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.

Weird AND Scenic: Accretionary Wedge #34

“… a weird and scenic landscape peculiar to itself” was how President Calvin Coolidge described Craters of the Moon when he proclaimed it a National Monument in May of 1924. For my entry in the Accretionary Wedge #34, hosted by the lovely Dana Hunter over at En Tequila Es Verdad, I'd like to talk a little bit about some of the weird things we have here!

In 2000, the original boundaries of the Monument were expanded to overlap with an area of BLM land, and the area is now managed cooperatively by the NPS and the BLM, and is now a National Monument and Preserve instead. I’m working this summer for the BLM, but am stationed at the NPS Monument, to increase knowledge of this cooperative management. *

The name and managing organization may have changed, but the landscape remains, well, weird. And scenic.

Craters of the Moon is comprised of about 60 lava flows covering 54,000 acres, and spanning 13,000 year of time. This is the most recent area of volcanism on the Eastern Snake River Plain; altogether, the sheer mass of lava erupted throughout the ESRP has depressed the crust, resulting in a (mostly) flat valley 100 km wide. The eruptions at Craters of the Moon are the result of a 52 mile long tear where two plates of the Earth’s crust pulled away from each other, much like in Iceland or sub-Saharan Africa. The volcanoes in this picture are cinder cones that formed alongside the Great Rift.

This picture shows a close-up of the same lava pictured above. This is the Blue Dragon flow, named because it’s spiny texture and blue glass coating reminded early explorers of the skin of a blue dragon. The spiny texture is the result of bubbles in the lava being stretched and popped as the flow moved; the origin of the blue glass is still unknown, although it is suspected to either be the result of higher than normal titanium concentrations or a process similar to “glazing” a pot.

This picture illustrates another reason why Craters of the Moon is weird: bimodal volcanism. In the foreground, we have the fluid basaltic lava flows of Craters of the Moon, and, in the background, the 800 meter tall rhyolitic dome of Big Southern Butte (which lies outside the monument.) This butte was formed when very viscous lava flows piled upon one another. (It is also thought to extend about 1000 meters below the surface of the earth, but has isostatically sunk due to it’s weight.)

The compositions of these two lava types are about as disparate as lava types can get: basalt has low concentrations of silica, and rhyolite has high concentrations of silica. It is suspected that, in this location, the two lavas come from roughly the same origin, but proceeded through different paths through the Earth, which resulted in differing compositions. They both are a result of the Yellowstone Hot Spot heating the asthenosphere as the North American plate passed above it. The rhyolitic lava travelled up through the continental crust above, melting it and absorbing the silica. Later, when crustal extension of the basin and range province stretched the area out, the silica-poor crust melted (mainly by decompression), and cracked open, creating the rift zone at Craters of the Moon. Gravity readings under Craters of the Moon suggest that there may be a thick sill of gabbro, that was once part of a reservoir for feeding the basalt flows above the surface.

Another really weird part of Craters of the Moon are the blocks of lava shown in the center of this picture. One of the more recent flows of the North Crater broke apart the crater wall, and rafted chunks of the wall along the top of the flow. These crater wall pieces dot the landscape in an eerie monolithic fashion, like something out of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

And here’s the North Crater itself, with one of the rafted blocks in the foreground. The area where the flow broke out is on the back and right side of the cone seen here. The asymmetrical shape of this cone is due to the cinders accumulating on the downwind side of the vent.

Early emigrants passing through this area by wagon train described this area as “black vomit.” These early emigrants, after travelling across a harsh and demanding area, almost entirely void of water or shelter, were too weary to contemplate appreciate the landscape. Those of us privileged enough to visit in this modern day find it easier to look past the difficult environment to the gorgeous volcanic scenery and awesomely weird geology.

* Normally, I wouldn't say who I work for, however my lawyer-mother recommended I do. Plus, it's pretty stinking obvious. Please don't think anything I say is the official opinion of the BLM or the NPS, and remember that I'm still learning about this area and geology generally. Also, please don't stalk me. If you're in the area, however, please feel free to say hi!

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.

