Fabulous day today! I went to the Mt. St. Helen's National Monument in Castle Rock, WA, about 10 miles back up the road from Kelso. This should be on every one's must-see list. There is a Visitor's Center about 10 miles from Castle Rock and adjacent to Silver Lake. The Visitor's Center was very nice and staffed with rangers who gave interesting talks about Mt. St. Helen's every hour or so. There was also a very informative film that lasted about 20 minutes and reminded me of some things I had forgotten about. Here is the Visitor's Center:
After hanging around the VC, viewing the very interesting exhibits, watching the movie, and listening to the Rangers, I headed on up to the Johnson Ridge Observatory. The Observatory is right opposite the portion of the mountain that exploded during the eruption and is named for David Johnson, a USGS Scientist who was killed in the eruption while monitoring from the ridge that now bears his name.
You can get a sense of the terrain downstream from the volcano itself from the picture below. This area was part of the area in the "Blast Zone" and you can see how it's reforested itself over the past 30 years. As you get closer to the volcano itself, you see much less vegetation:
Here is a little further up the road. This is the Toudle River with Mt. St. Helen's in the background:
From the point where I took the above picture, I noticed something interesting as I was walking through the woods:
If you look closely, you can see a downed tree stump from the blast and it's surrounded by new forest growth.
The next picture was taken about a mile from the Johnson Observatory and you can get a sense of the devastation that still exists in the area of the eruption. Look closely at Mt. St. Helen's and you can see the area that was blasted from the flanks of the mountain in 1980:
The Johnson Observatory was at the end of the road and you can see from the picture below how close we were to the site of the original blast itself. Again, the hollowed-out area is the blast area from the eruption in 1980:
I don't know for sure, but I would guess we were within 5 miles of the volcano at this point.
One last thing as a reminder of the 57 people who lost their lives as a result of the eruption and its immediate aftermath:
This is what remains of a car belonging to KOMO-TV (Seattle) when it was caught in the blast. In this case, if you read the notice on the window, the reporter lived to report another day.
After spending several hours at Mt. St. Helen's (and I could have spent several days, I think), I headed down I-5, skirted Portland to the east and caught sight of Mt. Hood:
The picture was actually taken from US 26 in Barlow Pass, and this is the south face of the mountain. A little further down US 26 (and I mean...maybe 25 miles) the terrain went from the lush mountain forest you see here to this:
This is the Warm Springs Indian Reservation and that's Mt. Wilson in the background.
The terrain stayed dry and semi-arid all the way to Bend, OR, where I'm spending the night tonight.
Tomorrow, it's Crater Lake and on to Redding, CA for the night. Miles Today: 328. Total: 8,689.
