Mount St. Helens, Part 2 of WA/OR trip, Oct. 2012

Earlier this day, we visited the Ape Caves...Part 1 of our trip. The kids napped on the way back to Woodland where we dropped off our guests then continued on our way up I-5.

We took our exit off I-5 at Castle Rock onto Hwy 504, destination Forest Learning Center.  As we were driving, I looked up the hours it was open and, to our dismay, noticed it was only open through Labor Day. So we pushed on to the Johnston Ridge Observatory. This monument is named after David Johnston, the volcanologist who was camped out on this ridge observing the volcano when it blew. His final words were "Vancouver, Vancouver, this is it." He was never found. Here is a link to the history of Mount St. Helens. It's a fascinating read.

As we drove down another beautiful winding forest road, we saw remnants of the blast like a Weyerhauser logging truck with a log smashed into it from the mud slides following the May 1980 eruption.

We began to see the effects of the blast as we got closer to the mountain. The lateral blast stripped the trees for miles. The entire scenery changes when you get closer to the mountain.

 

This from The History of Mount St. Helens: "At Mount St. Helens, the "uncorking" unleashed a tremendous, northward-directed lateral blast of rock, ash, and hot gases that devastated an area of about 230 square miles in a fan-shaped sector north of the volcano."

The fall colors were beautiful. Although much of the forest is conifers, we saw an occasional splash of color from the deciduous trees.

The Toutle River became a mud flow. The remnants of that are still visible through the center of the above photo.

 

Here is the view of Mount St. Helens from the door of the Johnston Observatory, shown below. It's built as a bunker with huge windows facing south to allow an impressive  view of the mountain. Would it stand the effects of another blast? I don't know...This from The History of Mount St. Helens: "Calculations have shown that the blast's initial velocity of about 220 miles an hour quickly increased to about 670 miles an hour."

I made a panoramic photo of the pictures Michael took around the area. And the photo below is a peek at Mount Adams to the southeast.

 

These photos describe some of the details about the blast and history of Mount St. Helens. It's fun to see the kids read the placards...they were very interested. But Annisia kept asking if the mountain was going to blow while we were there. Poor thing...we assured her we'd have SOME warning, like usually small earthquakes would occur...

Then came the challenge of getting the kids to pose for a photo...

Goofy son...

Pretty normal...

Aaak! Goofy daughter!

Now with Mommy...

Then with Daddy.

This sundial thing shows other mountain peaks, other observatories, trails, etc. and distances from there. There was also a line of stones dedicated to the 57 people killed as a result of the blast.

On the way down, I needed to use the restroom. It was intimidating to walk into this concrete bunker...toilet/fallout shelter!

We left the area as the sun was beginning to go down. And we had at least an hours drive...we got back to Karen and Scott's around 8pm. Annisia read them her school books, they played with the plethora of toys they have for Scott's granddaughter...ah! The kids were in heaven! Then we crashed so we could be ready for the next day's adventure... OMSI, the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, followed by a potluck in Vancouver, WA. 
Part 3 coming up...