Washington to Idaho Road Trip, Featuring Basalt

About two weeks ago, in May, my mother and I set off from her house in Seattle to travel to Idaho. I live (and now work!) in Idaho, but was back home to visit my brother and sister-in-law, who were in town for a spell (and newly expecting a baby!) This trip was held together tenuously from the beginning, and quickly began to disintegrate along the way. Luckily, we got to see some awesome stuff along the way.

Our first stop was Mt. St. Helens, always a favorite stop. I’ve never been here so early in the season, so I’ve never seen it so snowy! This iconic view from the Johnston Ridge Observatory really lets you look into the crater and see the lava domes (here, due to the snow, they look like a vague bump towards the back of the crater.) This spot also gives you a good look at the Pumice Plain, (the low area in the foreground) that consists of debris avalanche hummocks mostly covered in pyroclastic flows and ash fall deposits.

This is a nice outcrop near the Johnston Ridge Observatory, that really clearly demonstrates the layered nature of stratovolcanoes. You can see different lava flows (andesitic and basaltic) alternating with layers of ash and possibly pyroclastic flows (in this instance, I’m not sure which it is, or whether it is a combination of both.) All the different colors are a result of hydrothermal alteration on groundwater that seeps into the deposits, is heated by the still warm deposits, and encounters pockets of gas.

Once we left Portland, the cold my mother had been fighting off finally caught up to her. We stopped in a town called Cascade Locks for the night, slept in late the next morning, and then got some restorative chowder before heading out.

We took a short side trip off I-84 on an Oregon 30 between Mosier, OR and The Dalles, OR. When I was first moving to Idaho, we discovered this scenic jaunt, and it was great to see it again. Partway through, there’s an overlook of the Columbia River and the Columbia River Flood Basalts at a place called Rowena Crest.

The road down from the overlook is this delightful road called the Rowena Loops. It’s quite exciting (especially for one’s passengers!)

Somewhere along the highway near Pendleton, we pulled off the highway to look at this cool cement plant. After this, though, we encountered some pretty intense rain, and ended up staying in La Grande for a night.

Once we got to Boise and picked up my car, we joyfully discovered that it had some sort of gas leak. (This heap – I mean, jeep is beginning to get on my nerves.) We dropped it off at the shop, and drove into the foothills above Boise to camp. Along the way, we stopped at Diversion Dam. It was built in 1909 to supply water to another, older system of canals, to irrigate nearby farmland.

One of the cooler things about it was the logway – a special portion of the dam constructed to allow logs from logging upstream to pass through the dam. (The area upstream is the Boise National Forest)

It was interesting to see how the water from the less constricted logway (on the left) interacted with the water that was forced through the dam. Despite having an initially smaller outlet, the greater force enabled it to travel farther & spread out more before the turbulence achieved equilibrium. (I’m sure there’s a better way to phrase that, but my engineering-oriented physics class didn’t cover fluid dynamics… which is what I personally wanted to study! Someday maybe I’ll get to.)

We passed by several reservoirs, including this one. The differential erosion happening in the basalt here was really fascinating – the lower flow must be much harder, to have resisted so much more than the upper flow.

The road passed through areas of this potassium feldspar rich granite. The best exposures were alongside one of the dams, where the road was quite literally one lane carved into the cliffside, frequented by large trucks hauling boats. Needless to say, we didn’t really stop for picture taking.

When we finally began pitching our tent, we realized that the rainfly was still in Washington – and rain was predicted. My mum had this great idea to make one out of free garbage sacks and little bits of tape – which luckily worked pretty well, though it didn’t rain.

After that, we picked up my car (which luckily only had a leak in the fuel lines!) and checked the weather forecast. Since it was predicted to rain more and my mum was still under the weather, we decided to part company that day, instead of camping through the weekend. She headed west to Washington, and I headed east to my summer job. Much as a few days of mother-daughter camping would have been fun, it was nice to just call it quits and end the stress.

