Chris Bolhuis: not a whole lot. it's, uh, the weather's getting nice. I'm riding my tractor a lot. Um, it makes me happy every time. I'm just telling you, sometimes I just try, I go out to the end of my driveway and I'm like, well, I'm not going to walk. I'm going to drive my tractor out to the end of the driveway.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: You just got to, man. Why not?

Chris Bolhuis: You do, I know, I know,

Dr. Jesse Reimink: mean, so

Chris Bolhuis: so

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Bolhuis on his tractor. This is just for the [00:01:00] listener who's not been to Michigan. You'll drive around, if you drive around some of the rural parts of Michigan, you will see the old guys driving their tractor out to get the mail.

Chris Bolhuis: Oh, please, come on now.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: and Chris Bolhuis, you're not there yet, cause you don't look that old, but you're not that far off either,

Chris Bolhuis: know, I'm not, so here's the thing, if you go out to the end of your driveway with your tractor, the mail goes in the bucket. Do you know that? Like that goes in the bucket. You don't put it on your lap. You don't sit on it. It goes in the bucket. And then the, then [00:01:30] the tractor's doing work.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: There's a point to your trip. I have a question for you. How, you have a long driveway, I mean, what is it, a quarter mile, something like that?

Chris Bolhuis: About a quarter mile. Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: So, is that one beer's worth of a drive on your tractor out and back? Or

Chris Bolhuis: Well, it has a cup holder. So one for the hand and one for the cup holder, Jesse. Come on. Do you know me?

Dr. Jesse Reimink: One for the trip out and one for the

Chris Bolhuis: That's right. Well, because, at the end of my driveway is a dirt road. So of course I have to play in the dirt, right? I have to [00:02:00] move some of the gravel around at the end of my driveway. Um, so it's not just out and back.

I got to get the mail. I got to put it in the bucket, but that's after I moved dirt at the end of my driveway, just for the sake of moving dirt.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: so fun. Chris Bolhuis on his tractor. That just gives me great joy thinking about that.

Chris Bolhuis: I tell you though, okay, so we just had the auroras, right? The famous event, like this was amazing. I took unbelievably there. The pictures I have are just spectacular of this. And we [00:02:30] laid in the middle of my driveway. I went out at like 10 o'clock at night, on that Friday looked up.

I'm like, Oh my gosh, I ran up, sprinted inside. Jenny's like, what is going on? I sprinted inside, grab sleeping bags, pillows, and I'm like, come on, let's go. So we went out into the middle of the driveway, laid down and we spent like a couple hours out there anyway. The next night was another possibility, a Saturday night.

So I went out there again with Jenny. We got everything, bathrobes on, sleeping bags on. That's a really good mental image for you, [00:03:00] right? Two old people wearing bathrobes, you know? So

Dr. Jesse Reimink: shuffling out, doing the penguin walk in the sleeping bags

Chris Bolhuis: hell yeah. Did I tell you what happened? I laid there for like an hour, just, it was beautiful.

It was clear, but there wasn't anything really spectacular to see, especially when you compare it to the night before anyway, then. I don't know what happened. I woke up at like 1 30 in the morning. I fell asleep in my driveway. I'm just, I am out. Jenny's gone. And I'm like, I look over to, I'm [00:03:30] like, Oh, I guess I'm all alone.

What time is it? Oh my gosh, it's 1 30. I've been out here for like three hours. So I just then got up and went inside and went to bed. So there's my story. But I fell asleep in my driveway.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: I mean, that's pretty good though. I, you know, no better reason to fall asleep than trying to catch some beautiful northern lights, right?

Chris Bolhuis: That's right. Yep.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: It's better than any other excuse you could have for falling asleep in your driveway, I think. So,

Chris Bolhuis: Right. Otherwise.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: that's a good one. Otherwise, it's just weird.

