Mount St. Helens

Our campground was actually pretty close to Mount St. Helens, so close that many of the forest roads we explored had signs stating "No Mount St Helens Access". The route to the national monument and visitor center was actually a 1.5 hour drive though.

When we arrived at the visitor centers the kids all got Jr. Geologist booklets and had to sleuth out a variety of geologic features of the volcano and the events that led to its 1980 eruption. We had a picnic and did the marshland hike. Before leaving, we picked a pint of blackberries in the parking lot.

At Mount Rainier we saw speculation about it's future eruption and the impacts of it's subsequent Lahars. At Mount St. Helens we saw the real impact of Lahars in the Toutle valley and got to hike the Hummocks trail to see the ponds created when glacial ice chunks launched off the mountain melted. We listened to the Stuff You Should Know episode that laid out the full eruption timeline on our drive and everyone found it pretty informative.

We weren't able to venture all the way to the Johnston visitor center due to a road closure and wildfire smoke obfuscated our views of the mountain, but it was pretty.Lue lisää