A Mountainous Adventure

St. Helens before...

We have wound down our tour of Western Washington's most magnificent mountain...Mt. St. Helens.  This famed peak blew its top on May 18, 1980 after a couple of months of earthquakes and a large bulge growing on its North face.  A massive landslide filled the bottom of the valley and raised the water table on the lake below, burying campsites and recreation areas in its wake. 

St. Helens after...

Our trip was much less turbulent, leaving town on Tuesday and traveling south to Olympia to visit with Kelly's sister and kids (her husband was out of town for work), and we let the kids run and play with the critters on the property.  Two llamas, three goats, and a small flock of chickens keep the family busy and give them a steady supply of eggs. 

In the morning, we packed up and headed south to our next destination, the grocery store in Chehalis!  We stocked up on supplies for lunches, dinners, and s'mores!  Then headed 70 miles to the camp site, just outside of Randle, WA at Iron Creek campground.  The sites were secluded and surrounded by lots of really big trees.  There were pit toilets but they kept them very clean and treated them to keep the smell at a minimum.  They also had water spigots and garbage cans nearby.

My tree huggers...

Unfortunately, there was no power outlets...at all.  This caused a minor inconvenience for our medical needs, which we had been able to prepare for, but we still fell short of our minimum for the night feeds.  We thought the battery for the night feed would last two nights--it lasted 1 1/2 nights (unless it wasn't plugged in the previous night at Crystal's, which means it actually lasted 2 1/2 nights, but it wasn't fully charged when we left).  Kelly ran his c-pap on a marine battery and Ben and Emma did their medications from an outlet plugged into the car's power source, although we had to run the car to provide enough power for the machines.  Medications for Ben include two nebulized medications and a vest therapy.  Luckily, it only took about 30 minutes to do all medications.

We set up our tents, moved the picnic table slightly to make a more comfortable setting, and settled in. Our first night started out pretty well--until a bit past midnight when I started to realize that the air mattress seemed to be sagging slightly.  Kelly pumped it up with his C-pap (running on a marine battery) and we settled back in.  About 30 minutes later, it was sagging again.  He thought maybe the cork in the end wasn't seated correctly, so he unscrewed it, and put it back together, pumped it back up, and we settled in.  Only 15 minutes later, I realized that this was a losing battle and we were going to have to come up with another plan.  Laying on the ground is not something that you can really do when you reach your 40s, but we were going to have to try.  It hurt.  I tried sleeping in the back seat of the van.  The bench seat was too short (even for me).  I tried the front seat...nope.  Went back into the tent and *luckily* the night was warm enough not to require sleeping in the sub-zero sleeping bag, so I folded it in half and tried sleeping on top of that.  Then folded another blanket and tried sleeping on top of that as well.  It still hurt.  Eventually, I got about four or five hours of sleep, which was as much as I was going to get that night.

After breakfast, Emma and I took a trip back into town (yep, 70 miles back to town) while Kelly took the other two kids fishing, and we got another air mattress.  $35 and a full tank of gas later, we headed back to the camp site.  Upon arrival, we ate a quick lunch and headed up to Mt. St. Helens to view the old girl.  We went up two years ago to Johnston Ridge, but it's been 24 years since I was at the Windy Ridge observation area.

May 17, 1980...



Photo I took in September 1988...

Photo I took in August 2012 in nearly the same spot...

The Forestry Service had people up there giving hourly talks about the history of the mountain and the activity of the volcano, told stories of some of the people who measured the movement of the bulge in the weeks prior to the eruption, photographers who circled the mountain in an airplane moments before it blew, and the natural recovery of the immediate six or eight mile radius--I don't remember the exact numbers--which they have designated as a scientific study area as to how nature recovers after a devastating event.  More information from a couple years ago can be found here.


We decided to take a hike up a neighboring hill, which was an established path up to a spot overlooking Spirit Lake, Mt. Adams, Mt. Hood, and Mt. St. Helens.  It was a long way up.  I asked Ben to count the steps, but he didn't.  I tried to count on the way down, but I lost track a couple times.  I know it was over 400.  Note how tiny the cars are...in the upper right corner area is the small amphitheater where the Forestry gal gave her talk.  Ben was more interested in finding out more about Harry Truman, the man who ran a group of cabins on the edge of the lake at the base of the mountain.  He knew things were moving and that an eruption was imminent, but he decided he didn't want to move.  He and his cabins are now buried under a couple hundred feet of dirt from the landslide that preceded the eruption.

Interestingly, the last major eruption was in the 1800s, and artist Paul Kane painted this in 1847, documenting the eruption.  Note it's not at the top, but to the side, near where the bulge presented itself in 1980...