But if you're, you know, trying to catch some

Chris Bolhuis: It's still a little weird. Like I, yeah, I told my [00:04:00] students about it and I got some funny looks like, Mr. Bolhuis, like, what are you

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Bolhuis, you are such a nerd, dude. You are such a nerd. But,

Chris Bolhuis: I embrace my nerdness and I'm totally, I'm good with it.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: So, speaking of Northern Lights, maybe, this isn't a great segue. Not trying to win the segue award with this one. But, this episode, Chris, is Okay, this is going to be an introduction a little bit, the topic is Iceland, which is a very, very deep topic, and you are probably pretty far down in the rabbit hole of planning your trip to [00:04:30] Iceland, but you're going to Iceland this summer, You'll leave after this episode releases, probably, but you're in the midst of planning it right now, and to be honest, I'm pretty jealous of this, and I think there's a lot of geologists out there who are jealous, if they've not been to Iceland, are jealous of you going to Iceland, because it's just one of those, top couple, top five geotourist places to go to, Iceland is, I think, I mean, is that, is that accurate, would you, think that too, like, most geologists probably want to go to Iceland,

Chris Bolhuis: I think so. If you're a [00:05:00] geologist in Iceland is not on your list, then there's something the matter with you. Um, I, I don't know. I don't know how else to say it. Like what is going on, but, yeah, I always wanted to go to Hawaii. that was always our thing. So Jenny, my beautiful wife and I We're having our 30 year anniversary this summer, so we'll be out in Iceland on our anniversary.

Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you know, Jenny, so it's difficult. And, and so,

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Congratulations to Chris.

get the Survivor Award. [00:05:30] No, I'm kidding, Jenny, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. You, Jenny, Jenny gets the award.

Chris Bolhuis: Jenny does get the award, but anyway, we always thought we would go to Hawaii. And Jesse, when I started digging into Iceland, I don't know, like, why did I not have this as my, number one destination? And it was Hawaii. Like the more I dig into this, can't tell you how excited I am.

I have a hard time sleeping sometimes. Cause I start thinking about this.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: I totally get that. And I think, um, we've talked about this briefly before, but [00:06:00] I'm particularly jealous amongst the geologists because Iceland's a really interesting place. Like it is a very, cool. the landscape is amazing, because of the geology, but the geology at the depth of Iceland is really, really unique on earth.

It's the only place that has this particular geological setting, and it's a really important one, at least in my opinion, for understanding the early Earth. It's a proto continent. Iceland is a, on the way to being a continent. It's born in the ocean, but it's probably not [00:06:30] going to be subducted by the ocean.

It's probably going to end up It's going to be part of the continents someday. And there's some interesting reasons why that is the case. But for me, there's like a big scientific draw to Iceland, let alone the, the landscape and the volcanoes and all this stuff. Right. So there's kind of two parts to this.

Right. And, and I think we'll,

Chris Bolhuis: But, but they're not exclusive though. That's the thing is that these two parts to me, to you and I, you can't separate the formation of Iceland and what it means geologically. You can't separate it from the unbelievably [00:07:00] beautiful scenery. Also, those two things are married together and, it's just, it makes it so much better.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: so Chris, let me just propose way to go through this. Cause I think, like you said, this is going to be, you know, So we're going to do kind of a part one episode here, a bit of an overview, and we'll, we'll go into more detail because there's a lot of detailed geology in Iceland that's really cool and unique.

We're going to stick to the high level stuff. So what do you say we, we kind of go really high level tectonic setting of Iceland? What's unique about it? And then we have a part, a sort of a second part of this episode, [00:07:30] which is kind of you give us current events on your planning. Where are you at in your planning?

how are you thinking about it? How have you started doing your research to go into this? And what have you learned so far maybe? And then we can tidy that up later, either before you go or after you go. how's that sound?

Chris Bolhuis: It sounds great to me. I'm excited to talk about it because I, you know, I think about it pretty much all the time. So, heh

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. I mean, it's so cool. I have colleagues that go there and we, you know, we've analyzed rocks from Iceland our lab here at Penn State. for me, it's, it's cool because it's a totally unique tectonic [00:08:00] setting on earth. It has a mantle plume. and a mid ocean ridge. And so those are two areas that exist in other parts of the world where the mantle's upwelling, but Iceland has both of them.

And for me, Chris, and I'm curious about your response to this, for me, the most interesting surface representation of that is that on Iceland Around about a quarter of the rocks are felsic, which is an incredibly high amount compared to any other place in the oceans. Any ocean island, basalt province, [00:08:30] any hotspot volcanism, any mid ocean ridge, have a couple percent felsic rocks.

This has 15 25 percent in Iceland.

