Some local residents and travelers, who ride through the Willamette Valley, like to know the context of the earth that they are passing over. This blog entry is my offering of "spots" that I enjoy revisiting and reconsidering in my home area of Salem, Oregon. My place is in the middle of the north-to-south Willamette Valley in western Oregon. In this area, people look to the south and west at basalt hills. These hills were hot lava flows at a time well before The Ice Age. The flows cooled and become "rock hard" and then were tilted up, by long-distance earth forces. These jostling forces came from the Pacific oceanic plate rubbing counter-clockwise against North America (Sort of a great "upper cut", but as punches go,....very slow). To the east is the distant skyline of the Cascade Mountain Range. That horizon includes stratovolcanoes that tower another 6000 feet above the mountain forests.
This map shows my geological spots around Salem. The spots include:
- Rock faces that show distinct layering (I explain these on the interactive map)
- Overlooks where you can pull over on secondary paved roads and get a long view
- Places to get maps and sketchbooks
- Local sites like Parks and the State Capitol, where there is a climb up to the dome
- An outdoor store
- My watering hole (for Oregon microbrew)
You can get coffee to go or to stay in, if you want to size up our citizenry. Local or national brew houses are within a few city blocks of the Map store.
At the viewpoints, you can drop the Google Maps little person icon on the roadway and look off into the Cascades, over the Willamette Valley of across the road at some rock faces. I recommend looking at the roadside near Stayton, Oregon.
Here is the link: https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=z8BCD0wMZe7k.kY5JZvCPNx4s
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