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There are a number of places in the Olympics where pillow basalt is exposed. Pillow basalt forms when lava erupts under the sea. One place you can see it is along Hurricane Ridge Rd.

Indoor CLYDESDALE?!?! 😂

Indoor horse… TIL…

Thank you! I have recently been looking for geology stuff on yt.

It may be ok because Friday is Veterans day so no school and many off of work hopefully not as bad of traffic. The worst traffic is through Tacoma and near JBLM.

My years of taking NW Geology courses are finally gonna pay off!!!!

So Washington is geologically speaking actually many different "islands" pushed together. The coastline when dinosaurs walked the earth was actually in Montana. Over time as the pacific plate was subducted under the N American plate it also brought along Islands. Those Islands couldn't be subducted and instead become part of the N American plate. The subduction zone moved west and repeated this until you get the coastline we have now. Now, the flood basalt happened by huge fissures opening up on the East side of the Cascades about 17 million years ago. Now, by then the Cascades were formed so the basalt couldn't reach Western Washington except through the Columbia River Valley. So to answer your question most of Western Washington is silica based while eastern Washington is basalt, except in the Columbia River Valley and one other weird little outlier.

This outlier is a series of tunnels near Mt St Helen's where there was a period of basaltic flow about 2000 years ago. This 300 year period is the only time Mt St Helen's or any Cascade volcano history thay flowed basalt as opposed to the thicker more explosive silica. Geologists have absolutely no idea why or how this happened. You can visit the tubes know as the Ape Caves now. I highly recommend it as a spring/summer activity as the road up to it is closed in the winter.

Sorry for the Geology lesson.... I have had this information stored in my brain vault and saw my chance to finally use it. Hahaha

Lot of great dudes in that unit

I know I've run across pillow basalts in the Olympics.

There’s columnar basalt up Reecer creek road north of Thorp

If there are others like me who are discovering an interest in geology (in my case well after my school years), Nick Zentner has a few different series on YouTube.

The I-90 Rocks series he did and posted under the hugefloods name was a great entry point for me. Highly recommend for some easy to consume videos about familiar areas.

If you like them, he goes deeper on other channels.

Thank you. I was using a nightmare jig under a bobber.

Hahahahaha

There is a beautiful section of columnar andesite up at Mt. Baker on the road to Artist Point. Can also be found around Rainier. So if you're just looking for volcanic rocks and not specifically basalt, you're in luck. There are also some great pillow basalts near deception pass and in the Olympics.

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There are basalt columns up at Heather Meadows near Mount Baker.

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There is some columnar basalt at Narada Falls in Mount Rainier National Park, if I remember correctly.

Its 3 hours from Kent. Olympia hiway 101 and I-5, and south of Tacoma are sticking points for traffic bottle necks. Between Centralia and Chehalis it can be slow. Remember, a lot of Portland people are going back to Portland.

I did a series of maps about the basalt flows a few years back for Nick Zetner, a geology professor at CWU. Here is a link to one of the maps that shows the full extent (I have maps showing the active flow in each year - but the brown shows the full area). https://www.dropbox.com/s/cipb9c7odsn5zv0/10_5madike.jpg?dl=0

“Throes”, not “throws”

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I don’t have to much extra time unfortunately without being late to the event, that’s one reason why I was asking. I will definitely keep what you said in mind, thank you!

Vancouver resident, here. Traffic going south into Portland shouldn’t be too bad; traffic will be heavy going north back into Vancouver from the commuters. To be safe, it might be wise to give yourself a extra time to get there just in case there is any traffic heading south. Rush hour in Portland tends to start early on Fridays.