Geo 730: May 11, Day 497: Erratic Orientation III

A final "landmark photo" to help find this out-of-the-way and easy to miss wayside. My camera's flash went off, so the sign is much brighter than it would look in natural lighting. It's readily apparent coming from the east (we're looking west here, from the east), but you can see the road takes a turn to the right just beyond the hedge. If you're coming from the west, you've just made that turn, and the sign is easy to miss. I don't get to this spot very often, maybe four or five times in the 34 years I've been in Oregon, and every single time, I've interpreted this dang sign as saying "it's just around the corner here." It isn't. The sign is at the base of the path up to Erratic Rock, and you can see that path just beyond the post. The parking area starts to the left of the power line and pole on the opposite side of the road, and it's pretty long- I'd imagine there's plenty of room for four or five vehicles, at least, to pull off the road. The garage beyond the power pole is also pretty distinctive, and may be a useful landmark to watch for if you're coming from the west. For GPS users, lat = 45.137574, lon = -123.290817.

Photo unmodified. July 10, 2012. FlashEarth location.

Saturd80's: Synthpop Edition

Depeche Mode, Just Can't Enough:

OMD, Messages:

Berlin, The Metro:

Geo 730: May 10, Day 496: Erratic Orientation II

There's a wide strip on the south side of Oldsville road, where you can get out of the road and park- but it's not very obvious as you sail by at forty miles an hour. The orange sign (which looks brown in this view), at the end of the walkway above, is generally visible as you go by from the east, but it looks as if it's telling you to go around the corner in the road (which is not apparent in this view). It's not: it's pointing up the path. If you're coming from the west, on the other hand, you've just come around that corner, and it's easy to miss the sign. Another landmark to look for is that garage, mostly hidden behind foliage in this view. As I said yesterday, this is an easy spot to miss, so I'm spending a few days showing and describing landmarks to make it easier to find.

Photo unmodified. July 10, 2012. FlashEarth location.

Geo 730: May 9, Day 495: Erratic Orientation I

This may be overkill and belaboring a point, but as I said when I started this series, Erratic Rock Wayside is easy to miss. It's out of the way to begin with, and it's frustrating to realize you've driven by it yet again. So I'm going to spend the next three days pointing out some landmarks that should make it easier to spot visually instead of sailing past it (Though hopefully, with the advent of GPS, it's less of an issue these days). Today, we're pretty high up on the shoulder of the hill, looking roughly south, over Route 18 farther away, and Oldsville Road maybe a hundred yards closer. There is no direct connection from 18 to the wayside; you have to turn off onto Oldsville Road two or three miles to either the east or west, then follow the latter to the parking area at the base of the hill.

Photo unmodified. July 10, 2012. FlashEarth location.

Geo 730: May 8, Day 494: Christmas Trees and Wine

I think we'd started back down the hill from Erratic Rock at this point, and were looking more or less northeast. The trees just past the fence in the foreground are likely part of a Christmas tree plantation- a very common crop in the Willamette Valley, and a major source of Oregon's export income. The hillside in the middle distance looks likely to be another vineyard. Both of these crops owe some of their productivity to the rich silt deposits of the Missoula floods. Finally, in the right distance, the Western Cascade foothills are barely visible through the haze.

Photo unmodified. July 10, 2012. FlashEarth location.

Geo 730: May 7, Day 493: Erratic Rocking Out

A fellow looking for a geocache in the area offered to take a photo of Dana and me standing on the rock. Not only is it nice to have a photo of the two of us, but this is the best of all the pictures I have to give a sense of scale for Erratic Rock.

Photo unmodified. July 10, 2012. FlashEarth location.

Geo 730: May 6, Day 492: Not a Stupid Question

I was once asked by a student if there was any danger that the Missoula Floods might occur again... a reasonable question from the standpoint of a student initially trying to grasp the scale and destructive power of these events. From my perspective though, I had not even considered the possibility, because the floods clearly depended on a set of conditions that no longer exist. So it took me a moment to find an answer, and to frame it in such a way as to not sound dismissive. I responded, "None whatsoever. The floods were caused by the breach of a glacial dam, and that glacier and the ones associated with it no longer exist."

Despite the ease of dismissing the potential hazard, it's not the least bit foolish, as one thinks about the potential devastation if there was a recurrence, to be concerned. Had I been standing (or more likely, on a boat) at this same location, looking in the same direction as above, at the time of the flood that deposited these erratics, there would have been no land in the scene before the ridge on the horizon. Everything else we see in this photo would have been submerged in nearly freezing, turbid, and turbulent water. Much better to raise the question of a possible risk, and finding it easily dismissed, than to ignore a potential risk and discovering too late that it's all too real.

