I think these flowers might be monkeying around. Then again, flora isn’t my forte – which is why I’m grateful to have you lot. I can traipse around in the wild (or domestic) looking for pretty plants to photograph, and then come back to my experts.
I love you guys.
There aren’t so many flowers in late September, but these were happily blooming along the Iron Goat Trail.
In a few hours, I shall be off to Oregon for one last adventure while summer lingers. I know some of you are experiencing horrible weather, and I’m sorry. I truly am. I’ll be rubbing your nose lightly in the fact that we’re in the 70s and dry as a bone for a few days more. But I’ll make it up to you by bringing you back some really delicious geology. I don’t even know what, yet – Lockwood and I are kind of playing it by ear.
I’m hoping to see my boys and Suzanne while I’m there, but I’m not sure where we’ll be, so it’ll be one of those call-at-the-last-minute-to-see-if-they’re-free sort of things. Here’s hoping! Then it’s back home, and possibly one last day of sweet sunshine before the rain and the cold arrive at last.
I’ve put some time off and the weather to good use. I haz things for ye. I have erratics, and flowers, and birds, and salmon, and even an insect or two. Yes, proper insects, not spiders. Although I’ve got some outstanding spider footage, which you shall have soon. I have some really lovely shots of various and sundry, one of which you may have now:
(For our first official cryptoinsect, arachnophobes may wish to leave the cantina.)
All right, some of you have been clamoring for insects. I am nothing if not (occasionally) obliging. Besides, I developed a brand-new love for insects when I got the camera with the good macro mode. Things I used to dodge with a shudder, I now stalk, crooning things like “whose-a-good-bug-then?” and “you’re-beautiful-yes-you-are” as I shove the lens in their bizarre little faces. I’m happy to report that, despite provocation, nobody has stung, bitten or otherwise maimed me yet.
One of my favorite survivor’s stories of all time is up at Rosetta Stones. Go meet Dave Crockett, watch the video he shot as he struggled to survive on the slopes of Mount St. Helens in the middle of the eruption, and marvel at the fact that both he and his car survived.
There’s a personal story to be told about that car. You see, as I was researching for that piece, I discovered that his car had been recovered and was displayed at 19 Mile House. “Yay!” said I when I discovered that’s where a highly-rated little restaurant called Patty’s Place is. “We can have homemade cobbler, scenery, and Dave Crockett’s car!”
Only Cujo did some sniffing round the intertoobz, and discovered it’s been moved to the Hoffstadt Bluffs Visitor Center. Not a problem. They have cobbler, too. (And, it turns out, the best homemade ranch dressing I’ve ever tasted.)
But they haven’t yet got Dave Crockett’s car displayed. It’s been stashed down by the fuel tanks for the helicopters. The folks at the center didn’t seem to think it would be a problem for us to head down for a look, but the huge signs saying “Don’t even think about it” persuaded us otherwise. We saw a Volvo, but it turned out not to be the Volvo. [Nevermind. Got me cars crossed – shall quest for the Mercury Monarch, and might have a bit more success.] Sigh.
We’ll await the day when they decide where to publicly display Crockett’s car, then make another pilgrimage. It’s worth it for the cobbler alone. Yum! Also, the views from Hoffstadt are outstanding. And you can watch helicopters take off for flights around the volcano.
We did Patty’s Place on the second day, because cobbler, and theirs is also delightful. Also, they have this logging truck parked out front. It obviously was a witness to the eruption:
One of my research projects for this winter is to try to run down that truck’s story.
If you make the trip to Mount St. Helens, I can personally recommend the cherry cobbler from Patty’s Place. Get it to go, warm it in the microwave a bit, scoop some vanilla gelato atop it, and have a foodgasm. I think seeking out strange relics from geologic events at wayside eateries is going to become a new thing with me, because the results are delicious, even when the relic isn’t the one sought.
One of you mentioned the possibility of field trips a while back. I am not averse to this idea, so if any of you want to join me in these excursions, let me know. Bring an appetite.
Those informational signs at various attractions can sometimes be more aptly described as mis-informational. This tends to frustrate the geotraveler: responses may include groans, gripes, and rolling eyes. One severely-annoyed geologist at Summer Lake, Oregon took matters (and a Sharpie) into their own hands, and engaged in a little correcting-their-fieldwork.
Continue reading “Geopuzzle: One of These Three Postulations is Right Out”
So here’s the thing about ocotillo: it’s not nice. Oh, I grant you, it can be lovely to look at, especially when it’s blooming. It’s a wonderful desert plant, and I’m sure it’s ecologically important, and one or two in a xeroscaped yard look very classy and Southwestern indeed. However:
Every spring, the rhodies fill Seattle with bursts of riotous color. But they’re usually gone by early summer, and then they’re just great green blobs again.
I’d not realized some of them lag behind. But as I was taking a turn round the buildings in search of my car recently (which had to be parked somewhere in Timbuktu because of the pavement resealing), I encountered some latebloomers.
After today, I may have no readership. This post contains content that may be offensive to all viewers. There will be the “Oh gawd that song is horrible and now it’s stuck in my head!” crowd. There will be those who found elements of the video unforgivable, especially those with a sense of taste or color coordination. There will be those who roll their eyes and say, “Dana, are you really that far behind on pop culture?” to which I will have to admit, “Yes,” which will then cause those readers to abandon me as hopeless.
So there are huge potential losses, but I’m going to post this anyway. Because, and I hate to admit this, I actually do like the song and think the video’s a scream. And because – but we’ll get to that in a moment.
I’m emerging from my sickbed – well, sickchair – for a moment to request a favor from the computer geeks in the audience. Does anyone know of a simple and preferably free way to set up your television as a dual monitor? I’ve got me HDMI cable, and I’m happily playing content through the PC, but I’d like to have video playing on the teevee whilst still being able to work on the machine. Right now, what I see on the PC screen is what I see on the teevee. This makes working whilst streaming movies difficult.
I’m sure this is simple, but I’m rather muddled at the moment and don’t trust myself not to fuck it up without expert guidance. Thanks in advance!
In other news, I’ve taken this unexpected absence to discover the joys of nasal spray and contemplate the invention of a cuisine based on texture and sensation rather than taste. It’s been very exciting. Wish you were here! You would be greatly amused.
I think I just managed to sort-of smell an English muffin, and I might have detected one out of the forty or so spices in the chili soup, so I’m off for what promises to be a somewhat lively lunch. I’ll be back soon with actual, y’know, content. Just you wait ’til you see what I’ve got for the Sunday Song. You’ll never be the same again…
I’ve acquired strep throat. I could have ended up with the virus that’s going around instead, but no: my immune system got overstressed, and it chose strep. Which is fine with me – easy to survive with antibiotics, as long as you minimize swallowing for the first 24 hours. Bed rest is also lovely, but here’s the thing about the company I work for: you can only get Family and Medical Act leave if you’re out for three days. If you don’t need to be out for three days, you don’t get excused under FMLA. You just rack up the attendance points until you risk getting fired. In the meantime, your chances of promotion or transfer are destroyed, because you’ve ended up on a written warning for the crime of being sick too many times. This is how American companies work. And keep in mind, this is a company with a rather generous attendance policy compared to some.
So you come in sick, sit your highly-contagious self down, and suffer.
