Geo 1095: January 17, Day 747: A Glorious View

What more is there to say beyond the title? I won't let that stop me, though. We're standing in a more easily weathered and eroded set of sedimentary beds, deposited between two massive Columbia River Basalt flows. Those two flows, in turn, of Grande Rhonde Basalt, originated in what is now northeastern-most Oregon, and flowed all the way across the state, and even continued past this area, to reach the location of the modern Pacific shore. Anyone who says science spoils natural beauty is an idiot. Natural beauty is what drew me to geology, and a major factor in why I continue to pursue it. So now, not only am I awed by nature's glory, I'm amazed by how it happened, too.

Incidentally, if you look at the left upper edge of the leading photo, you see a thin, nearly horizontal notch. If we zoom to full resolution (The crop below is about 2/3 scale; right-click and open in new tab to see full size.), you can see there's a fence in that notch... that's the path from the parking area as it heads into the cove behind the falls. And when I scaled the photo up to make a crop to show the fence, I realized there's a person for scale, just to the right of the falls.

Photo unmodified. August 30, 2012. FlashEarth Location (approximate).