests to distantly spaced specimens, in addition to Joshua tree forests, the western part of the park includes some of the most interesting geologic displays found in Californias deserts. The dominant geologic features of landscape are hills of bare rock.
These hills are popular amongst rock climbing and scrambling enthusiasts, the flatland between these hills is sparsely forested with Joshua trees. Together with the piles and Skull Rock, the trees make the landscape otherworldly. Temperatures are most comfortable in the spring and fall, with an average high/low of 85 and 50 °F respectively, winter brings cooler days, around 60 °F, and freezing nights. It occasionally snows at higher elevations, summers are hot, over 100 °F during the day and not cooling much below 75 °F until the early hours of the morning. Joshua trees dominate the open spaces of the park, but in among the outcroppings are piñon pine, California juniper, Quercus turbinella, Quercus john-tuckeri. These communities are under stress, however, as the climate was wetter until the 1930s, with the same hot. These cycles were nothing new, but the vegetation did not prosper when wetter cycles returned. The difference may have been human development, cattle grazing took out some of the natural cover and made it less resistant to the changes.
But the bigger problem seems to be invasive species, such as cheatgrass, in drier times, they die back, but do not quickly decompose. This makes wildfires hotter and more destructive, which some of the trees that would have otherwise survived
Hiking
Hiking is the preferred term, in Canada and the United States, for a long, vigorous walk, usually on trails, in the countryside, while the word walking is used for shorter, particularly urban walks. On the other hand, in the United Kingdom, and the Republic of Ireland, the word hiking is often used in the UK, along with rambling and fell walking. The term bushwalking is endemic to Australia, having been adopted by the Sydney Bush Walkers club in 1927, in New Zealand a long, vigorous walk or hike is called tramping. It is an activity with numerous hiking organizations worldwide. In the United States, the Republic of Ireland, a day hike refers to a hike that can be completed in a single day. However, in the United Kingdom, the walking is used, as well as rambling. In Northern England, Including the Lake District and Yorkshire Dales, fellwalking describes hill or mountain walks, hiking sometimes involves bushwhacking and is sometimes referred to as such. This specifically refers to walking through dense forest, undergrowth, or bushes.
In extreme cases of bushwhacking, where the vegetation is so dense that human passage is impeded, the Australian term bushwalking refers to both on and off-trail hiking. Common terms for hiking used by New Zealanders are tramping, walking or bushwalking, trekking is the preferred word used to describe multi-day hiking in the mountainous regions of India, Nepal, North America, South America, Iran and in the highlands of East Africa. Hiking a long-distance trail from end-to-end is referred to as trekking, in North America, multi-day hikes, usually with camping, are referred to as backpacking. The idea of taking a walk in the countryside for pleasure developed in the 18th-century, in earlier times walking generally indicated poverty and was associated with vagrancy. Thomas West, an English priest, popularized the idea of walking for pleasure in his guide to the Lake District of 1778. To this end he included various stations or viewpoints around the lakes, published in 1778 the book was a major success.
Another famous early exponent of walking for pleasure, was the English poet William Wordsworth, in 1790 he embarked on an extended tour of France and Germany, a journey subsequently recorded in his long autobiographical poem The Prelude. His famous poem Tintern Abbey was inspired by a visit to the Wye Valley made during a tour of Wales in 1798 with his sister Dorothy Wordsworth. Wordsworths friend Coleridge was another keen walker and in the autumn of 1799, he and Wordsworth undertook a three weeks tour of the Lake District. John Keats, who belonged to the generation of Romantic poets began, in June 1818, a walking tour of Scotland, Ireland
Kings Canyon National Park
Kings Canyon National Park is a national park in the southern Sierra Nevada, east of Fresno, California. The park was established in 1940 and covers 461,901 acres and it incorporated General Grant National Park, established in 1890 to protect the General Grant Grove of giant sequoias. The park is north of and contiguous with Sequoia National Park and they were designated the UNESCO Sequoia-Kings Canyon Biosphere Reserve in 1976. Humans have inhabited the area for thousands of years, the first Native Americans in the area were Paiute peoples, who moved into the region from their ancestral home east of Mono Lake. The Paiute Nation people used deer and other animals for food. They created trade routes that extended down the slope of the Sierra into the Owens Valley. Kings Canyon had been known to white settlers since the mid-19th century, United States Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes fought to create the Kings Canyon National Park. He hired Ansel Adams to photograph and document this among other parks, the bill combined the General Grant Grove with the backcountry beyond Zumwalt Meadow.
