From: LiveFromTheClocktower@gfy.com   
      
   "Larry Caldwell"  wrote in message   
   news:MPG.1f5fb7e74164b38d989845@news.peaksky.com...   
      
   > Just to expand on this, the northern Willamette Valley is full of  glacial   
   > erratics.  During the Missoula Floods, huge hunks of glacier   
   > were torn loose and floated down the Columbia.  When the flood backed up   
   > into the Willamette Valley, some of these icebergs got caught in >the   
   > backwater, and melted.  This dumped the load of included rock they were   
   > carrying wherever the glacier melted.   
      
   Pretty much anywhere in the valley where you see giant rocks in the middle   
   of meadows, particularly if they show signs of erosion such as rounded   
   edges.   
      
   In Portland, apparently, you can see some in yards and other places along   
   the Alameda plain, which is the high ground on the west side of Rocky Butte.   
   The high ground is the sediment deposit behind the butte.  Hard to tell   
   which rocks are erratic and which are landscaping unless the rock is so big   
   that it's unlikely to have been hauled there in a dump truck.   
      
   > When I was a kid, one of my classmates dug an almost complete mastodon   
   > skeleton out of the bank of the Willamette near Dayton.   
      
   That would be beyond amazing!  Whatever became of it?   
      
   -c   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)