Sasquatch!!

Dodging the hail/rain, lying on the grass, sleeping under the stars, listening to 12 bands, and taking pictures is how I spent my Memorial Day weekend. I spent Saturday through Monday at the Gorge Ampitheatre in George, Washington for the Sasquatch Music Festival. If you've never been to the gorge to see a concert, YOU MUST GO once before you die. You feel like you're at the end of the world and about to fall into the gorge. All day as I listened to music, I couldn't help but think how chock full of history the area is. Thankfully, I brought a book or two about geology as I listened to music.

The Columbia River Gorge was carved out by the breaching of a giant ice dam in Clark Fork, Idaho. The ice dam held back glacial Lake Missoula, which spidered its way from Clark Fork, Idaho, down to Missoula, Montana. The water came gushing down from Idaho, across SW Washington, down the Columbia River between Oregon and Washington, then down through the Willamette Valley. The wonderful soil in the WV is due to silt settling from the lake that was formed from Portland on down.

The layers that one sees in the walls of the gorge is from the many, many different basalt flows over millions of years. There were spouts of lava that came up all over eastern Oregon/Washington, and this basalt flowed like a river westward. Different regions have their own flow names. For example, Roza basalt, Picture Gorge basalt, Grand Ronde basalt, and many more. Each basalt has a slightly different composition, and thus different properties and colors. Sometimes it was years and years between two different basalt flows, so vegetation was able to grow on the new basalt. When the next basalt flood would come through, the new vegetation would be trapped, thus making an obvious layering look in the canyon wall.

The weather was nice enough this weekend that I was able to sleep under the stars both nights. It was amazing to see so many more constellations than back here in Portland. I think I was able to see every summer constellation out there, amny of which I haven't seen in a while. My weather band on my car said the temp reached the 50s at night. I was a bit cold the first night, but fine the second. Yea for goosedown! My friends thought I was nuts for sleeping outside the tent. At least this year I wasn't bugbitten on the eyelid!

Well, the whole point of the trip was music, not geology and astronomy. Sunday I sat from 11.30 until 10 listening music…amazing music. I was able to see: Blue Scholars, Nada Surf, The Decemberists, Death Cab, Matisyahu, and a few others. All the bands I liked were amazing. I've seen the Decemberists about 4 times live now…they are so entertaining! I managed to sneak in *two* removeable lens cameras (hehe!) and got some pretty good pictures. I'm not that crazy about sitting close at concerts, so even though I had a telephoto lens, the performers are still sorta small.

All in all, I highly recommend going to Sasquatch, or any concert, at the Gorge Ampitheater. Camp on Vantage road, not in the designated campground. And most of all, read up a bit on the geology of the area. (Vantage used to be a tropical climate before the Cascade Mountains were "born", so there are some nice petrified trees at the Gingko Petrified Forest.)