31 Years!

31 years ago, I was loading my planes into the van for a day of  flying.  Vera was washing the breakfast dishes, and called me in to look at the strange cloud with lightening coming out of it.  As I came into the kitchen, I saw our neighbor clear the fence by about 3 feet waving his arms over his head shouting "The Mountain Blew!"  We headed up to Schaffran Rd, we watched and took pictures for a long time and went back several times during the day.

After Vera's bible study today, we headed for Mt. St. Helens for the 31st Anniversary.  Our first stop was at 19 Mile for lunch at Pattie's Place.  We both had Elk Burgers and fries.  Today they were providing free desserts, so Vera had Peach Cobbler and I had Strawberry Rhubarb Cobbler.  They have great fries there.

 We stopped at the Weyerhauser Visitor Center to take some pictures and found Elk grazing on the mud flows.

We stopped for another photo session at Elk Rock and Vera took this picture.

There was a little steam coming out of the dome today.

There were quite a few people and we had a good time people watching, seeing every thing from a cowboy to a tattooed lady.  There was enough snow that the path up to the compass rose viewpoint looked pretty hazardous.  They had a sign up to that effect so we passed on it.

 This what the snow looked like on the way back to the parking lot.  It was a great day, most of the time we went without the windbreakers.  After sitting and driving for a couple of hours, I had an ambitious streak when we got home and cleaned the pond.