Photo unmodified. July 10, 2012. FlashEarth location.

Geo 730: May 5, Day 491: Erratic Vineyard

Actually, there's nothing erratic about this vineyard at all; it has been here for years. Not as long as the erratic rock behind me in this view, but nevertheless...

Photo unmodified. July 10, 2012. FlashEarth location.

Geo 730: May 4, Day 490: Erratic Erratic

I think at some point, probably late fifties and sixties, this spot was more heavily visited and, if not better known, known with more intense interest. This was likely because the idea of Harlan Bretz, that enormous floods had scoured the Pacific Northwest, had recently been accepted, and seemed so ridiculously outlandish. As such, it seems samples of Erratic Rock were taken as souvenirs. The rock is, frankly, not all that interesting, just a dark, slightly metamorphosed mud/siltstone. Yet the story it tells is gripping. Unfortunately, in taking a souvenir of the story, tourists have diminished the actual storyteller, by roughly 50%, and scattered miscellaneous chunks around the hilltop. Please do not take samples here.

I'm in the midst of a minor crisis- not a big deal, and nothing to worry about  in the grand scheme- and busy dealing with it, so no funnies today.

Photo unmodified. July 10, 2012. FlashEarth location.

Geo 730: May 3, Day 489: Stranded on the Hilltop

Coming around from the east to north side of Erratic Rock Wayside, we're looking into yesterday's "boat prow." On the rock farther back, the line of sight is  from just above the plane of foliation and cleavage, so we're looking almost parallel to, but a little bit down on, that plane. In the closer block, we're looking down onto that same plane. As pointed out by Callan Bently in a comment on yesterday's post, this is almost certainly Belt Supergroup argillite. Also, as in yesterday's post, wine grapes are visible on the right in the mid-distance.

Photo unmodified. July 10, 2012. FlashEarth location.

Geo 730: May 2, Day 488: Argillite Prow

Resembling the prow of a grounded boat, these blocks of argillite were probably once all one larger boulder. Through processes both natural (weathering and frost wedging, for example) and human, they've been split into a number of smaller slabs. This is somewhat metamorphosed, I think; it's more indurated than shale by a long shot, but the foliation and cleavage is not as well developed as I would expect in slate.

In the mid-distance on the left, you can see the wine grapes foreshadowed in Wednesday's post.

Photo unmodified. July 10, 2012. FlashEarth location.

Geo 730: May 1, Day 487: The Accidental Tourist

Though this was not a particularly demanding day, slogging a half mile or more through sand to the Tsunami Dock (See March 28 through April 8 of this series) took its toll, and the moderate climb up the hill- maybe 150 feet of elevation gain- seemed interminable. It was nice to come around the corner and finally spot the goal of that effort. The fence post on the far right is about four feet high, and the wooden post in the middle left maybe two feet; this is a big hunk of rock to travel some 500 miles.

Photo unmodified. July 10, 2012. FlashEarth location.

Geo 730: April 30, Day 486: Wine Sign

This is actually the text below the map in yesterday's photo, and it's particularly appropriate, given the view from the top of the hill. It's also a little misleading. In addition, wine grapes are grown locally on laterites developed from basalts in the area (which includes Columbia River Basalt, and I think also Siletz River Volcanics, though I'm not positive about the second), and in soils developed from Eocene sandstones and siltstones, equivalent to the Tyee Formation. Farther south, west of Roseburg, there are a growing number of vinyards growing in soils developed from the Lookingglass Formation (pre-Tyee sediments derived from erosion in the Klamath Mountains). So it's not incorrect, but neither does it paint a very complete picture. As I said in Monday's post, take these sorts of signs with a grain of salt.

Photo unmodified. July 10, 2012. FlashEarth location.

Geo 730: April 29, Day 485: Sign of a Map

Another one of the interpretive signs at the beginning of the trail up to Erratic Rock, showing the general layout of the great floods that scoured the Pacific Northwest toward the end of the last glacial maximum. Judging from pages 16 and 17 of "Origin, Extent, and Thickness of Quaternary Geologic Units in the Willamette Valley, Oregon" (USGS Professional Paper 1620, PDF), in the Corvallis area the Missoula silts are about 4-5 meters in thickness, but thicken rapidly northward/downstream along the Willamette main stem. This site is well north of my home, but I suspect that up on the hill, where the erratic rests, the thickness is much less than here on the valley floor.

Photo unmodified. July 10, 2012. FlashEarth location.