Chris Bolhuis: you get this really big diversity then of the personality of the volcanism that, that, comes out. Right. And

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Can you explain that a little bit? And what do you mean by

Chris Bolhuis: yeah. Well, that's the way I describe it. When I talk about volcanoes is, they have their personalities and we did an episode on, or a couple episodes on the nature of volcanoes and the types [00:09:00] of volcanoes and how they're all like snowflakes. And, and they are the, you can't either hard to put in a box and say, okay. Shield volcanoes, and this is how they are. But Iceland breaks a lot of the rules in this, because like you said, it is a, a mid ocean ridge.

And it's the only place in the world that a mid ocean ridge is, comes out of the ocean. it's so many layered or layer upon layer upon layer that it actually pops out of the ocean. It's the only place in the world where we have this. But that kind of

Dr. Jesse Reimink: hold on, let me interrupt. You mean that the surface is exposed above sea [00:09:30] level, the, the, the rocks are, that's what you mean by pops above the surface. Yeah,

Chris Bolhuis: Yes. Yeah. So, that kind of volcanism mafic you tend to get, basaltic rocks, these black, fine grained igneous, extrusive rocks. But personality is, tends to be very, very For the most part, quiet and gentle eruptions, right? These typical classic Hawaiian type eruptions, but Iceland, you get everything.

Really? You get and acidic eruptions, like what you get in the Andes mountains or the Cascades in the [00:10:00] Northwest part of the U S you know, these, kind of episodic. They can Extremely violent eruptions, but they don't happen very frequently. And then they, you, like you said, you also get these felsic eruptions, which is kind of the nastiest of the nasty, the Yellowstone or the Long Valley caldera kind of, very infrequent, but eruptions.

Right. And, and Iceland has all of that.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, let me interrupt because it, because a lot of European to Eastern U. S. or Eastern North American [00:10:30] flight paths go right over Iceland. And so, Iceland's a massive hazard for air travel. And I think it was 2019 or 20, 2019, right? Or

Chris Bolhuis: well, 2010,

Dr. Jesse Reimink: a big one, but there was a more recent big eruption that disrupted a lot of air travel. Um, I can't remember what year it is now. I should, we should have looked this up, but anyway, these bigger eruptions, the non Hawaiian, more violent personality types, those ones can disrupt air travel because they throw so much ash up into the atmosphere, that planes have to, you know, fly around it [00:11:00] or not travel.

Chris Bolhuis: and then the prevailing winds take the ash over to Europe and it, you know, it does create a lot of havoc. the personality of these volcanoes is determined by what we call in geology, the viscosity of the magma. You know how sticky it is, how thick it is, we can simplify this everybody can understand this.

Black rock means it came from mafic magma tends to be thinner and runnier and, and the thinner and runnier it is, the quieter the eruptions are going to be. It [00:11:30] doesn't have to, build up a lot of pressure. It doesn't tend to get stuck as it traverses the crust to come up and out, and then.

The stickier it gets, the more violent it gets, and that correlates with more felsic kind of magma. It's rich in quartzes and feldspars and it forms light colored rocks. And, When I talk about personality, that's what I'm referring to is the viscosity of the magma.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: let's sort of square those two comments. why is the tectonic setting, which we said is very [00:12:00] unique, the coincidence of a mantle plume and a mid ocean ridge in the same spot, Iceland's unique on earth, it's the only place that has that, and we have this wide variety of rock types and therefore volcano personalities on Iceland, The link between those two is heat.

There is extra heat because we have a mantle plume and a mid ocean ridge. We have more mantle upwelling, it's hotter mantle, it's more melting, more volcanism, more basaltic volcanism, and more heat in that crustal package, so [00:12:30] we've just got a thicker crust there, and that's it. It's not moving away as quickly.

kind of piling up more, I guess, if that makes sense. Which what does it mean? when basalt, when you pile up basalt on top of each other, think of this, your basaltic eruption, basaltic eruption, basaltic eruption, it's piling up, piling up, piling up. That basalt is interacting with water.

It's interacting with glaciers, it's interacting with rainwater, snow, it's getting hydrated. There's minerals that are being formed that have water in them, and then you [00:13:00] bury those. Those things are easier to melt, so if you add heat to that recipe, you can melt basalt. So the point here is extra heat means extra distillation of the crust, and extra distillation means more felsic rocks, which are these more violent personality types, the more violent volcanic rock types.

