Northfield Mountain Riverboat with Professor Richard Little - September 21, 2019 @goldenoakfarm

Decades back we used to take our son on the educational riverboat trips up and down the Connecticut River. The boat was an old wooden one.

From Northfield Mountain’s FB:

"The Quinnetukut II, Northfield Mountain’s 44 passenger riverboat, has been cruising the Connecticut River for nearly a quarter of a century. The "QII" makes 12-mile round trips through the enchanting French King Gorge, and on to historic Barton Cove — home to nesting bald eagles and the site of a former dinosaur track quarry. An on-board interpreter narrates each cruise, offering information on the culture, habitats, and natural history of this spectacular stretch of river.”

They also used to offer evening cruises with small musical groups playing. We went on a couple of those too.

But then the budget cuts hit, both for us and for the educational program they had.

Our budget has improved, but I’ve not seen signs of them re-instating the old programs. So when I saw they were offering Professor Richard Little on the riverboat, I signed up immediately back in August. But the trip was cancelled and they said they hoped to offer it later in the season.

A couple weeks ago I saw it was offered again and signed up immediately. I also told our Freezer Camp wizard Tom about it and he signed up his whole family.

My husband was very sad to see the Quinnetukut II was no longer doing the rides. The boat was now a modern pontoon boat called Heritage. But the captain told us that the Quinnetukut II was one of 3 identical boats made, and one of its sisters was in Florida, still running. So the Quinnetukut II went to join her and will be still running also. He didn’t say what happened to the 3rd sister boat. This boat came up from Florida 3 years ago.

We got there a little early and boarded for good seats. Tom’s family arrived right on time, and as we watched, 5 of the 7 took off running up the hill away from the boat! The mate came on and told the captain they saw him and took off! (Actually it was a restroom visit.)

The captain was new since we went on the boat years ago.

Professor Richard Little

We first saw Professor Richard Little at a program he offered at a venue at Amherst College over 20 years ago. He had just completed a video of THE FLOW OF TIME: 500 Million Years of Geo-history in the Connecticut River Valley. We got to see the video and hear him speak, and we enthralled. He’s a very interesting and funny speaker. He taught at the local community college for decades and has since retired. He still does lectures, teaches one geology course a year, and does travel trips relating to geology, going all over the world.

He started the trip before we even left the dock, pointing out a lovely striped rock on the riverbank and explaining how it was formed.

Looking on the North America side

We headed down the river and he showed us how the river valley was a huge fault, formed when Pangea the super continent formed. When Pangea broke apart, it did not break on this fault, but instead out past Boston. So the other side of the river is part of North Africa.

Pangea: red star shows our farm and the Connecticut River valley

French King bridge on the Africa side

We continued down the river and went past the French King rock and under the French King bridge. He explained the history of the name; a French soldier rowed out to the rock, was so taken with what he saw around him, he proclaimed the area for his French king. The name stuck, and lots of places in the area have French King as part of their name.

North America side

My husband kept spotting kingfishers fishing all along this side.

Professor Little explained that the east side of the river in this area was bedrock and when the glacier that formed Lake Hitchcock here 16,000 years ago receded, it left glacial moraine. The local rivers, as they entered the stream brought their own debris and built enormous deltas. In this valley, everywhere there’s one of these deltas, an airport has been built on it, because they are so flat and huge.

As the river grew bigger when the glacier continued to melt, it bore down through parts of the deltas to the bedrock. As it went over the lip of the bedrock, it formed plunge pools.

Depth finder

There were 3 of them in the section of river we were traversing. The reading got deeper than this, but I couldn’t get a shot of it. I think it went to 107’ at one of the pools. Two of the pools are submerged, but the 3rd is at the bridge into Turners Falls. (My husband watched the depth finder to see if there were any fish being found, as they also serve as fish finders.)

Embedded armored mud balls

In this section of the Connecticut River there was a phenomenon that only occurred here.

From Professor Little’s website:

“The valley armored mud balls formed when large pieces of hard, dry mud fell into a stream. As they tumbled in the current, they became round as well as soft and sticky enough on the outside to have streambed pebbles imbed into the soft exterior, forming the “armor”. To be preserved, the newly created armored mud balls must be buried quickly in the stream’s sandy gravel sediment. Otherwise, drying will disintegrate the balls. So, in Mesozoic Turners Falls, the conditions along the outer edge of an alluvial fan were just right to form and preserve these unique balls.”

“They were first “officially” discovered by the author in the early 1970s (see Little, 1982 in geology article references).”

Armored mud ball cut in half

He was a great one for geology jokes:

“In honor of their discoverer, some of the armored mud balls bear his name. Armored mud balls less than 6 inches in diameter are known as “Little” armored mud balls : ).”

We reached a section known as Barton’s Cove and started seeing the mute swans that populate that area. Some people were able to see the eagle that nests here, Tom among them.

Mute swans

Going back, on the Africa side, we saw several blue herons.

Africa side with moutonees

On the way back up the river we could see the west side, with the moutonees ahead. These were formed by the glacier as it flowed south.

Just before we reached the dock, we saw the opening where Northfield Mountain Pumped Storage takes water from the river in off hours, and uses it to generate electricity during peak hours.

So the sold out boat was captive for 1½ hours to Professor Little’s bad geology jokes and torrents of information about how this area developed into what we see now. We all had a great time, he gave out lava pieces to the kids (and adults) to take home, along with a cool hand out.

Source:
Riverboat: https://www.facebook.com/pg/northfieldmountain/photos/?tab=album&album_id=224564444242773
Richard Little: http://earthview.rocks/
Pangea: http://capitan-mas-ideas.blogspot.com.br/2012/08/pangea-politica.html Author: Massimo Pietrobon Permission CC-BY-3.0
Plunge pool: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plunge_pool