Kings Canyons future was in doubt for nearly fifty years, some wanted to build a dam at the western end of the valley, while others wanted to preserve it as a park. The debate was settled in 1965, when the valley, along with Tehipite Valley, was added to the park, Kings Canyon National Park consists of two sections. The parks Giant Sequoia forests are part of 202,430 acres of old-growth forests shared by Sequoia and this section of the park is mostly mixed conifer forest, and is readily accessible via paved highways. Both the South and Middle Forks of the Kings Rivers have extensive glacial canyons, one portion of the South Fork canyon, known as the Kings Canyon, gives the entire park its name. Kings Canyon, with a depth of 8,200 feet, is one of the deepest canyons in the United States. The canyon was carved by glaciers out of granite, the Kings Canyon, and its developed area, Cedar Grove, is the only portion of the main part of the park that is accessible by motor vehicle. Both the Kings Canyon and its Middle Fork twin, Tehipite Valley, are deeply incised, U-shaped glacial gorges with relatively flat floors and towering granite cliffs thousands of feet high.
In addition, the canyon has several systems, one of which is Boyden Cave. To the east of the canyons are the peaks of the Sierra Crest, which attain an elevation of 14,248 feet NAVD88 at the summit of North Palisade. This is classic high Sierra country, barren ridges and glacially scoured lake-filled basins
Deer
Deer are the ruminant mammals forming the family Cervidae. The two main groups are the Cervinae, including the muntjac, the deer and the chital, and the Capreolinae, including the elk, the Western roe deer. Female reindeer, and male deer of all species, grow, in this they differ from permanently horned antelope, which are in the same order, Artiodactyla. The musk deer of Asia and water chevrotain of tropical African and Asian forests are not usually regarded as true deer and form their own families and Tragulidae, respectively. Deer appear in art from Palaeolithic cave paintings onwards, and they have played a role in mythology and their economic importance includes the use of their meat as venison, their skins as soft, strong buckskin, and their antlers as handles for knives. Deer hunting has been a sport since at least the Middle Ages. Deer live in a variety of biomes, ranging from tundra to the tropical rainforest, while often associated with forests, many deer are ecotone species that live in transitional areas between forests and thickets and prairie and savanna.
The majority of deer species inhabit temperate mixed deciduous forest, mountain mixed coniferous forest, tropical seasonal/dry forest. Clearing open areas within forests to some extent may actually benefit deer populations by exposing the understory and allowing the types of grasses, additionally, access to adjacent croplands may benefit deer. However, adequate forest or brush cover must still be provided for populations to grow, fallow deer have been introduced to South Africa. There are species of deer that are highly specialized, and live almost exclusively in mountains, swamps. Some deer have a distribution in both North America and Eurasia. Examples include the caribou that live in Arctic tundra and taiga and moose that inhabit taiga, huemul deer of South Americas Andes fill the ecological niches of the ibex and wild goat, with the fawns behaving more like goat kids. Mountain slope habitats vary from moist coniferous/mixed forested habitats to dry forests with alpine meadows higher up. The foothills and river valleys between the mountain provide a mosaic of cropland and deciduous parklands.
