Adventure Quest

11/20/2025

Did around 9 miles in the rain up the south side in Upper Park last Thursday!

11/13/2025

He was thirty, frail, and dying — his lungs shredded by tuberculosis, his nights broken by coughing fits so violent they left blood on the pillow. Yet one rainy afternoon in 1881, Robert Louis Stevenson sat by a Scottish window, picked up his pen, and began to write about pirates.
Not because he had a deadline. Not because he expected fame.
But because a bored twelve-year-old boy needed a story.
The boy was Lloyd Osbourne, his stepson. Trapped indoors by the endless drizzle, Lloyd had drawn a map of an imaginary island — coves, mountains, and a bold red X in the middle. Stevenson looked at it, smiled through his sickness, and whispered, “That’s where the treasure lies.”
That whisper became Treasure Island.
But the story really began long before the ink touched the page.
Robert Louis Stevenson had been sick since birth — too weak for sports, too delicate for the cold Scottish air. While other children ran through the streets of Edinburgh, he lay in bed, inventing worlds to replace the one he couldn’t explore. “To travel hopefully,” he would later write, “is a better thing than to arrive.”
His father wanted him to be an engineer. His teachers wanted him to be serious. But Stevenson wanted only one thing — to tell stories that lived. He failed at law, disappointed his family, and scandalized polite society by falling in love with F***y Osbourne, an American woman ten years older with two children and a broken marriage. Against every warning, he crossed the Atlantic — coughing blood, half-dead, penniless — just to be with her.
“I travel not to go anywhere,” he once said, “but to go. I travel for travel’s sake.”
By the time he settled in Scotland again, he was a husband, a stepfather, and a man who had nearly died for love. He had no fortune, little fame, and less health. Then came that map — and the spark that lit the rest of his short life.
He wrote feverishly, one chapter a day, reading each aloud to his family at night. Lloyd listened wide-eyed. F***y laughed. Even his stern father, who’d once called writing “a waste of a good mind,” offered ideas for the plot. The sick man’s laughter returned. The cottage filled with adventure — mutiny, hidden gold, stormy seas, and the unforgettable one-legged sailor with a parrot on his shoulder: Long John Silver.
In fifteen days, it was done.
When Treasure Island was finally published in 1883, the world fell under its spell. Children dreamed of sailing ships and buried treasure. Adults marveled at how a dying man had written something so alive. Stevenson, who had spent his life searching for air, had found immortality instead.
Yet even success couldn’t save his body. He moved from Switzerland to California to Samoa, chasing a climate that might let him breathe. In Samoa, the locals called him Tusitala — “the teller of tales.” They adored him. He built a home, wrote every morning, and helped settle village disputes in the afternoons. For the first time, he belonged somewhere.
On December 3, 1894, while helping F***y prepare dinner, he collapsed suddenly. A cerebral hemorrhage ended his life in moments. He was forty-four. The Samoans carried him up Mount Vaea by torchlight and buried him facing the sea. His grave still bears the words he wrote himself:
> “Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.”
And so the boy who could barely breathe taught the world how to dream of open skies.
Every pirate who shouts “Arrr!”
Every treasure map marked with an X.
Every one-legged rogue with a wicked grin.
They all came from that fragile man who refused to stop imagining.
Robert Louis Stevenson didn’t just invent pirates.
He invented the kind of adventure that keeps people alive — even long after they’re gone.

10/28/2025

09/15/2025

Been doing some adventuring lately!

09/09/2025

Ever wonder who collects hats blown into Yellowstone hot springs, repairs damage to bacterial mats or thermal ground, and monitors the health of Yellowstone’s thermal features? Today's introduces you to the Yellowstone Geology Program!

https://www.usgs.gov/observatories/yvo/news/hydrothermal-hats-and-visitor-safety-walking-boots-yellowstone-national-park

When recreating or working in Yellowstone National Park, it’s not uncommon to stumble across a team of National Park Service (NPS) geologists in distinctive red safety vests. These folks are part of Yellowstone’s Geology Program: a specially trained team dedicated to protecting, remediating, and studying Yellowstone’s incredible geology and hydrothermal features. No two weeks are the same for the Geology Program team. Let's walk through some of the responsibilities of this unique NPS working unit!

One of the Geology team’s most important tasks is hydrothermal area cleanup. Yellowstone’s picturesque landscapes are visited by over four million visitors each year. This immense amount of visitor traffic combines with the area’s intense winds to create a near-constant stream of trash and hats that blow into delicate hydrothermal areas. Nearly all of this litter is unintentional, although sunflower seed shells, orange peels, and other food materials discarded by the occasional visitor accumulate as well and are particularly time-consuming for the team to remove.

To reach this debris, which is often literally floating in boiling water, the Geology team uses a collection of tools: some off-the-shelf and others manufactured in-house using little more than creativity and elbow grease. From 2-foot to 12-foot and even 30-foot grabber poles, to fishing rods and extra-long slotted spoons, the team uses (or creates!) any device necessary to remove items safely. The Geology team, who represent a range of earth science backgrounds from geophysics to volcanology to science education and more, are trained to carefully traverse Yellowstone’s dangerous yet delicate hydrothermal areas, preventing damage to fragile bacteria mats and geologic formations while also keeping themselves safe.

