Mount St. Helens

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Sept 12th -13th 2009

Having a baby changes many things about your lifestyle if you will allow it. And for us it definitely did and we gave priority to our son and watching him grow. The fact that he hated the car seat made travel all the more difficult for us. But like we have found, if you wait and not let the desire die, things will eventually turn around. He is a little over a year old now and as he faces the front in the car slowly beginning to realize it is not such a bad deal after all. We on our hand after having his grandparents help for a little over a year, are slowly settling into a lifestyle and a routine that allows us to enjoy him and also slowly revisit some of our interests. We are definitely not the kind who wait for every long weekend to make travel plans, but do savor the beauty of the places we do manage to visit.

By now I have made it clear that we have moved to Oregon. The weather during the Sept 7th long weekend sucked like no other and after spending 4 hrs researching Mt. Rainer and Mt. St. Helens, I resigned to the fate that this trip was not going to happen then. But when Miss Sunshine reared her head the following weekend, we decided to pay Mt. St. Helens a visit. Our friends Krupa & Sharath also tagged along for the ride, and are we glad they did (along with plenty of snacks for the way!). Mt. St Helens can be a day trip or if you like to visit every single scenic spot and trail along the way, you could spend more than a day. We decided to leave Sat afternoon and spend the night there, so we would not inconvenience Mr. V. This way we could time the drives to coincide with his nap times, so he would not be too flustered and I think it really worked well.

Mt. St Helens is a volcanic mountain that last erupted in 2004. It erupted in 1980 before that. Its exudes not molten lava like we usually associate volcanoes with, but spewed hot ash during its eruptions. The reason these eruptions are not very famous is because they were predicted before they happened and very few calamities occurred. The eruptions here have helped understand volcanoes all over the world. It sounded very exciting and we were not disappointed one bit by the sight we saw.

I used this website for all of our planning. We stayed at the Townhouse motel . This was actually owned by a Gujrati family and they managed to make do with just the bare minimum. I have not seen poorer quality of soap/shampoo anywhere. Their highly advertised continental breakfast was literally cereal from 2 jars, probably brought from their kitchen The proximity to Mt. St. Helens was not bad at all considering others closer were about $40 or more expensive per night.

We started from Portland at 3 pm on Saturday and after calling in to the visitors centers decided to visit the Mt. as the weather was gorgeous and we could get a good view. We drove all the way upto Johnston Ridge Observatory, closest to the mountain providing the best view. All along the way we could see the path taken by the hot ash (~ 30-40 miles away) where trees were felled and no vegetation existed. I thought that was pretty amazing after 30 years! How would this place have been if we had visited a few years after the eruption, the power of nature!! The eruption in 1980 spewed ash and smoke 12 miles high and created a landslide at the speed of 300 mph. It was a majestic Mt. sitting as it is even now. All the observatories were closed by the time we reached, but we were happy that we got a very clear view of the mountain and the surrounding damage that it had caused. We planned to return the next day to view the observatories and the movie of the eruption.

The observatories did not open till 9 and one till 10, so we left the hotel at 8:30 am after the *amazing* continental breakfast that I described before. We decided to do the Johnston Ridge Observatory first as the Forest learning center was closed after the Sept long weekend. We reached at about 10:15 am and went in after cajoling V to eat his breakfast. The main highlight of this observatory is the movie of the eruption. It was the 80s and the best of technology did not exist, so I was disappointed a bit. But Karthik thought I was crazy and went in a second time to watch the movie. V was very well behaved throughout the trip. He did not mind the loud movie and crawled all over the theater, I thought that was pretty amusing. The movie captured the eruption itself and some scenes of the hot ash and one could kind of get a feel for how fast it traveled. One sentence in the movie keeps haunting me about how these eruptions change landscapes and form continents and places we now call earth. It truly to me brought to the fore the almighty’s power. For me in a way all of these things strengthen my belief in God and the supernatural power, because as much as science can predict and learn from these events, it is he who causes and controls when and how they happen.

We saw Mt. St Helens again and took in her majestic appearance before we decided to leave around 12. Like I said before since the Forest Learning Center was closed and V was sleeping we skipped the Silver Lake Visitor Center also, as we did not think there was anything new there. We drove back and had lunch in downtown Portland. I do not recommend this restaurant Swagat and it was a rip-off, please spend your money elsewhere. I am not sure about the other locations but we went to the one on Lovejoy street. V did not care and loved the naan over the dhal rice I packed him, kids..what can I say

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