The rare woodland caribou have the most restricted range living at altitudes in the subalpine meadows. Elk and mule deer both migrate between the alpine meadows and lower coniferous forests and tend to be most common in this region, elk inhabit river valley bottomlands, which they share with White-tailed deer. They live in the aspen parklands north of Calgary and Edmonton, the adjacent Great Plains grassland habitats are left to herds of elk, American bison, and pronghorn antelope
Redwood National and State Parks
The Redwood National and State Parks are old-growth temperate rainforests located in the United States, along the coast of northern California. Comprising Redwood National Park and Californias Del Norte Coast, Jedediah Smith, and Prairie Creek Redwoods State Parks, the combined RNSP contain 139,000 acres. Located entirely within Del Norte and Humboldt Counties, the four parks, protect 45% of all remaining coast redwood old-growth forests and these trees are the tallest and one of the most massive tree species on Earth. In addition to the forests, the parks preserve other indigenous flora, grassland prairie, cultural resources, portions of rivers and other streams. In 1850, old-growth redwood forest covered more than 2,000,000 acres of the California coast, the northern portion of that area, originally inhabited by Native Americans, attracted many lumbermen and others turned gold miners when a minor gold rush brought them to the region. Failing in efforts to strike it rich in gold, these men turned toward harvesting the giant trees for booming development in San Francisco, after many decades of unrestricted clear-cut logging, serious efforts toward conservation began.
Redwood National Park was created in 1968, by which time nearly 90% of the redwood trees had been logged. The ecosystem of the RNSP preserves a number of threatened species such as the tidewater goby, Chinook salmon, northern spotted owl. Modern day native groups such as the Yurok, Karok and Wiyot all have ties to the region. Archaeological study shows they arrived in the area as far back as 3,000 years ago, an 1852 census determined that the Yurok were the most numerous, with 55 villages and an estimated population of 2,500. They used the abundant redwood, which with its grain was easily split into planks, as a building material for boats, houses. For buildings, the planks would be erected side by side in a trench, with the upper portions bound with leather strapping. Redwood boards were used to form a sloping roof. Previous to Jedediah Smith in 1828, no other explorer of European descent is known to have investigated the inland region away from the immediate coast. The discovery of gold along the Trinity River in 1850 led to a secondary rush in California.
This brought miners into the area and many stayed on at the coast after failing to strike it rich and this quickly led to conflicts wherein native peoples were placed under great strain, if not forcibly removed or massacred. By 1895, only one third of the Yurok in one group of villages remained, by 1919, the miners logged redwoods for building, when this minor gold rush ended, some of them turned again to logging, cutting down the giant redwood trees. Representative John E. Raker, of California, became the first politician to introduce legislation for the creation of a national park
Rain
Rain is liquid water in the form of droplets that have condensed from atmospheric water vapor and precipitated—that is, become heavy enough to fall under gravity. Rain is a component of the water cycle and is responsible for depositing most of the fresh water on the Earth. It provides suitable conditions for many types of ecosystems, as well as water for power plants. The major cause of production is moisture moving along three-dimensional zones of temperature and moisture contrasts known as weather fronts. If enough moisture and upward motion is present, precipitation falls from convective clouds such as cumulonimbus which can organize into narrow rainbands. On the leeward side of mountains, desert climates can exist due to the dry air caused by downslope flow which causes heating and drying of the air mass, the movement of the monsoon trough, or intertropical convergence zone, brings rainy seasons to savannah climes. The urban heat island effect leads to increased rainfall, both in amounts and intensity, downwind of cities, global warming is causing changes in the precipitation pattern globally, including wetter conditions across eastern North America and drier conditions in the tropics.
The globally averaged annual precipitation over land is 715 mm, climate classification systems such as the Köppen climate classification system use average annual rainfall to help differentiate between differing climate regimes. Rainfall is measured using rain gauges, rainfall amounts can be estimated by weather radar. Rain is known or suspected on other planets, where it may be composed of methane, sulfuric acid, or even iron rather than water. Air contains water vapor, and the amount of water in a mass of dry air. The amount of moisture in air is commonly reported as relative humidity. How much water vapor a parcel of air can contain before it becomes saturated, warmer air can contain more water vapor than cooler air before becoming saturated. Therefore, one way to saturate a parcel of air is to cool it, the dew point is the temperature to which a parcel must be cooled in order to become saturated. There are four mechanisms for cooling the air to its dew point, adiabatic cooling, conductive cooling, radiational cooling.