Airplane scenery, Boise–Seattle

After finals, I decided to visit some family and friends in Seattle for a few days, before travelling out to my summer job. There was much hurried packing and rushing and I barely made it to the airport with an hour to spare.

Which was fine, since my plane was grounded for four hours due to mechanical difficulties.

Once we finally made it into the air, we saw some great airplane scenery.

Sad plane.

Looking at the Snake River Plain from a (snakeless) plane. (The Western Snake River Plain is a large graben.)

Mt. Adams, seen from a distance.

Admiring Mt. Rainier while sipping some (free!) white wine made for the perfect flight.

Then we descended into the clouds, which oddly reminded me of the Titanic sinking…

… and arrived atop Seattle! This is I-90 floating bridge that crosses Lake Washington, with some nice drumlin hills in the background. (Lake Washington is a ribbon lake that formed when the Cordilleran ice sheet was sculpting the region, and acted as a drainage point for the ice sheet as it melted.)

We also got a nice view of Boeing field, a small regional airport used primarily for small airlines, private planes, cargo flights, and military landings. (It was originally used as a place for the Boeing Company to move their planes about, and is still used for tests to this day.)

Then we got a nice view of downtown Seattle and the Puget Sound.

And, last but not least, the Space Needle.

Scenic South Idaho

When I tell people that I moved to Idaho, they react in a couple different ways: enthusiasm about the region’s beauty, or badly veiled confusion and disgust.

Sometimes, instead of waxing poetic about rocks and getting eye-rolls, I opt for simplicity and just mention sunsets, big skies, and weird plants.

Accretionary Wedge #32: Carnival of Blogs

Ann at Ann's Musings on Geology & Other Things is hosting March’s Accretionary Wedge, with the special Mardi Gras theme of a parade of favorite geology pictures!

It’s always hard to pick a favorite geology picture, but this wintery Crater Lake panorama tops my list right now. Crater Lake is one of my favorite places, and it was exciting to visit in the winter! The perfect mirroring effect was particularly stunning. In person, the sky and water were the same color, making the caldera look like an arch in the sky.

2010 Travel Meme: The PNW Edition

This travel meme seems to be a geoblogosphere favorite! This year, Silver Fox started it, and has a list of this year’s participants. I’m a little late, but better late than never, eh? In 2010, I visited a mere 4 states – but lived in 3 of them!

In January, I hiked up Mt. Si with my family and some of my mum’s caver friends. It was a little chilly at the top, but what a view! Also, my family took a day trip to the Portland Art Museum (and Voodoo Doughnuts!) At the time, I lived in Olympia, Wa. (The state capital, 2.5 hours from Seattle, and the hipster-little-sister-city to Portland, much to the chagrin of Olympians everywhere.)

In February, I went to visit Oregon Caves National Monument with the Cascade Grotto for a conservation weekend. I picked some lint, but my father and another power-tool devotee removed a large piece of metal from the cave, dangling on rope, wielding reciprocating saws.

In  March, my friend Sarah visited, and we went on a lovely lake hike with her mum near Brown Creek.

Also in March, I visited Discovery Park in Seattle with my school’s geology club. We looked at the glacial deposits there, including the Lawton Clay, Esperance Sand, and the Fraser till. Underneath all the glacial deposits lie the pre-glacial, river-deposited, and highly photogenic Olympia Beds.

In April, I visited Elliot Bay Book Company in their Pioneer Square location, the day before they moved to a new location in Capital Hill. There was a reason – high rent or some hogwash – for the move, but I think the new location is fugly compared to the creaky wood floors and dark, brick-lined basement café. Pfft.

In May, I visited the Columbia River Flood Basalts twice: once on a geology club field trip, where we visited Dry Falls, Grand Coulee dam, and went on a geology hike…

… and once on a Northwest Geological Society field trip, focusing on structural geology. I haven’t studied much structural geology yet, so this basically blew my mind, especially this scenic anticline. Overall, it was a pretty basalt-tastic month.

In June, I had a fun-filled four-finals week, and then packed up my apartment and moved to South Idaho. On the way, I swung by the John Day Fossil Beds in Oregon.