Or the more violent volcanoes and then the more felsic rock types that come out of those. So, it's really about more melting in Iceland. More volcanism that kind of feeds back into more [00:13:30] distillation. The crustal package there is thicker, and hotter, and therefore gets melted more. And that's why there's more felsic rocks.

Chris Bolhuis: exactly. And I want to, highlight what you said, because I want to make sure everybody understands this. When you talk about the distillation of a mafic basaltic magma pile upon pile upon layer upon layer of this, these eruptions, that extra heat then is going to partially melt. And then partially melt and [00:14:00] partially melt these mafic rocks.

Well, again, this is another throwback to Bowen's reaction series, and we've given this several cracks on previous episodes of, why is this so important? Well, here's a classic example of why Bowen's reaction series is so important because when you partially melt mafic magma.

What part are you melting? You're not melting the whole thing. what part are you melting? And you're melting the lower temperature minerals in Bowen's reaction series. And these happen to be [00:14:30] the quartzes and the feldspars and the muscovites, these lighter colored minerals, and these are what make magma sticky.

So, you know, if you do this again and again and again and again, then you're going to generate magma. That is very different from the rock that it came from. if you melt basalt, you get basaltic magma. But if you partially melt it and then you partially melt it again, and you keep doing this, you keep on [00:15:00] generating a magma that is very, very chemically different.

The rock that's left behind.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: that's a really nice way to phrase it. If you melt basalt, you get basalt. But if you partially melt basalt, you get something intermediate or granite like, because you're distilling it. you're taking out all the goodies that are easy to melt. It's like making maple syrup, or it's like making, you're distilling alcohol.

You distill the goodies out, and what's left behind has less goodies in [00:15:30] it, and the stuff that comes out then, then you get a granitic rock, and so in Iceland, we have what's called a bimodal volcanic series, we have a lot of mafic stuff, and you have a decent amount of felsic stuff, and you have very little in the middle, not much between those two compositions, because you form basalt by melting the mantle, and then you melt the basalt, and you get granite, or dacites or any kind of, you part, right, thank you, thank you, you partially melt the [00:16:00] mantle, you get basalt, you partially melt the basalt, and you get something felsic in composition that produces these more violent types of volcanic eruptions, and the last

Chris Bolhuis: I just go ahead. I just, can I interrupt a second, Jesse? Cause I had a thought, right? Well, you're talking about art. If I partially melt the mantle, I get basalt. know, we did an episode recently on the rocks. You should know. And then we did another episode on some of the rocks that you maybe don't know, but you should.

And then we did a episode on like uncommon rocks, right? But [00:16:30] the mantle is, made of peridotite, it's ultramafic. And so this is a rock.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: yeah,

Chris Bolhuis: is. And then if you partially melt peridotite, that's ultra mafic. Now you generate basalt, which is just mafic. Okay.

and then if you partially melt basalt, you generate an intermediate magma. And the common rock type that's associated with that is, andesite or diorite depends on whether it's intrusive or extrusive. And if you partially [00:17:00] melt that, then you generate. A granitic magma or a felsic magma, the two rock types are rhyolite and granite.

So these are rock types that I think a lot of our audience are probably quite familiar with. I would hope anyway, if you're not, then you should.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Go listen to our episodes. Go, go to, go listen to our episodes, go to the Camp Geo app and, learn about the rock types there. Go to our igneous rocks chapter, learn about that. Chris, will you allow me a little rant about the early earth [00:17:30] quickly? And then I

Chris Bolhuis: Yeah, I actually, I actually do. I want because you, you started too early on and I wanted to just say, let's come back to this because I think it's important. So. Let's talk about Iceland and what you said, I think, is a really powerful statement that this may be a prototype for the formation of continents.

And I think that's a really important and really fun and cool aspect to dive into.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: So. A little bit about Iceland, the sort of the [00:18:00] structure of Iceland. We don't really know what's at depth beneath Iceland, in the crust, but we know the thickness of the crust. So in oceanic crust, if you're not in Iceland, if you're in, anywhere else in oceanic crust, the crust is about seven kilometers thick.

