Mt St Helens

Mt St Helens--clouds obscure the top


Mt St Helens area



Road up to Mt St Helens--reforested areas on both sides of road

Do you remember May 18, 1980? If you lived where I am staying now, you would! This is the day that Mt St Helens made its most spectacular and devastating eruption--really a series of events including landslide, eruption of lava, mudslide, and all the attendant destruction.

It was hard to see a lot today due to cloud cover and intermittent rain, but one thing I definitely noted was the re-growth. There are signs in front of huge tracts of trees noting when they were planted, pruned, fertilized, etc. In contrast to the many other forested areas we've traveled through, these "forests" comprise trees uniform in size and growing in orderly rows. No shame in that--it's great to see such lush vegetation in what must have been an absolute wasteland 29 years ago.

After Daisy and I drove to the closest observation/visitor's center today, it was time to take the car in for its overdue 5,000-mile check up, oil change, etc. While we sat in the customer lobby, several people asked about Daisy and what we were doing. When I explained we had traveled across the country, they asked if we had been to see Mt St Helens. I said we had gone up one direction today but it was too cloudy to see the top. I asked if any of them had lived here, and all 3 people I spoke with had been here 29 years ago. They talked about how disrupted the area was--even I-5 was closed for a while. They are also very proud of the re-growth that has occurred and encouraged me to try to see the othr side of the mountain (I'm afraid we don't have time this trip). I also got some good advice about someplaces to see in eastern Oregon about the Oregon Trail pioneers.

So, we head southeast Sunday. More to come....