In July, I was busy travelling around Idaho, doing an internship at Craters of the Moon.

In August, I went to north Idaho for a trip through Papoose Cave. We rappelled down a 22’ waterfall, but, unfortunately, the 40’ waterfall had too much water to rappel through. We got to see some great limestone during the short trip, but no formations.

After that, my sister and I took a trip to Yellowstone, where we saw hot springs, microbial mats, and a bunch of animals.

In September, I went to the Northwest Caving Association Regional in Bend, Oregon, and saw even more lava caves (and some long tree roots!) Then I finished up my internship and moved back to my parent’s house in the Seattle/Tacoma suburbs.

In October, I went on the annual bike riding / wine tasting trip in Eastern Washington with my parents and their friends. (I always hope for some hilarious middle-aged drunken hijinks, but they’re all too wise for that nonsense.) Also, my brother graduated from Universal Technical Institute in Phoenix, and we went to see him and his wife. During the plane ride, I got a great aerial view of some nearby volcanoes.

The day after returning from Phoenix, I moved my possessions into my parent’s van, and drove down to Oregon Caves to work on a restoration project.

In November, we visited Crater Lake. We went home to Washington for Thanksgiving, and then returned to the caves for more work.

In December, we travelled back to Washington. Before that massive snows and a power outage made life a little adventurous, but we got to have an active lesson in static and kinetic friction, and how the coefficient of friction of ice is different than that of pavement. Sometimes this was bad…

… but sometimes it was pretty useful.

On our way back, we visited some of the historic covered bridges in Cottage Grove, Oregon.

Before the New Year, we visited Seattle three times. (My mother likens these shipping cranes to Brachiosauruses.) We did a toursity gig – the ballet, Pike Place Market, the waterfront… It was really nice to visit the city a couple times before I move to Boise next week.

Here’s hoping 2011 has some more travel adventures, and that everyone had a happy New Years!

The Upsides and Downsides of Mountains

I’ve lived in Western Washington for a total of twenty-one years, so it’s really easy for me to answer this month’s Accretionary Wedge (#29!) as posed by Ann at Ann's Musings on Geology & Other Things: "What Geological features about the area you call 'home' do you love? and what do you not like?"

Washington can be divided very roughly into thirds: Eastern Washington, home to the Missoula Flood-carved Columbia River Flood Basalts; Western Washington, with thick glacial deposits and steep stratovolcanoes in the Cascade Mountains; and the Olympic Penninsula, which is an accretionary wedge, with the uplifted Olympic Mountains.

My favorite geological features are the volcanoes. These result from the subduction of the Juan de Fuca plate beneath the North American plate:

Cascades Volcano Observatory

Mt. Rainier

Mt. St. Helens

Mt. Adams

 

Now, my least favorite geological features of Western Washington are also the Cascades, because they help cause the massive, constant amounts of rain.

sequimwa.com

The Olympics create a rain shadow, but they aren’t so high that all the moisture condenses and falls: the rest is carried over the Puget Sound. As it does so, it picks up more moisture, which then condenses as it rises over the Cascades, dropping all over Western Washington.

That’s why it rains 365 days out of the year (or at least feels like it!)

Thus, my Theory of Seattle: the rain nourishes the trees and shrubbery, which grows profusely and blocks out the light. Between the rain and the trees, everyone wants to stay indoors – thus, the major IT industry begins. Between the masses of commuters and the nasty dim weather, rush hour runs rampant. Since everyone codes late into the night and has to get up early to beat the traffic, the immense coffee culture is started. Thus, the population has a Vitamin D deficiency, stares at computers constantly, is always struck in traffic, and gets regularly strung out on coffee, resulting in perpetual depression and tweakiness. Thus leading to the reign of 90s grunge music, which also contributes to the high suicide rate.

That’s my theory, at least. And I’m sticking to it.

I’ll be honest: I’ve had my fill of the dreary rain and endless rush hour.

So, I’m going to study Geology at Boise State University next year!