Time in Washington

Well, continuing our timeline, we next drove up to La Center Washington to visit Lee’s parents.  I think by this time of the trip we were starting to get tired of taking pictures, or maybe we stopped doing something outside everyday and ‘around the house’ pictures aren’t as much fun.

We went to the Portland Rose Garden, thinking that June would be gorgeous and of the thousands of roses there, there was 1 in bloom.  Very sad visit.  So, right around the corner was the Children’s Museum and we played the afternoon.

I had never before seen Mt. St. Helen’s and want to see the famous volcano.  As the crow flies, it’s about 1/2 hour from La Center, but it takes about 2 hours of driving.

Our first views were a bit disappointing:

The fog was so thick you couldn’t see the end of the parking lot, let alone the observatory, and not even close to the mountain.

 

But we ate some lunch in the car and the clouds blew out and we could see the mountain.

It is actually hugely impressive to see and I recommend it to anyone.

 

 

 

 

 

These pictures I didn’t take, but they are good “Before and After” the explosion of 1980.  There was no lava, no huge fire destroying disaster, but it set ash flying north easily to cover Canada and east to Idaho in a matter of hours.  The mudflows caused more damage than any other natural disaster in the US.

 

The day before the explosion                                                        Two years after

It shot off 1300 ft of elevation from the mountain and left a crater two miles wide.  The power in the earth is incredible.