20030621                      Open new window with today’s pictures.

June 21, 2003
Saturday

Start:   Crown Villa RV Resort, Bend OR
End:     Seaquest State Park, Castle Rock WA
Miles:   228
Hi Temp: 68.4
Lo Temp: 39.0


It only took a few hours to go from desert, ponderosa pine, and cactus to forest, Douglas Fir and ferns. It sure makes a difference which side of a mountain range you're on.

We left Bend around 9:00am on US97 to Madras to US26 to the Portland area. Then I84 to I205 to I5 to here. The trip on US26 was up-and-down and wet due to showers, but otherwise no problem.  The low clouds prevented us from seeing Mount Hood as we drove past it.

The driving in the Portland area before we got onto the interstate reminded us of a Saturday in Manassas - lots of cars and people running around doing what they couldn't do during the week.

About 20 miles north of Portland the weather turned to solid light rain from low-hanging clouds.  We knew it wasn't going to be our day to see Mount Saint Helens.

We pulled in to the park and campground (no one was at the check-in booth) and went to our site.  It was fairly tight getting through all the fir trees, and then backing into the site.  But we got unhooked all right and got set up. We had a light lunch in the trailer and went to town to get groceries. We also found the church for tomorrow and Dolores went into the local information center.  She says she almost didn't get out of it - the man there wanted to talk and she was the captive audience.

Back at the campground, I pulled in hastily (other cars moving around) and put a small dent in the tailgate of the truck. No biggie, but frustrating. 

We took a hike to the Mount Saint Helens Visitor Center (run by the state) during a period of sunshine.  It's across the road and down a ways. Dolores took pictures of flowers and ferns all the way there.

The center was about to close, so we didn't go in. We'll start there tomorrow morning and then work our way up the road to the other visitor's centers on USFS land. Maybe we'll be lucky and the clouds will allow us to see the mountain.

The USFS lady we saw later said the riders in the bicycle contest on the road to Mt St Helens encountered rain, sleet, snow, and hail today.  The snow was apparently down to the 3,200' foot level here.  She spoke with one rider who returned to the campground; he couldn't stop his hands from shaking. 

We returned to the little house in the big firs and loafed a bit.  Then we made up spaghetti with hot Italian sausages and meat sauce for dinner. I had merlot and Dolores killed what was left of the last bottle of Rockbridge Tuscarora table white wine we'd brought from Virginia.

We did the computer chores and now we're going to take it easy.

20030622                   Open new window with today’s pictures.

June 22, 2003
Sunday

Start:   Seaquest SP, Castle Rock WA
End:     Seaquest SP, Castle Rock WA
Miles:   0
Hi Temp: 56.7
Lo Temp: 49.1


We tried to see Mount Saint Helens today, but the weather just wouldn't cooperate. Not only that, it looks like no-one is going to see it until Thursday. The wind is out of the west, bringing in the humid air. When the humid air sweeps up the mountains, it forms clouds and that's it.  The bottoms of the clouds today varied between 3,500' and 4,500'.

We started with breakfast in the little house, then into town to St Mary's for church. The service was nice and the priest was very good. The congregation was very friendly.

Then we stopped at the little house to pick up the camera and headed up the hill.  There are several visitor's centers on the way up, but we wanted to see the mountain if possible, so we headed for the top.  The road is excellent and reflects the fact that it was torn out by the volcano's blast, landslide, and/or flood.  Several beautiful bridges now span creeks. One span is 370' above the creek it goes over.

It was drizzly most of the way up the road.  At the Johnston Ridge visitor's center (the top - 4,000') we parked and went in. We saw the movie presentation, most of which is animation but ok, on the eruption and subsequent happenings. The statistics are astounding - over six cubic miles of earth was moved via landslide (the largest recorded), for instance.  Weyerhauser lost over 10,000 acres of trees.  Spirit Lake's surface rose 200' because earth filled in the bottom of it.  Two major lakes were created. The list goes on and on.

When the presentation ends, the screen and the backdrop both rise and (on good days) you gaze directly at the mountain. The effect is said to be spectacular. Today, we saw white as in cloud. After a while, the cloud level rose enough that we could see the valley below. Wow, what a mess.  There are hummocks and ash and mud with big dead trees in it all over what was a deep valley but is now fairly level. The creek running through it will eventually eat into it and carry it downstream.

They've installed a sediment dam downstream to trap the silt so they can truck it away rather than let it just go downstream. That way, the stream downstream of the dam can carry away the silt that came to rest downstream.  The flood after the eruption carried away bridges and houses for miles downstream and was felt at the Columbia River, 50 miles away.

Dolores took pictures of flowers and the valley for a while. Then we went down the hill to the Coldwater creek visitor's center, which has food. We ate and then watched the presentation there, which wasn't as detailed.  We wandered around and took more pictures, then stumbled in on a ranger's lecture on the aftermath of the eruption and how life is begining again, even on the pumice plain below the volcano where biologists thought nothing could grow (how's that for a run-on sentence?).

He was good. He kept the audience's attention and several times had everyone laughing.  At one point, he was describing how scientists were trying to measure insects dropped into the blast zone by the wind using cups of anti-freeze under the theory it would kill them and preserve them all at once as they fell in. He said something like, "we know the elk drank the anti-freeze, but they're big enough that they weren't hurt. In fact, we think it did them some good the next winter". The scientists quit using that method after they found the elk drinking the anti-freeze.

We took one last trip to the top to check it out, but it was hopeless. Still, we'd seen things the eruption did and learned a lot about it.  One thing to keep in mind is that scientists believe this one was one of the smaller eruptions by Mount Saint Helens over the years. Tree rings show one happened in the fall of 1497 that may well have been bigger.

We came back to the little house and looked in all the visitor's guides to see what restaurant we might take on. We wandered toward one of the "possibles" in Longview. Eventually, we got to Longview (we used local roads).  Then we got lost once or twice. Finally, we found the right street and then the restaurant (The Duck). It had a lot of cars around it, so we went in. 

I had lemon-pepper snapper with twisty fries and baked beans, and Alaska Amber.  Dolores had a half-chicken with Thai Peanut sauce (note that, kids!) and the local Riesling.  It was quite good.  Then we wandered out of town, getting lost only once, and back to the state park and the little house under the Douglas Firs.

Now we're settling in while our jackets dry, and taking it easy.