Sticks and rocks need to be removed from thermal springs, too! Although these items are “natural,” it’s not a coincidence that hydrothermal features near boardwalks and trails accumulate more rocks and sticks than more remote features. Debris thrown into a hot spring can irreversibly change its behavior, resulting in lower temperature, changes to color, and altered (or halted altogether!) eruption behavior—this is what caused a change in the color of Morning Glory pool, for example.

So far in 2025, the Yellowstone Geology crew has collected more than 13,000 pieces of trash, 4,000 rocks and sticks, and over 300 hats (estimated to be worth upwards of $6,000!) from hydrothermal areas. In doing so, they have covered over 2,100 kilometers (1,300 miles) of trails and boardwalks on foot and have driven more than 18,000 kilometers (11,000 miles) to reach the various thermal areas throughout Yellowstone National Park!

With so much time spent collecting debris, it’s only natural to find some bizarre items. Favorite finds from the team during the summer of 2025 include a Birkenstock sandal, a pizza box with slices still inside, a fake Louis Vuitton bucket hat, a stuffed koala toy, a ball cap with the phrase “I P*E IN THE LAKE,” and a Polaroid picture of Excelsior Geyser—which was found within Excelsior Geyser’s crater!

In addition to hydrothermal trash collection, the Geology team also conducts a lot of science! The staff use water quality instruments and a network of more than 100 temperature sensors to measure chemical composition and the eruptive activity of features across the park—information that is used by the park’s interpretive staff to help predict geyser behavior. Even more monitoring is done in collaboration with the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory (YVO), with Geology team members helping YVO partners install and maintain instruments that measure seismic activity, weather patterns, hydrothermal features, and more.

But that’s not all! The crew also spends time installing hazard signage, remediating footprints and graffiti, supervising maintenance work in hydrothermal areas, assessing geologic damage or hazards in collaboration with law enforcement investigations, and examining scientific records and resources to answer questions from other park departments.

The Geology team educates the public, too! They frequently stop to chat with curious visitors along boardwalks and trails, teach Junior Rangers about hot springs, and explain scientific concepts to tour groups—all important ways to help the public understand more about Yellowstone’s unique landscape.

You can help protect Yellowstone as well! When you visit the park, hold on tight to your hats, stay on marked boardwalks and trails, and make sure all your trash (even the food!) ends up in a trash can.

(Photo: Just some of the hats collected by the Yellowstone National Park Geology Program from sensitive thermal areas throughout the park in 2025. National Park Service photo by Margery Price, September 3, 2025.)

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Yellowstone Caldera Chronicles is a weekly column written by scientists and collaborators of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. This week's contribution is from Margery Price, Physical Science Technician with the Yellowstone National Park Geology Program.

09/08/2025

Starting a new job at the Forebay Aquatic Center, expanding in Adventure Quest in some ways. We went for the Moonlit Paddle last night and I’ll be leading Salmon Tours on the Feather River. The Moonlit Paddle was loads of fun! Highly recommend it! Thanks to April Mangino for going and taking pictures and making this post!

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2622172471469716&id=100010309667116&mibextid=wwXIfr

09/08/2025

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1333312908406638&set=a.1049801296757802&type=3&mibextid=wwXIfr

The ultra-rare Wondiwoi tree kangaroo has reappeared after vanishing for nearly a century.

This elusive animal was last seen by scientists in 1928, when German zoologist Ernst Mayr collected a single specimen from the Wondiwoi Mountains in New Guinea. For the next 90 years, it vanished into legend. Many believed it had gone extinct.

But in 2018, deep in the misty mountains of Papua, British naturalist Michael Smith captured the first-ever photographs of a living Wondiwoi tree kangaroo. With its golden fur, black nose, and long tail, the animal looks almost like a cross between a teddy bear and a wallaby – and it lives high in the rainforest canopy, rarely seen by humans.

Tree kangaroos are unusual marsupials. Unlike their ground-dwelling cousins, they have evolved strong forelimbs and long tails to balance in the treetops. The Wondiwoi species is considered one of the rarest, found only in a remote corner of New Guinea, and its rediscovery is thrilling news for conservationists.

The sighting doesn’t mean the species is safe – logging and habitat loss still threaten its survival. But the fact that this animal has endured for so long, unseen and unknown, gives hope that even in the 21st century, the natural world still holds secrets waiting to be rediscovered.

Learn more
“Elusive Tree Kangaroo Spotted for First Time in 90 Years.” Smithsonian Magazine, 27 Sept. 2018.

09/03/2025

08/20/2025

Adventure Quest has many fascinating and engaging classroom presentations for Nature Education available. Schedule your classroom for a presentation today!

Bats, arachnids, butterflies, adaptations, nature’s creepiest, skulls and skins, and more!

08/18/2025

A slide from our presentation, Amazing Arachnids! One of many classroom presentations available for nature education!

08/10/2025