Catch-up

Here are some of the photos I've mentioned in the past but couldn't upload:

My first view of Mt. St. Helens!

Mt. Hood towers over the landscape.

Mt. Hood through the trees. It's the closest to Vancouver, so I have lots of pictures like this!

Beautiful Weekend... with photos!

It was a gorgeous weekend here in Vancouver. After all the rain we've had lately, 80s and sunny was a welcome treat! My roommates and I decided to take advantage of the nice weather on Saturday and drive down to Larch Mountain (Oregon), where we'd been told we would have a great view of the Cascades. It took about an hour to drive to the little park, which is located in the HUGE Mt. Hood National Forest. After a short stair climb, we arrived at the summit, where we had an amazing 360-degree panorama view! The day was beautiful, and we could see FIVE peaks standing in one spot. Here are a few pictures from the top of Larch Mountain:

Mt. St. Helens: 46 miles away.


Mt. Rainier: 97 miles away!

Mt. Adams: 54 miles.


Mt. Hood: 22 miles.

Mt. Jefferson: 62 miles.

Mt. Hood behind me.

View of the Columbia River.

After eating our lunches on Larch Mountain, we took a drive along the Columbia River Gorge to see all the waterfalls that cascade into the gorge. It's really beautiful!

Kaleb and Jamie consulting the map.

Columbia River Gorge. You can just see Interstate 84 in the bottom right; it runs along the rim of the gorge for most of the length of the state of Oregon!

Jamie and Kaleb at Vista House, a tourist stop that overlooks the gorge.

Latourell Falls and a beautiful day!

Latourell Falls, Oregon.

Multnomah Falls, over 600 feet tall! (Niagara Falls are 167 feet...)

Rainbow in the mist at Multnomah Falls.

It was nice to enjoy a day outside and see the sights this region has to offer. I'm really glad my roommates enjoy the outdoors as much as I do!

First Days

Quick update tonight: The first few days on the job have been pretty slow. Lots of training on the computer (computer safety/security, information protection, etc...) and reading papers. Joe gave me a bunch of journal articles about rootless cones, which is what our project will be on this summer. A rootless cone is a small volcanic cone that is formed when lava flows over wet ground or ice. The water gets heated, and explodes as it is turned to steam, building the cone. The best-studied examples are in Iceland, but there are also lots of investigations of some possible rootless cones on Mars, which is really interesting because that would mean there is (or was) water or ice at the surface! There's still a lot of controversy surrounding the Martian cones, though.

In other news, we were driving home from the store on Monday night, and we got an AWESOME view of Mt. Hood from the street right around the block from our house. It was incredible! So we raced home to grab our cameras, and searched out a good point for taking pictures. Unfortunately, it was getting dark, but I think we still got some pretty good ones. I'll post the (really terrible) copies from my phone for now, but will update with real photos when I can get them off my camera:

I know it's really hard to see, I'm sorry, but here's a view of how Mt. Hood stands out over all of the surrounding landscape. It's so pretty!

A view of Mt. Hood through the trees. It was such a clear night, we had a great view. I just wish we'd found a good spot before it got so dark!

Better pictures to come.