Geo 365: April 2, Day 92: Into the Setting Sun at Pilot Butte

It seems fitting that the last photo I took on this day is one of Dana walking toward the setting sun. Behind her (we're looking more or less east) are the Maury Mountains. I don't know much about them, but they're north of the Brothers Fault Zone (AKA High Lava Plains: see the last paragraph here for a more complete explanation), and based on other similar areas I've seen, I'd expect to see younger lavas of HLP affinity, overlying a basement of Blue Mountain-related rocks. The latter are a complex assemblage of late Mesozoic to mid Cenezoic accreted terranes, overlain by younger volcanics.

I'll choose a new topic for tomorrow, but as we close out this segment of Geo 365, I'll point out that everything I've posted from February 18, at Abert Rim, through today was a single day's drive- and we weren't pushing all that hard. There are portions of Oregon that have more diversity, perhaps, and depending on what "spectacular" means to you, maybe more of that, too. But there is an awful lot of amazing stuff to see in this lightly visited and largely ignored portion of the state.

Photo unmodified. August 20, 2011. FlashEarth Location.