Mount Saint Helens



The clouds were moving in on us when we got to the top of the mountain



One of our stops to listen to the "Silence" on a forest service road.





I love the wooden floors in the grocery store!





Take a look at the thousands of trees blown into the lake!





You gotta love the timer function of the camera! Just press the button and run back to the family!



We never made it to this mountain called Mt Adams!

Leaving Seattle, we headed 100 miles south to Mount Saint Helens!  We found a great little park called Harmony Lakeside which was a bargain at $31 a night with full hookups, cable TV and WIFI!  It becomes a real challenge keeping up with this blog because we have 3 other people who need the Internet connections and sometimes the connections are not available until everyone has gone to bed!  Once we setup near Saint Helens we went into town to get some groceries.  This has become one of my favorite things to do because you get to see and speak with all the locals from each town.  I have learned if your polite and ask for good restaurants or places to see the locals will always steer you into the right direction. The grocery store was really neat with old fashioned wood floors and even a basement!  The next morning we woke up and headed to see the mountain.  2-1/2 hours and several stops later we made it to a great over look called Windy Ridge.  This ridge is directly across from Saint Helens and gives you a birds eye view of the Crater once you hike about 400 stairs to the top of an adjacent hill.  From the top of this hill you can see Spirit Lake.  Spirit Lake was directly in from of the landslide/blast zone and we were told the ash and mud slid into this lake raising its level 200 feet and waves in the lake reached 800 feet up the hillside from the force of the blast!  Although the drive was a long one, we had a good time once we reached the national park that Mount Saint Helens is in.  We traveled down a few of the forest service roads and found some amazing trees and and the silence of this place was amazing.  At one point in our journey we stopped the truck and got out and were very quiet and just listened to the silence!  I know it sounds crazy but until you have been far enough off the beaten path to experience it its hard to imagine how quiet it can get.  Unfortunately the roads do not loop around the mountain so we had to back track 2-1/2 hours to get back home.  The next day we went the opposite direction around the mountain and stopped at the visitors center and saw several movies about the mountain and the eruption!  On the way home we asked a local where to get a bite to eat and as usuall they came through with a little place called Patty's Place.  It was someone home converted into a restaurant right on the river.  We had home cooked hamburgers and chicken fingers!  The next day we were burnt out of driving so it was a day of rest and relaxation!  I watched football on T.V. and Karen and the kids played video games and just hang out.  I also took some time to make some pulled pork on my little barbeque grill which I have been craving since we left the south!

  



Millions of trees were snapped off by the eruption and its hard to believe 30 years later its all still very visible!