Field Geography of Oregon

Steen Mountains, southwest Oregon... aka middle of nowhere with a fantastic view!

The week of September 16-22 I was on a field trip for my first graduate class, Field Geography of Oregon. Basically it involved driving around Oregon (and a very small part of Washington) and seeing local geographic/geological areas of the state. The class was awesome!! It's been a very long time since I got to camp, so that was interesting but I made it work (thanks for that helpful hint Tim Gunn!). Along with meeting many of the incoming geoscience graduate students (and a few other from different disciplines) I also learned a lot about geology (i.e. rocks and furthermore basalt) and the geography of each area (and for those who don't know what geography is, don't worry I'm still confused and I'm majoring in it. A basic definition is the relationship between land/sea and humans... and that's very basic).

Here are a few things I learned:

• You have a 98% chance that if you see a rock/rock formation in Oregon its basalt, a type of magma. 

Can you guess what type of rock this is? And yes it is the a lava flow.

• Oregon used to mainly be ocean but thanks to plate tectonics it is now here and I have a land underneath my feet (although its still slightly damp, but thats due to the rain).
• It get frickin cold at night, actually below freezing, and my sleeping bag was not rated to that temperature... so next time I go camping I should not forget my thermal underwear!!

Sunrise on a volcanic crater... beautiful but freezing cold! To warm up we stated having cold raves with our own rendition of techno music.

• Oregon has really weird road signs, when a sign says ROCKS, what the heck does that mean?? Look at the rocks, falling rocks, rocks in the road, basalt rocks.... I mean come on peoples, descriptions are a good thing! And check out this sign...

• Camping and traveling with 35 other people is difficult... it takes at least 30 minutes for bathroom/gas breaks, although it never helps with the restrooms are out in rural Oregon and consist of only one toilet. Not to mention that we take up a lot of space, see picture below where we took up a parking lot drying out all of our camping gear from the rain and ice.

• I knew very few gleeks in Texas, but I found a lot more on this class field trip (and you can't call majority of them Oregonians). We all bonded over Bohemian Rhapsody and Journey.
• Mount Hood rocks, this is the closest that I have ever been to a glacier and the top of a mountain!

• Only two out of the 34 incoming graduate students had a background in geography, only 4 people were from the West coast, and everyone was nervous about starting there graduate career. 
• Maybe only 10 of the students actually knew what they were going to be researching. And when we meet with last years class they informed us that they didn't know what their thesis project would be but a year later they all had nice concise projects, which gives me some hope...