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| Mt. St. Helens and visitors in southern Washington |
Today was a relatively easy day. We spent the night in Longview, Washington with our first stop this morning at Mt. St. Helens. Mt. St. Helens is an active volcano in the Cascade Range that runs from Washington down through Oregon and into California. Mt. St. Helens erupted violently on May 18, 1980. It was a Sunday morning as I remember hearing about it and watching the news reports. With a degree in geology, volcanoes have always fascinated me and I was closely following the events prior to its eruption. May 18th is my wedding anniversary so that is another way to remember when it erupted.
Mt. St. Helens is about 47 miles east of I-5 in southern Washington State. When we first arrived at the intermediate visitor's center, the mountain was totally socked in with fog. My traveling companions were very disappointed as neither of them had previously seen the spectacle. I had been to Mt. St. Helens on two previous occasions, both in the summertime. We spoke to a ranger and he indicated that this time of year, fog was pretty common. We stood around and talked, walked around the area, then returned to our car intent on driving back down toward I-5. As we were starting to leave, the ranger came out and flagged us down. It seems that he had just talked to someone at the far visitor's center, the one closest to the moutain, Johnson Observatory, and they said it was clear up there. So, we drove the additional 20 miles to Johnson Observatory.
The image you see above is what the visitors were seeing. At this point, the mountain is 5 miles away. Spectacular! I was glad we made the drive as I had never seen the mountain when snow covered. What a sight!
After we spent some time at the mountain, we drove north and spent a couple of lovely hours at the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge. It was a clear day, warm but with a steady dry breeze to cool us. We walked the boardwalk and the dyke and observed many species of birds, waterfowl and mammals. A very refreshing time.
We also were stalling for time as we needed to drive to Seattle to drop off one of us at his daughter's house as he would be departing the trip and staying with her. We all went out for a nice farewell dinner and said our goodbyes, then the remaining two of us drove to Auburn, Washington to spend the night.
Tomorrow, we travel south and west skirting the the northern and eastern sides of Mt. Rainier as we start our journey back to Virginia. What was once four of us on a Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery II road trip is now two of us heading back to Virginia with no particular route or agenda in mind. I'm sure we will see some interesting things along the way, with some side trips, and enjoy the return journey. I'll keep you posted as to our further adventures.
Thanks for looking.
Dennis Mook
Many of my images can be found at www.dennismook.com. Please pay it a visit. I add new images regularly. Thank you.
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