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Published: July 30th 2017
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Mt St Helens Mileage -219.5
Left a little later this morning and headed to Walmart for the last couple of things for the trip. We are trying to go thru most of our stuff but there were still a few things we needed for these last 2 days. We then fed Parker at the gas station. The first pump we tried was for flex fuel vehicles and Parker didn’t want that, so we found another. We then proceeded to Mt Saint Helens. I was working on the blog in the back seat until I lost internet, but I continued to work on the pictures. Our first stop was at the end of the blast zone. This was at a bridge. After that, as we drove in, everything was in the blast zone. Our next stop was shortly thereafter at the Learning Center and gift shop. We meet a guide there that told us a wealth of information. The most bizarre fact was that if you were within 60 miles of the eruption, then you didn’t hear any sound. The sound traveled up instead of sideways and bounced off the atmosphere. The folks 150, 200,+++ miles away could hear the booms but not the
people nearby.
Then there were the hikers on Mt Adams. They didn’t hear it either but saw the eruption. One of them reminded me of a friend because she wanted to continue to the summit until her friends talked her out of it. Mt Adams was only 36 miles away, not a ton further than the blast zone.
Back to the guide – all the trees were pretty much destroyed in the blast zone. He showed us a couple places where a small group of trees survived. After the eruption, the logging company that worked the area, brought in a ton of folks to harvest the downed trees (it was best for the mountain) and then over the next 2 years, they hand planted the forest back. They had to scrap the ash away for each tree so that it could be planted in good soil as the ash lacked the nutrients. Folks, this was like 21,000 acres or more. Now it was kind of weird to see the new forest. It looked older than 37 years but it was uniform. Actually, it looked blurry because all the trees were the same height, spaced evenly and were mostly
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see where the old mountain was “Christmas” tree type trees so there was space between the branches. I hope you can see the blurry look in the pictures. We then headed on up the mountain to the observatory. Here we could get a great view of the crater that used to be the mountain, and we could see the new cone that is forming in the middle. You could see where the majority of the blast material went down stream, but also where the blast blew off the soil down to the bedrock on the opposite side hill. Someone made the decision to not plant inside the park but rather to leave it natural, and you could see where trees had fallen and stumps and some of the fallen trees remained. Most of the trees were swept downstream but many still littered the mountains.
The entirety of the area was just overwhelming, especially since each of us remember the events that led up to the eruption and the eruption itself. If you get this way, you should come visit the area.
We left and headed down the mountain and toward Astoria and our final stop. We drove along Hwy 4 and 401 on the
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a small strand of trees that survived in the blast zone Washington side of the Columbia River then crossed the long bridge into Astoria. We are staying at a Holiday Inn Express tonight but we are having to pay for it. There were no point rooms left 4 days ago when we tried to book a room. The room is huge and the hotel is on the waterfront, near the bridge. We brought everything in from the van tonight as we have to pack all our suitcases with all our accumulation of items from the trip. It is sad that is it coming to an end. We have already started talking about our next adventure. Who knows, it might be a long weekend trip to Oklahoma and Arkansas or even one to Florida. Next year it might be the top middle of the country or even something like Alaska, or Hawaii… who knows what we will plan. We will all start making notes and see what appears.
We went to dinner downtown and then went up to the Astoria Monument before retiring.
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