Adiabatic cooling occurs when air rises and expands, the air can rise due to convection, large-scale atmospheric motions, or a physical barrier such as a mountain. Conductive cooling occurs when the air comes into contact with a surface, usually by being blown from one surface to another. Radiational cooling occurs due to the emission of infrared radiation, either by the air or by the surface underneath, evaporative cooling occurs when moisture is added to the air through evaporation, which forces the air temperature to cool to its wet-bulb temperature, or until it reaches saturation
George Lucas
George Walton Lucas Jr. is an American filmmaker and entrepreneur. He is best known as the creator of the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises, as well as the founder of Lucasfilm and he was the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Lucasfilm, before selling it to The Walt Disney Company in 2012. Upon graduating from the University of Southern California in 1967, Lucas co-founded American Zoetrope with fellow filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, Lucas wrote and directed THX1138, based on his earlier student short Electronic Labyrinth, THX1138 4EB, which was a critical success but a financial failure. His next work as a writer-director was the film, American Graffiti, inspired by his teen years in early 1960s Modesto, the film was critically and commercially successful, and received five Academy Award nominations including Best Picture. Following the first Star Wars film, Lucas produced and co-wrote the following installments in the trilogy, The Empire Strikes Back, along with Steven Spielberg, Lucas co-created and wrote the Indiana Jones films Raiders of the Lost Ark, Temple of Doom, and The Last Crusade.
Lucas produced and/or wrote a variety of films through Lucasfilm in the 1980s and 1990s, Lucas returned to directing with the Star Wars prequel trilogy, consisting of The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith. He collaborated on the story for the Indiana Jones sequel Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, five of Lucass seven features are among the 100 highest-grossing movies at the North American box office, adjusted for ticket-price inflation. Lucas is one of the American film industrys most financially successful filmmakers, Lucas is considered a significant figure in the New Hollywood era. Lucas was born and raised in Modesto, the son of Dorothy Ellinore Lucas and George Walton Lucas and he is of German, Swiss-German, English and distant Dutch and French descent. Growing up, Lucas had a passion for cars and motor racing, on June 12,1962, while driving his souped-up Autobianchi Bianchina, another driver broadsided him, flipping over his car, nearly killing him, causing him to lose interest in racing as a career.
He attended Modesto Junior College, where he studied anthropology, sociology and he began shooting with an 8 mm camera, including filming car races. At this time and his friend John Plummer became interested in Canyon Cinema, screenings of underground, avant-garde 16 mm filmmakers like Jordan Belson, Stan Brakhage, and Bruce Conner. Lucas and Plummer saw classic European films of the time, including Jean-Luc Godards Breathless, François Truffauts Jules et Jim, thats when George really started exploring, Plummer said. Through his interest in racing, Lucas met renowned cinematographer Haskell Wexler, another race enthusiast. Wexler, to work with Lucas on several occasions, was impressed by Lucas talent, George had a very good eye, and he thought visually, he recalled. Lucas transferred to the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, USC was one of the earliest universities to have a school devoted to motion picture film. During the years at USC, Lucas shared a room with Randal Kleiser.