So that's the basaltic layer that sits on top of the mantle. and the mantle lithosphere there. So the crust is seven kilometers thick. In the continental crust, the crust is usually 35 to 70 kilometers thick. So a lot thicker. In Iceland, [00:18:30] the crust is about 25 kilometers thick. So kind of intermediate, right?

Kind of in between those two. And that's really unique to Iceland. There's not many places that have that intermediate thickness of crust. Now, Iceland also has a lot of basalt, 75 percent basalt, but maybe 25 percent granitic or felsic compositions of rocks on the surface at least. And so Iceland is probably, you said a prototype for continental crust, Iceland today is unlikely to subduct.

if Iceland gets [00:19:00] thrown into a subduction zone system, it's going to get glommed on to the edge of the continent. It's not going to go down the subduction zone system because it's too buoyant.

Chris Bolhuis: it's all about density. The introduction of these more felsic rocks, like gr granitic, magma, or, you know, rite is the extrusive version of this. It's, it's too buoyant. it, it can't get dragged down into a subduction zone. And so instead to me, don't know, like an, I'm gonna try an analogy.

We'll see if you like it. If you don't, then you can let me know and I'll stop [00:19:30] using it. But I use it all the time in class is that, you know, if you, if you make fried eggs. let's say you bake some bacon in a frying pan. You get some grease and then take the bacon off and you use that hot grease.

You throw some eggs in it, right? you're gonna caramelize the bottom part of those eggs. You're gonna kind of burn a little bit. You get the eggs out of there, but you got some crud left over in the bottom of the pan. Well, if you take that spatula, That's And you turn it upside down and you just scrape crud off the bottom of the pan.

That's kind of what's going to happen to this is that when this material meets [00:20:00] another plate, it's not going to be dragged down. It's just going to be scraped off and plastered to that other plate that it's, that it's converging with.

I don't know. Good. Is that, is that a good analogy or is that

Dr. Jesse Reimink: I like that. No, that's a, that's a good one. It's going to get scraped off because it's not going to get subducted. It's too buoyant. It's going to get scraped off in its subductions on system. Right. and that is really important.

Especially if you consider, just hypothetically, consider a planet without continents. And if you have a [00:20:30] planet without continents, the question is how do you get a continent to form? How do you kickstart this process? Because it's kind of a difficult thing to potentially do. And the juxtaposition of a mid ocean ridge and a mantle plume, where there's this extra heating, you get this kind of proto continent.

If you have a bunch of little islands forming, then those could run into each other, and nobody's gonna go down in the subduction zone system, and they could kind of grow into an actual continent. If you take these little proto continents, these nuclei, and smash them into each other, [00:21:00] they could eventually become a bigger proto thing that we would consider a continent. so that's why Iceland becomes an interesting analogy for how continents kind of got kick started. How do you kick start continental growth in one model that has been proposed before us, but that my PhD work kind of You know, grabbed onto was this Icelandic analogy like, hey, maybe this is the way you kind of kickstart continental growth is an Iceland like place.

because it's this kind of intermediate, it's in between oceanic crust and continental [00:21:30] crust, which is really rare on the modern earth. And it might be a good way to kind of kickstart this. So, okay, that's my little tangent on the early earth.

Chris Bolhuis: All right, well, I, I love that, but I have a thought you have no idea what I'm going to say right now. Okay. because this just came into my head.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: what you're going to say,

Chris Bolhuis: That's true. That's true. Um, well, let's talk about the subcontinent of India, before it collided with Eurasia and, shallowly was dragged underneath Eurasia and formed the Himalayan mountains.

What, what [00:22:00] formed India?

Dr. Jesse Reimink: uh, the southern tip of India is like really old. It's all Archean, deep crustal stuff that's been tilted up. so India is a piece of a, a fragment of a supercontinent that's kind of been broken apart and it's kind of bopped around a little bit.

I think it's more of a continent. it's an actual honest to goodness continent, whereas Iceland is kind of a new growth. It's a new little proto continent and when that runs into another continent, it's it's not going to create the Himalayas. It's not going to like double the [00:22:30] thickness.

It'll probably get kind of smushed down to the side a little bit in a, in a less dramatic way, maybe. Accreted. Exactly. Much more like a volcanic arc that kind of gets accreted to the side. It's, I mean, still tectonically dramatic, but not as dramatic as the Himalayas probably.

