After an intense three days of incredible geology with Lockwood and Aaron, I’m back home. The cat’s alive, everyone’s intact, I have sparkly rocks in buckets… it was a great trip!
I’ll be entertaining you lot with snippets from this extravaganza for months. Rocks! Subduction zones! Moar rocks! Flowers! Rocks! Hydrothermal alteration! ROCKS! Unidentified flying dinosaurs! Did I mention the rocks?
Why, here’s one now.
Lockwood et moi at Erratic Rock State Natural Site. Many thanks to the kind geocaching gentleman who snapped this for us.
This was enormous good fun, and I look forward to many more trips like this with Lockwood, Aaron, and hopefully other northwest geobloggers.
Right now, though, I’m going to go reacquaint myself with my bed and my cat. I’ve sorely missed them both.
Whilst I’m passed out, let me know what you want sneak previews of first: wild pillow basalts, waterfalls, the weirdest cinder cone ever, or the most bizarre fossil plant I’ve ever encountered.
13 comments
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Suzanne
July 10, 2012 at 11:55 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
yay! can’t wait to read about your findings… i want it all — the wild pillow basalts, waterfalls, the weirdest cinder cone ever, and the most bizarre fossil plant
Mike
July 11, 2012 at 12:03 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Fossil plant. Definitly Fossil plant.
rq
July 11, 2012 at 12:04 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Most bizarre fossil plant! And the rest immediately after.
I like how there’s a park for erratics. In case they all ever need to congregate, they’ll know where to go!
Can’t wait for all your discoveries.
Stacy
July 11, 2012 at 1:34 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Welcome back! Fossil plant pleez.
M
July 11, 2012 at 4:49 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Grew up in Bend. Climbed almost all of the peaks in Oregon. My dad helped with the building of the Summit lift on Mt Bachelor and the husband of my high school chemistry teacher designed Sun River for the army. I live in New York now (upstate). What I miss the most is the caves. Lockwood has mentioned a few of the more popular ones, but I would like to see one reopened. When we first moved to Bend there were still people using ice boxes. The ice came from Arnold Ice cave just south of Bend. The cave has frozen to the surface now, but it is one of the best thermodynamic examples of temperature being affected by air flow. Up until it was abandoned, crews would cut at the ice encroaching on the steps to the cave. Now only crazies go in and sometimes they get stuck and don’t come out.
Lockwood
July 12, 2012 at 12:16 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
The Arnold Cave system is pretty amazing, and I suspect there are segments that don’t have openings, and aren’t yet known. But Arnold Ice Cave *is* pretty cool, both literally and figuratively.
Trebuchet
July 11, 2012 at 8:00 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
All of the above, please!
It’s very cool they’ve done a state park for erratics. I’m more accustomed to seeing them rounded, I think. You learn something every day.
F
July 11, 2012 at 12:55 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Cindercone. Hit me!
geocatherder
July 11, 2012 at 4:57 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Pillow basalts. Looove pillow basalts.
Lithified Detritus
July 11, 2012 at 6:22 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Agreed to all of the above.
In my neck of the woods, any rock at the surface is an erratic, rounded from its long journey in the glacier.
One mechanism that comes to mind that would produce such an angular erratic is surface or near surface transport by a valley glacier. This can happen when blocks fall from the valley sides, and are carried along by the glacier.
According to Wikipedia, these erratics were then deposited from icebergs rafted by the Missoula floods, and the rock originated in Canada. Pretty cool!
Lockwood
July 12, 2012 at 12:21 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
The Missoula erratics are often angular because they were rafted in ice, then deposited and melted out as the flood water receded. They have not undergone the kind of water transport that creates the rounded shape we expect.
Lockwood
July 12, 2012 at 12:18 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Mentioned yesterday on Twitter, and realized I should say so here as well, if you enlarge that photo to full size, I look almost as wiped out as I felt that afternoon.
hotshoe
July 12, 2012 at 5:47 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Hey, cool rocks. What I want to know is did you find the geocache ?