Along with classmates such as Walter Murch, Hal Barwood, and John Milius and he became good friends with fellow acclaimed student filmmaker and future Indiana Jones collaborator, Steven Spielberg
Cascade Range
The Cascade Range or Cascades is a major mountain range of western North America, extending from southern British Columbia through Washington and Oregon to Northern California. It includes both non-volcanic mountains, such as the North Cascades, and the notable volcanoes known as the High Cascades, the small part of the range in British Columbia is referred to as the Canadian Cascades or, locally, as the Cascade Mountains. The highest peak in the range is Mount Rainier in Washington at 14,411 feet, the Cascades are part of the Pacific Oceans Ring of Fire, the ring of volcanoes and associated mountains around the Pacific Ocean. All of the eruptions in the contiguous United States over the last 200 years have been from Cascade volcanoes, the two most recent were Lassen Peak from 1914 to 1921 and a major eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980. Minor eruptions of Mount St. Helens have occurred since, the Cascade Range is a part of the American Cordillera, a nearly continuous chain of mountain ranges that form the western backbone of North America, Central America, and South America.
The Cascades extend northward from Lassen Peak in northern California to the confluence of the Nicola, the Fraser River separates the Cascades from the Coast Mountains. The highest volcanoes of the Cascades, known as the High Cascades, dominate their surroundings and they often have a visual height of one mile or more. The highest peaks, such as the 14, 411-foot Mount Rainier, Mount Baker in Washington recorded a world-record single-season snowfall in the winter of 1998–99 with 1,140 inches. Prior to that year, Mount Rainier held the record for snow accumulation at Paradise in 1978. It is not uncommon for some places in the Cascades to have over 500 inches of snow accumulation, such as at Lake Helen. Most of the High Cascades are therefore white with snow and ice year-round, annual rainfall is as low as 9 inches on the eastern foothills due to a rain shadow effect. Beyond the eastern foothills is a plateau that was largely created 17 to 14 million years ago by the many flows of the Columbia River Basalt Group.
Together, these sequences of fluid volcanic rock form the 200, 000-square-mile Columbia Plateau in eastern Washington, the Columbia River Gorge is the only major break of the range in the United States. When the Cascades began to rise 7 million years ago in the Pliocene, as the range grew, erosion from the Columbia River was able to keep pace, creating the gorge and major pass seen today. The gorge exposes uplifted and warped layers of basalt from the plateau, in early 1792, British navigator George Vancouver explored Puget Sound and gave English names to the high mountains he saw. Mount Baker was named for Vancouvers third lieutenant, Joseph Baker, although the first European to see it was Manuel Quimper, Mount Rainier was named after Admiral Peter Rainier. Later in 1792, Vancouver had his lieutenant William Robert Broughton explore the lower Columbia River and he named Mount Hood after Lord Samuel Hood, an admiral of the Royal Navy. Mount St. Helens was sighted by Vancouver in May 1792 and it was named for Alleyne FitzHerbert, 1st Baron St Helens, a British diplomat
Lava Beds National Monument
Lava Beds National Monument is located in northeastern California, in Siskiyou and Modoc counties. The Monument lies on the flank of the Medicine Lake Volcano. The region in and around Lava Beds Monument lies at the junction of the Sierra-Klamath, the Monument was established as a United States National Monument on November 21,1925, and includes more than 46,000 acres. Lava Beds National Monument has numerous lava tube caves, with twenty-five having marked entrances and developed trails for public access, the monument offers trails through the high Great Basin xeric shrubland desert landscape and the volcanic field. 1872–1873, this area was the site of the Modoc War, the area of Captain Jacks Stronghold was named in his honor. Volcanic eruptions on the Medicine Lake shield volcano have created a rugged landscape punctuated by these many landforms of volcanism. Cinder cones are formed when magma is under great pressure and it is released in a fountain of lava, blown into the air from a central vent.
The lava cools as it falls, forming cinders that pile up around the vent, when the pressure has been relieved, the rest of the lava flows from the base of the cone. Cinder cones typically only erupt once, the cinder cones of Hippo Butte, Three Sisters, Juniper Butte, and Crescent Butte are all older than the Mammoth and Modoc Crater flows, more than 30, 000–40,000 years old. Eagle Nest Butte and Bearpaw Butte are 114,000 years old, Schonchin Butte cinder cone and the andesitic flow from its base were formed around 62,000 years ago. The flow that formed Valentine Cave erupted 10,850 years ago, an eruption that formed The Castles is younger than the Mammoth Crater flows. Even younger were eruptions from Fleener Chimneys, such as the Devils Homestead flow,10,500 years ago, about 1,110 years ago, plus or minus 60 years, the Callahan flow was produced by an eruption from Cinder Butte. Though Cinder Butte is just outside the boundary of the monument, spatter cones are built out of thicker lava. The lava is thrown out of the vent and builds, layer by layer, Fleener Chimneys and Black Crater are examples of spatter cones.