Chris Bolhuis: so, that's super interesting. And thanks for bringing us to that. There there's an example, kind of a, you know, not too far in the past example of one of these enormous. Huge eruptions, cataclysmic eruptions in Iceland. [00:23:00] happened in 1783, actually, this was Laki and it caused a lot of devastation and massive amounts of loss of life.

And this was a big deal. It led to a famine because of all the aerosols that were put in there. the dust and ash and the, blotting out the sun and so on. About 25 percent of the island's population was lost. Can you imagine? Like, that's crazy, Jesse, to think about this, right?

It actually affected global temperatures. spewed sulfur dioxide into the Northern Hemisphere. And this was just a, [00:23:30] this was a big, big deal. they actually didn't know if the island was going to recover, from this event that, and this is really not. too far removed, you know, 1783 into 1784 it was a basaltic kind of thing, but it started as really violent as, that's kind of typical too, because even if it's a basaltic eruption, you have a lot of gas and so it kind of changes nature it diffuses and loses the gas, then it becomes more quiet.

Right. But. It's still put just tons of these toxic gases into the [00:24:00] atmosphere. It's just not a good, not a good thing. So, um,

Dr. Jesse Reimink: mean, it's an interesting thing. We, rarely think of Iceland as Volcanic hazard area, right? I mean, we, we more think of the strato volcanoes, the Italian volcanoes, the Japanese volcanoes, the Cascades, the Andes. We don't necessarily very frequently think of Iceland in this regard, but it is a major player.

so, Chris, what is the, How's the planning going? And what is, I mean, maybe what's surprised you or what's [00:24:30] interesting, at this stage? And keep it high level because we will go into the weeds a bit more, later. But, I don't know, what are, what's the

Chris Bolhuis: I guess, what started it all, Steve Maddox, professor at Grand Valley. He's the guy that I work very closely with. We've had him as a guest on our show, you know? Um, he's yeah, he is a friend of the pod and we, um, he sent me a video link just out of the blue, random. And he said, check this out.

wait till you get home, put it on the big screen and watch it with Jenny. And it was a half hour long [00:25:00] video of a really talented photographer and videographer that was hiking one of the top five backpacking trails in the world. And it's called the Lagerweger trail. And I was blown away. The scenery that he captured in this, and it's not very low.

It's only like a 40 miles, you know? But then I was really, really enthralled at that point after watching this with Jenny and Jenny is, you know, Jenny was all in and I'm like, well, let's, let's look into [00:25:30] this. And so that's how it all started. we decided to add on another 15 miles to it and we're going to, we're going to end up hiking a one way trip from, uh, Landmont Lager.

through the Lagavigure Trail, and we're going to end at Skogar. So, tacking another end onto it, but I can't wait. And it, the planning is interesting.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: What's the geology that you're walking across?

Chris Bolhuis: It's everything, Jesse. It, you go through this diversity of volcanism. It's, you have a lot of basalt, you have rhyolite, you [00:26:00] have, hydrothermal features and glaciers.

all of them are involved. And then the side jaunts, this is why we're not going to fly through this trail. We could do 55 miles in, just a few days, right? If we wanted to, we're not going to do that. We're only going to go maybe seven or eight miles at a, crack because when you camp, then you have all these side ventures that you can go onto and see just.

Unbelievable geology. So we're planning that too, we're going to get up, we're going to hike to here and [00:26:30] then we're going to pitch our tents and, kind of go down to smaller packs and then book it to another place, that's going to be our approach to it.

So the first like eight days we're backpacking in Iceland. Yeah, that's

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Very good. Very good. What's the, what's the most exciting geological feature or the, the thing that's, that you're most excited about? Just one. You have to pick one.

Chris Bolhuis: do I have to pick one? Oh my gosh, I have a flood of stuff going through my head right now. Um, I guess I really want to [00:27:00] see and stand in the Rift Valley. You know, where the, where the Mid Ocean Ridge runs right through Iceland. I'm looking forward to that, but there's so much, you know, like the, I can't wait to see the, all the columnar joints and I can't wait to see the original geyser, the one that all other geysers are named for.

