Arrived at Seaquest State Park near one of the visitors' centers for Mt. St. Helens. Boy what a pretty place--tall trees, mossy ferny underbrush, chartreuse grassy meadow near our space (#10), and too much rain for me to take any pictures. I'll take some tomorrow before we leave for the volcano.

Sunday, September 19

Well I forgot to take pictures after all. Darn.

Back in 1991 I drove up to Seattle behind Angie and Sanjay (the friends we visited in Seattle a few days ago), who were moving up there from Davis so Sanjay could start his new job at Microsoft. I followed behind them in my car, but took some back roads and explored my way up, while they jetted up I-5 with two truckloads of furniture. One of the places I stopped was Mt. St. Helens. It had been ten years since the blast, so I wasn't sure if it would look anything like I remembered from the news coverage back in 1980. The earth was still grey, and So many trees lay on the ground, or piled up in a big lake below. There weren't any new ones taller than two feet that I could see, but you could see new growth in some places. I drove past a mangled miner's car too, which showed the force of the blast (or maybe the mudslide behind it). I wish I had my old pictures with me now--I'd scan them so you could see how it looked back then.

This time we took a different road in, one that had not been built until 1993: Hwy 504, which takes you all the way to Johnston Ridge, where vulcanologist Don(?) Johnston stood on the day the volcano blew, and said, "Vancouver, Vancouver, this is it!" He had been reluctantly watching the mountain from that spot, measuring sulpher gas (they thought that they could predict the eruption by watching sulpher levels) and doing other sciency stuff. Well, they were wrong about the sulpher gas. The levels were low when the volcano erupted, and those were the last words Johnston said.

From Johnston Ridge, you get a direct view into the blast zone (and the new lava dome that's growing in the crater). To get to it, though, you have to drive about 50 miles east of I-5, and pass six or seven visitors' centers along the way. No joke. Not just one. I was confused when we got to the first one (right near where we camped, about 5 miles from I-5) and there was a sign about paying to visit it ($3 per adult) or paying to visit multiple centers ($6). I was like, "Um, I want to visit the one that teaches us about the Volcano..." but they've broken it up into one that handles the geology (at Johnston Ridge), one that talks about the historical accounts and Indian history, etc. (the first one), and one that focuses on biology (all the trees, how the elk are bringing seeds back in their poop, etc.). Then there are three or four more that are owned privately (the others are state), including one that advertises to teach the Creationist view of what happened up there (that sounded a little too fire-and-brimstone for us). Truly there are too many visitors' centers to see them all, and this is just along Hwy 504. There are two other roads that take you close to the volcano, including the one I drove on back in 1991.

So we drove and stopped, drove and stopped, and soon it began to cloud up. We thought, "gosh, wouldn't that suck if we couldn't even see the mountain when we get there?" So guess what?

Here are pictures from our visit to Mt. St. Helens:

Here's what Mt. St. Helens looks like, 24 years after the eruption: it's completely gone!

On Johnston's Ridge, directly across from Mt. St. Helens, the trees were all blown down and most were blown away. Here's one that stayed where it fell. This area is still quite void of trees, although other areas seem to be recovering quicker.