Roughly ninety percent of the lava in the Lava Beds Monument is basaltic, there are primarily two kinds of basaltic lava flows, pahoehoe and aa. Pahoehoe is smooth, often ropy and is the most common type of lava in Lava Beds, aa is formed when pahoehoe cools and loses some of its gases. Aa is rough and jagged, an excellent example is the Devils Homestead lava flow, most of the rest of the lava in the monument is andesitic. Pumice, a type of lava, is found covering the monument
Pacific Crest Trail
The Pacific Crest Trail is 2,659 mi long and ranges in elevation from just above sea level at the Oregon–Washington border to 13,153 feet at Forester Pass in the Sierra Nevada. The route passes through 25 national forests and 7 national parks and its midpoint is near Chester, where the Sierra and Cascade mountain ranges meet. It was designated a National Scenic Trail in 1968, although it was not officially completed until 1993, the PCT was conceived by Clinton Churchill Clarke in 1932. It received official status under the National Trails System Act of 1968 and it is the westernmost and second longest component of the Triple Crown of Hiking and is part of the 6, 875-mile Great Western Loop. The route is mostly through National Forest and protected wilderness, the trail avoids civilization and covers scenic and pristine mountainous terrain with few roads. A parallel route for bicycles, the Pacific Crest Bicycle Trail is a 2, the PCT and PCBT cross in about 27 places along their routes. The Pacific Crest Trail was first proposed by Clinton C, Clarke, as a trail running from Mexico to Canada along the crest of the mountains in California and Washington.
The original proposal was to link the John Muir Trail, the Tahoe-Yosemite Trail, the Skyline Trail, the Pacific Crest Trail System Conference was formed by Clarke to both plan the trail and to lobby the federal government to protect the trail. The conference was founded by Clarke, the Boy Scouts, the YMCA, from 1935 through 1938, YMCA groups explored the 2000 miles of potential trail and planned a route, which has been closely followed by the modern PCT route. In 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson defined the PCT, the PCT was constructed through cooperation between the federal government and volunteers organized by the Pacific Crest Trail Association. In 1993, the PCT was officially declared finished, thru hiking is a term used in referring to hikers who complete long-distance trails from end to end in a single trip. The Pacific Crest Trail, Appalachian Trail, and Continental Divide Trail were the first three long-distance trails in the U. S, successfully thru-hiking all of these three trails is known as the Triple Crown of Hiking.
Thru-hiking is a commitment, usually taking between four and six months, that requires thorough preparation and dedication. The Pacific Crest Trail Association estimates that it takes most hikers between six and eight months to plan their trip, while most hikers travel from the Southern Terminus at the Mexico–US border northward to Manning Park, British Columbia, some hikers prefer a southbound route. In a normal year, northbound hikes are most practical due to snow. If snowpack in the Sierra Nevada is high in early June and low in the Northern Cascades, however, it is not currently possible to legally enter the United States from Canada by using the Pacific Crest Trail. Hikers have to determine their resupply points, resupply points are towns or post offices where hikers replenish food and other supplies such as cooking fuel. Hikers can ship packages to themselves at the U. S, post Offices along the trail, resupply at general and grocery stores along the trail, or any combination of the two
Volcanic Legacy Scenic Byway
The Volcanic Legacy Scenic Byway is an All-American Road in the U. S. states of California and Oregon. It is roughly 500 miles long and travels through the Cascade Range past numerous volcanoes and it is composed of two separate National Scenic Byways, the Volcanic Legacy Scenic Byway - Oregon and Volcanic Legacy Scenic Byway - California. The latter includes the Lassen Scenic Byway. The byway includes Rim Drive which circumnavigates the lake, the byway passes Mount McLoughlin on the east as it joins Oregon Route 140 to Klamath Falls. From there, the route proceeds southwards on US97, between Bear Valley National Wildlife Refuge and Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge to the California border, just south of the border, a spur route heads east on State Route 161 and south on Route 139 to Tulelake. The monument lies on the northeast flank of the Medicine Lake Volcano, along Hwy 97 just north of Weed is Plutos Cave, a collapsed lava tube that individuals can explore on their own. It briefly joins Interstate 5, passing Black Butte, before heading east on Route 89 in the city of Mount Shasta, besides volcanoes, the byway passes near a number of waterfalls.
