Mt St Helens 35 Years

We headed up to Mt St Helens this morning, this was our first stop at George Taylor Rd to let a diesel pickup get a ways ahead so we did not have to smell it.   Vera took a couple of pictures of Silver Lake while we were waiting.

Our next stop was the Weyerhaeuser visitor center, looking down at the mud flows, we could see the recovery that has taken place.

From there we went to Elk Rock, we have been on top of it many times during ELT practices.

We hiked out on this point so I could get a picture of the mud flows we had looked at from the visitors center.  This is looking West from Elk Rock, the visitors center is the light area on the next point down.

This is Mt St Helens from the Elk Rock view point, the first really good view of the whole area.

We could remember being at the Castle Lake view point one year when it was so cold it hurt to breathe.  That was not the case this year, it was nice and warm with light winds the whole time we were at the mountain.  At first we thought that something was in bloom on the hill behind me.

It turned out that they had been thinning the trees, they also topped all of them.  We saw this in several places and I am wondering why they were topped.

By the time we left the Castle Lake view point my Achilles was getting pretty sore so we headed for Johnston Ridge without any more stops.  I wanted to be able to get up were we could see the dome better.  It took a couple of rest stops, but I made it!  There sure isn't much snow up there this year.  I had a nice time talking to a lady from Mississippi who had never been here before.  I told her a few of the things that we saw the day it erupted.

 It does not look like there is much heat in the dome as there was no sign of melted snow.  On the way home we stopped at 19 mile, but there were quite a few cars in the parking lot, we decided to eat some where else.  We really like the fried chicken at Drew's so we headed there.  After picking up the chicken, a couple of salads and Jo Jo's we went to Harry Gardner park to eat.  After lunch as we pulled onto the road the Blazer started making all kinds of noise.  I stopped and looked at it and decided it was the exhaust system.  After a noisy ride home, I checked and the pipe from the catalytic converter to the muffler had broken.  We went down to NAPA to get one, but it was going to have to come from Seattle and would  not be here until Wednesday.  Even with the little problem, it was a great day!