I can't wait for that. And you know what else, Jesse, I can't wait to see the puffins. The puffins in the fjords, I'm really looking forward to

Dr. Jesse Reimink: totally. This is gonna be great. I'm super jealous. [00:27:30] Oh man, that's pretty good.

Chris Bolhuis: I did ask Steve cause Steve goes there a lot. He's taking a class there this summer. He's actually going to be there when I'm there. I said, so have you ever seen the Northern lights in Iceland during the summertime? And he's like, nah, it's, it's kind of weird.

It doesn't really get dark. it'll get kind of somewhat dark for a couple of hours, but the sun is, just below the horizon. So it's still pretty light out. So unfortunately we won't get to see that probably, but

Dr. Jesse Reimink: That's the problem we're gonna, probably [00:28:00] around the same time you'll be in Iceland and I'll be walking around Iceland like rocks in the four billion year old rocks up in Acosta. it's the same problem up there. you know, it's just light too long to see the northern lights really, like it never really gets dark.

So, that's the problem. We're debating whether going early July or late August. in August you can for sure see it, but, not in

Chris Bolhuis: Have you ever been there during non peak season? I mean, peak season being in the, you know, the warmest and best potential for good weather. Like, have you ever been there in a time outside of [00:28:30] that?

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Oh, yeah, um, I've been up there in the wintertime. Well, to Yellowknife in the wintertime. not up, like, outside of civilization, but up in Yellowknife in the wintertime. And it's cold, and the Northern Lights are out every night. Uh, so,

Chris Bolhuis: really? So it's like, okay. All right. That's awesome. are they colorful?

Dr. Jesse Reimink: You know, I've seen the green and yellow combination a lot, but the reds I've only seen once. Like, the green reds I've only seen once, in a really, like, spec the, the sort of stunning, spectacular way, so they're a little bit more rare, but, you know, if you're up there for a week, you'll probably [00:29:00] see them.

Well, okay, Chris. Iceland's very cool. Iceland's very unique. Iceland's a geologist's, dream to go to. It's one of the bucket list places in many geologists minds. And, uh, myself and probably many of our listeners are very jealous of you. So, you know, Take lots of pictures of the cool rocks and cool stuff for us, and we'll have an update here, as we get closer to your trip, or maybe after your trip too, where we get more into the weeds about Icelandic geology, because it is just so cool, and so [00:29:30] unique, and just, geologists, we study stuff that's Kind of outlier we study the ones that are weird and Iceland's one of the weird one It's the only place that looks like Iceland geologically and that's cool, right?

Chris Bolhuis: Yeah, I can't wait. I'm super excited, but I, we've talked about this in another episode too. I love the planning part of it though, I'll tell you though, with this one, it's difficult for me, more difficult than normal, because the challenge for me is when you're. I want to find places that [00:30:00] are of geologic interest and not tourist interest.

I'm not a, I'm not a boardwalk kind of guy. And, you know, so I want to make sure that we get away and see things. That most people probably won't see, so that's challenging though, because when you, when you're looking around online, like we said, you know, finding these field guides and, okay, you have to go here because you're going to see this and it's just not.

very common [00:30:30] to find that stuff online. You do these searches and you come across it where everybody goes to this, it's proven to be a challenge, but it's a fun challenge.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Do the deep dives into the sort of difficult to find literature. So that's, super exciting. Well, Chris, I can speak for a bunch of people. We're very excited for you and can't wait to hear how it goes. So, Hey, that's a wrap for this episode. If you have any questions, send us an email, planetgeocast at gmail.

com. We love getting those. We got a bunch recently, that. You know, we're gonna, we're building episodes on backs of, so stay tuned if [00:31:00] you gave us a question and we haven't responded or gotten back to you in a while, give us a break, we'll get to it eventually, um, if you want to learn more with images, geology is just such a visual science, you can go to our Camp Geo mobile app, it's the first link in the show notes, There we have a whole bunch of free content.

Basically the introduction to college level geology that Chris and I both teach is there along with some other audio books on the Grand Canyon, the Grand Tetons will be up soon and the geology of Yellowstone. So go check that out and [00:31:30] you can follow us on all the social medias at PlanetGeocast.

Chris Bolhuis: Cheers.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Peace.

Jesse Reimink

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