The McCloud River Falls are north of Lake McCloud, which south of the highway. McArthur-Burney Falls Memorial State Park is further along Route 89 at Lake Britton, passing by a number of smaller volcanoes, Burney Mountain and Sugarloaf Peak, the byway makes it way south where it circles Lassen Peak. At Route 44, the byway heads southeast to Route 36, there is a bypass along Route 147 and Route 89 around Lake Almanor, rejoining Route 36 in the town of Chester. The byway continues along Routes 36/89 and follows Route 89 after they split through Lassen Volcanic National Park, on the other side of the park, Route 89 joins Route 44 eastward, returning to the starting point of the loop. This loop itself is designated the Lassen Scenic Byway, roads portal Rim Drive Volcanic Legacy Scenic Byway web site Virtual Volcanic Legacy Scenic Byway
Squirrel
Squirrels are members of the family Sciuridae, a family that includes small or medium-size rodents. The squirrel family includes tree squirrels, ground squirrels, marmots, flying squirrels, Squirrels are indigenous to the Americas and Africa, and were introduced by humans to Australia. The earliest known date from the Eocene period and are most closely related to the mountain beaver. That word squirrel, first attested in 1327, comes from the Anglo-Norman esquirel which is from the Old French escurel and this Latin word was borrowed from the Ancient Greek word σκίουρος, which means shadow-tailed, referring to the bushy appendage possessed by many of its members. The native Old English word for the squirrel, ācweorna, survived only into Middle English before being replaced, Squirrels typically have slender bodies with bushy tails and large eyes. In general, their fur is soft and silky, although much thicker in some species than others, the color of squirrels is highly variable between—and often even within—species.
In general, the limbs are longer than the fore limbs. Their paws include a poorly developed thumb, and have soft pads on the undersides. Unlike most mammals, Tree squirrels can descend a tree head-first and they do so by rotating their ankles 180 degrees so the hind paws are backward-pointing and can grip the tree bark. Squirrels live in almost every habitat from tropical rainforest to desert, avoiding only the high polar regions. They are predominantly herbivorous, subsisting on seeds and nuts, but many will eat insects, as their large eyes indicate, in general squirrels have an excellent sense of vision, which is especially important for tree-dwelling species. They have very versatile and sturdy claws for grasping and climbing, many have a good sense of touch, with vibrissae on their heads and limbs. The teeth of sciurids follow the typical rodent pattern, with large gnawing incisors that grow throughout life, the typical dental formula for sciurids is 1.0.1.31.0.1.3. Many juvenile squirrels die in the first year of life, adult squirrels can have a lifespan of 5 to 10 years in the wild.
Some can survive 10 to 20 years in captivity, Squirrels breed once or twice a year and give birth to a varying number of young after three to six weeks, depending on species. The young are naked and blind. In most species of squirrel, only the female looks after the young, in general, ground-dwelling species are social animals, often living in well-developed colonies, but the tree-dwelling species are more solitary. Squirrels cannot digest cellulose, so they must rely on foods rich in protein, during these times, squirrels rely heavily on the buds of trees