A question for geologists:

Within the next semester or so, I need to decide whether to major in geology or geophysics. After some deliberation, I’ve decided to proceed with my initial impulse to aim for a career in volcanology, with a specific aim of working in monitoring and eruption prediction. I’ve done some reading about various ways to monitor volcanoes, and I’m getting the impression that a degree in geophysics might be a better preparation than a geology degree for this particular specialty.
My concerns about this thought process are as follows:

• I may have no idea what I’m talking about. Perhaps a geology degree would be perfectly fine preparation for volcanology, or perhaps an even better one. Making decisions based on possibly serious misconceptions makes me quite hesitant. (The last time I did that, I ended up two tattoos, several thousand dollars of loan debt, and a personally translated copy of chapter 16 of Homer’s “Odyssey.”)
• I’m not sure I can hack higher-level math and computer-based processing. (The difference is 4 credits of multivariable calculus, 6 credits of computer science, and the 16 geophysics credits themselves.)
• That being said, I’m also concerned about my GPA: perhaps a higher geology GPA would be preferable to a lower geophysics GPA when applying for graduate school.  (And my GPA is already embarrassingly low.)
• That I might be talking myself out of something I need to do, or into something I don’t need to do.

I know that the real decision point is grad school, but I need to make this particular choice within a few months. As part of my neurotic research, I was wondering if the geoblogsphere might be so kind as to advise me on the following questions:

• Is volcano monitoring and eruption prediction best approached from geophysics or geology?
• Which might best prepare me for jobs?
• How painful is multivariable calculus? (Where 1 = “Basket-weaving” and 10 = “Ancient Greek.”)
• What do grad school programs look for in applicants, generally? And GPAs, specifically?
• Am I over-thinking this decision?

In exchange, I offer this song about earthquakes:
I’d like to make a well-informed decision, so I’d appreciate any advice or counsel you can offer!

Back East, Pt I: Baltimore & Atlanta

I recently spent a few weeks visiting relatives back on the East coast. While that’s not really appropriate fodder for this blog, I also saw some fantastic places that I took altogether too many photos of.

2,500 photos too many.I had never been to the East Coast before, and was most impressed with the great architecture, and the sheer quantity of it. Our first stop was Johns Hopkins University, to visit my sister and wait for her to finish classes, and it didn’t disappoint in  architecture either.

My sister took us around to her favorite places on campus, including the building that houses a robot surgeon, and her favorite lecture halls.

After that, we visited the Inner Harbor, where we ate tapas, bought shoes, and touched the Chesapeake Bay/Atlantic Ocean.  We also had some strange wafer-like cookie covered with frosting/fudge/ganache called a Berger. These are a regional specialty, but were a little too sweet for even my sweet tooth.

I also tried octopus, which was basically like gnawing on a giant piece of whale blubber. It was good, as long as you didn’t think about the little crispy suckers.

While in Baltimore, we stayed at the Baltimore Hostel, a charming, quiet hostel in a fancy old row-house. It was close to the harbor, and to some nice restaurants, so it made a good home base.

 

As soon as my sister was done with her classes, we jet-setted off to Atlanta. There, we spent about four days with one of my great-aunts, who is quite ill with Parkinson's. It was stressful being there, but it was really good to visit her, meet a few other family members, and finish up a few school assignments. It would have been nice to stay longer, but we had another aunt to visit before my sister’s break was over.

My great-aunt was quite insistent that we go see Atlanta, so we spent an afternoon in the city. We started out at by visiting the Cyclorama, a circular painting depicting the Battle of Atlanta, which, if lain flat, would cover an entire football field. You sit on a stage inside the painting, and then the stage rotates slowly as a guide points out important facets of the painting. In the lobby of the Cyclorama sits the “Texas",” a steam locomotive involved in “The Great Locomotive Chase” of the Civil War. (The steam engines in this chase typically averaged a whopping 15 mph.)

After that, we really wanted to see an antebellum house, and managed to find one that was still open – the Herndon Home. It turned out that the Herdon Home isn’t just a nice house, but also the home of Atlanta’s first black millionare, Alonzo Herndon. Alonzo Herndon was born into slavery, but became trained as a barber, and eventually opened up his own shop. He then proceeded to become involved in real estate, and then bought what became Atlanta Life Insurance Company. The house was mainly furnished by his first wife, an actress and elocution teacher at Atlanta University, who had great taste in home design. I had honestly just been looking for a pretty house, but the history behind the Herndon Home made it one of my favorite discoveries of our trip.

After that, we headed off to Virginia and Washington D.C., which really warrants a post in of itself!