Sunday Roast: Road Trip pics

Some sort of duck in a pond

Fields, farm & hills, Cougar Ridge area, ID

Awesome canoe sculpture, Lewiston, Idaho

View of the rolling hills of the Palouse, from Steptoe Butte, WA

Dried thistles, Steptoe Butte, WA

Basalt formation, Columbia River Gorge, Biggs, OR

Photos by Zooey

So it was a good trip, with beautiful sunny days and cold nights, visits with friends and family, and lower gas prices than Oregon.  It’s the little things that count.  🙂

This is our daily open thread — Did you turn your clock back or forward?

Sunday Roast: Glacial Erratic

Blackberries

Geese!

The trail to the glacial erratic.

Mossy trees.

The erratic!

The view from the erratic.

Another view from the erratic.

Photos by Charles Meier

My eldest and I recently took a trip to the Oregon coast to celebrate his 31st birthday, and we stopped by Erratic Rock State Natural Site, in the Willamette Valley near Sheridan.  I gave him my camera, and found that he’s another member of our little family with a great eye for photos.

A glacial erratic is rock that is different from the type of rock normally found in the area where it has been found, having been carried to its present location by glacial ice.

This particular erratic is a bit different, in that it was carried to this place encased in an iceberg let loose by the Missoula Floods.

The pre-historic Missoula floods began in western Montana fifteen to twenty-thousand years ago. These large floods altered the landscape of the Columbia River valley and flooded the Willamette Valley. Many rocks were transported down the Columbia encased in icebergs and deposited from Montana through Idaho,Washington, and Oregon when the flood waters receded and the ice melted.

The really cool thing about this rock — other than the fact that it’s a friggin’ glacial erratic — is that it comes from Canada, and it’s the only rock of its type outside of Canada.

Geologically, the rock comes from Canada and is the largest glacial erratic rock in the Willamette Valley. The rock is argillite believed to be 600 million years old and originally part of the sea-floor.

This geology geek just went all tingly.  Coolness!!!

This is our daily open thread — Geekify!

The Watering Hole: September 17 — Fun with basalt

Photo by Zach Meier

From the Wiki:

The Columbia River Basalt Group is a large igneous province that lies across parts of the U.S. states of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.

During late Miocene and early Pliocene epochs, one of the largest flood basalts ever to appear on the Earth’s surface engulfed about 163,700 km² (63,000 mile²) of the Pacific Northwest, forming a large igneous province with an estimated volume of 174,300 km³. Eruptions were most vigorous from 17–14 million years ago, when over 99% of the basalt was released. Less extensive eruptions continued from 14–6 million years ago.

Erosion resulting from the Missoula Floods has extensively exposed these lava flows, laying bare many layers of the basalt flows at Wallula Gap, the lower Palouse River, the Columbia River Gorgeand throughout the Channeled Scablands.

I just love our geology.  🙂

This is our daily open thread — rock on!