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Our fall Departmental fieldtrip this year was to Washington State. The weather was great, we had a fabulous time, and we learned a lot. The first day of the trip was spent flying to the Northwest, buying groceries, and catching up on lost sleep, so I didn't take any pictures that day.
This is a view of some of the vehicles as we packed them up for the
first day in the field.
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Our first stop was at the Forest Learning Center on the way up to Mt. St.
Helens. From there we had a good look at the S. Toutle river and the way
that the lahars and mud flows had filled up the pre-existing river channel.
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Our next stop was at the Johnston Ridge Observatory. We had several talks
there and a great overlook of the volcano.
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Our final stop for the day was at the Hummocks Trail. More talks and
yet another view of Mt. St. Helens.
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We stopped at the Bonneville dam for a few talks.
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There is a great exposure of pillow basalt at The Dalles.
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The Maryhill stop included a good overlook of the Columbia river, and
the lame fake stonehenge (which we mostly ignored, except Joe who tried
to stem up it).
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The road and train cuts at the Rock Creek stop were great, but other
folks got better pictures here than me.
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Finally we stopped at the Sand Station Recreation Center for a view of
the Wallula Gap and a few talks.
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Here is a view of Rattlesnake Mountain from near it's base.
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And here is a view from the ridgeline looking back along the fold of
Rattlesnake Mountain and the other little hills that make up the
rattles.
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Here's Windy giving her talk (she's not really that tall, she's balancing
on some rocks behind that map).
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We also visited Umtanum Ridge and the Sentinel Bluffs.
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After our stop at Gingko State Park, we stopped at some lava and lake
sediments nearby.
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Our last stop of the day was at Frenchman Springs Coulee where we saw
some spectacular flood basalt exposure and the results of the floods
carving the coulee.
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We stopped at a great overlook of West Bar and its giant current ripples.
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We stopped and listened to a talk during our drive up Moses Coulee.
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Laszlo showed us the rubbly pahoehoe at Armour Draw.
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Dry falls was an excellent example of a flood-carved coulee, and offered
a good view and a nice little visitor's center.
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We visited the rather basic Soap Lake.
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Our last stop of the day was at the Ephrata Fan.
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We decided to take a group picture on the giant boulder. So those of
us with delays on our cameras set them up. Naturally, everyone's
timer was different, and so there are several shots of the photographers
running back to the rock to get in position, but I think that we finally
got some good pictures.
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The ring dike at Amphitheater Crater was very interesting.
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We had a hike through barbed wire (which got Ralph pretty good there) out
to the outcrop at Marengo Siding.
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Our final stop that day was at Hole in the Ground which was
very pretty.
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On the last day we stopped at Hangman Creek to look at the sediments.
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After that we dropped off most of the fieldtrippers at the Spokane airport, left a small expeditionary force to rent their own vehicle for an extended trip, and then Jason, Jani, Peter, and I started driving the vehicles back to the Portland airport. That night we drove to Walla Walla to spend the night with Jason's brother, Xander.
Day 8 on this trip was like the bonus level, only four of us made it. Unfortunately, we just drove, chatted on the CB, and stopped for sugary snacks, so not much in the way of photogenic opportunities.
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