Geo 730: April 28, Day 484: Signs, Signs, Everywhere a Sign

After leaving Lincoln City, Dana and I came inland on OR Route 18, and headed to Erratic Rock Wayside. The parking and pathway from Oldsville Road are easy to miss- I've driven by at least once each time I've visited the spot, and this time was no exception. Hopefully, with the FlashEarth location and modern deally-boppers such as GPS, along with landmarks and cues I'll point out over the next few days, others will have an easier time with it.

A note about interpretive signs: take them with a grain of salt. I don't know who is responsible for designing them and writing them up. They aren't necessarily wrong- I see no outright errors in the one above. But neither are they authoritative. It's not at all uncommon to find misinformation and mistakes on them. I'm mightily glad I live in a place that cares enough to more-or-less permanently make this information available to the public, but for those who find it interesting, whether the sign is interpreting a natural or historical site, such information should be taken as jumping-off point, a start, and an impetus to find more thorough- and likely more accurate and complete- sources.


Photo unmodified. July 10, 2012. FlashEarth location.

Geo 730: April 27, Day 483: Columnar Fountains

Columnar basalt, being abundant and readily available in Oregon, and due to it's geometry, pleasing and interesting to the human eye, is frequently used in landscaping around here. I think this was a new one to me, though: holes were bored through the center of two of the columns to create a pair of fountains. A third one, naturally fractured with a cup-like joint, has accumulated a small pool. To me, there's something very refreshing about this.

I have no idea why we stopped here; we had just had an excellent lunch in Depoe Bay. My mouth still waters recalling that shrimp melt sandwich, which was both more tasty and more filling than I had hoped. But I suspect we stopped to get drinks. I opened FlashEarth a little while ago, with no expectation I would be able to pinpoint the location. I found several likely suspects, but no good way to nail the correct one down. Then I thought to look over the four photos from this location to look for constraining landmarks. The first thing to jump out at me was "Burger King." Quick Google search for "Burger King Lincoln City Oregon," and bang, there it is.

Photo unmodified. July 10, 2012. FlashEarth location.

Saturd80's: Post-Punk Edition

I have no idea what reminded me of this song, which was a staple of summer '83 (for my room mates and me, at least), but found it quickly. And what a pleasant surprise! What I'd recalled was the clever lyrics. What I hadn't recalled was the catchy tune, and in particular, I don't think I even noticed at the time how tight and accomplished the instruments were. Fun song! Human Sexual Response, Jackie Onassis:

Classic post-punk: Soft Boys, I Wanna Destroy You:

Violent Femmes (I need to do a devoted edition for this group sometime), Gone, Daddy, Gone:

Geo 730: April 26, Day 482: Faulty Pillows?

A final shot of the pillows at Depoe Bay, to the right of yesterday's photo. There's some overlap; a few of the pillows on the left of this picture are easily matched to the same ones in yesterday's. The distinctive aspect of this photo is what appears to be a minor fault running roughly vertically through the middle. This is a spot that's not practical to get at in person. We're looking down at it from maybe 10-15 feet away, so one can't get a good look at the fracture to say for sure it's a fault- you'd want to see clear offset or slickensides, which I can't say for certain that I do. However, there's a pillow right near the bottom that seems to be broken. Still, it's not clear enough to me to say with any real confidence that this is a fault rather than a joint. Either way, it's expression has been enhanced by wave erosion.

Photo unmodified. July 10, 2012. FlashEarth location.

Geo 730: April 25, Day 481: Pile O' Pillows

Looking almost straight down onto the pillow basalt beyond the sea wall (which can be seen along the lower margin of the photo) at Depoe Bay, it looks as if the clastic sedimentary component is, for practical purposes, non-existent at this location. I noted on Wednesday that the sediment seemed to be becoming a smaller portion of the mix, and if you go back over earlier days, you can see that there is an apparent trend, from south to north, for an increasing ratio of basalt to sandstone. This is another instance of a pattern I've noticed from photos, not on the spot, so it really ought to be "ground-truthed." That is, it's an excuse to get back to this town and see if the trend I've noticed from afar is reflected in reality.


Photo unmodified. July 10, 2012. FlashEarth location.

Geo 730: April 24, Day 480: Depoe Sequence

Looking roughly north-northwest from the center of town, across Depoe Bay, we see the Basalt of Depoe Bay, a flow of Columbia River Basalt, in the foreground. Toward the end of the point is another basalt flow, that of Cape Fowlweather- another CRB flow. Between the two is the Sandstone of Whale Cove. It's a simple sequence, but gives rise to a spectacular land and seascape.

Photo unmodified. July 10, 2012. FlashEarth location.