How about this handsome guy?



Cute kids on the mountain...smiling, even!  Spirit Lake in the background still has logs floating in it, 32 years later.



Following our hike up this mountain, we headed back down the hill and cooked up some steaks and burgers and slept pretty soundly on a new air mattress.  The next day, we packed up the car and headed south around the mountain and took in some beautiful views on the winding roads.




We ended up at Beacon Rock, named by the famous Lewis & Clark on their 1804 expedition across the continent.  Initially, it was called "Beaten Rock" from its weathered look, but was later used as a beacon, being a very unique rock formation, and the name altered to Beacon Rock.  In 1915, Henry Biddle bought the rock for $1 and built some paths up to the top.  It's about 600 feet high, so it has a mile of switchbacks to get to the top.  After he finished building the paths, he donated the rock to the Washington State Parks.  I guess they have other hiking and camping areas in the neighborhood.  We didn't check it out, though.

In a word, exhausting.

After that hike, we went up the road a mile or so to take a look at the hydro dam and fish ladders (no fish climbing the ladders this late in the year), and then crossed the Bridge of the Gods and stopped at the fish hatchery, which really didn't have a lot of fish there.  They had some big rainbow trout that you can feed pellets to, but they were shipped in just for tourists.  Then there was a tank with a few salmon and a couple large sturgeon, but it's really murky.  We found one set of tanks that had little fry in it, but that was it.  Not terribly interesting this time of year.



Finally, back on the road...and remember, we've been camping for two days and nowhere near a shower we finally make it back to civilization and check into our hotel which turned out to be inexpensive, and not really worth what we paid.  The first bad sign is that we arrived and reminded them that we requested a rollaway online, and they said, "We don't have rollaways."
I'm sorry...What?  We have five people...how are we going to sleep all five of us in a room?
"You can have one person sleep on the floor."  WHAT?!
We should have left right then...but we didn't.  Then they say, "Is a second-floor room OK?"
I guess.... Oh. There aren't any elevators.  Remember all the medical equipment we've got?  Yeah.  Great.

We get in the room and we all need to take showers.  Desperately.  I turn on the light switch and I'm looking around for the bathroom fan.  There isn't one.  But I noticed there was some mold on the ceiling...ew.  And then I notice that there's only three towels.  It sleeps four in the room, we checked in five, but there's only three towels.  I called the front desk for extra towels.  They brought them pretty quickly, along with the extra bedding.  No sheets, though.  Kelly went down to the car and brought up the camp cot and dressed that up for sleeping.  We had to draw straws to figure out who was going to be sleeping on it--this was Cammie's idea, and unfortunately for her, she ended up drawing one of the shorter straws.  She accepted that fate with grace and took the second night on the cot.

After cleaning up, we went down to get some dinner from the on-site restaurant.  The food was pretty good, but the service was underwhelming when it became clear that that were seriously understaffed.  There appeared to be one waiter for about ten tables.  He forgot to bring a salad for Kelly and the guy never came back to see if we needed anything, and I had to flag him down to get the bill.  The guy at a neighboring table went to go get the water pitcher himself.  When I mentioned to the waiter that he forgot the salad, he apologized and took 25% off our bill.  That was nice... :)

We settled in for the night, looking for a movie for the kids to watch on Pay Per View, but the only "family" videos available on the TV were toddler and pre-school 30-minute cartoons from Nick and PBS, like "Arthur", and given that they're on PUBLIC television, it was ridiculous they were charging $3 an hour for these shows.  The rest of the movies were horror, drama and other adult subjects.  Kelly and I wanted to let the kids settle down and go on a mini-date get a drink in the bar, but after sitting there for 45 minutes and not getting any service, we gave up and went back to the room.  We snuggled down for the night and found that the air conditioner wasn't working properly.  It was pretty hot in the room, even though the machine was set for 60 degrees and running full blast all night.

The next morning, Emma and I went to visit with Sharon & Jeff at their home--the remodeling of which is looking fantastic.  Kelly had dropped us off and then he took Cammie and Ben to a water park and airplane museum in McMinnville.  We made a trip to Fabric Depot where I picked up a couple of things on their 25% off cotton print sale and their 40% off clearance room.  We then picked up some burgers for lunch while Jeff made a fresh salad from their garden.  Delicious salad!  The burgers looked like they were run through the wringer first...

That night, we met up with Mike & Laura and had sushi at their favorite neighborhood Japanese place.  We were the last ones out of the place, and unbeknownst to us, Kelly dropped his keys on his way out the door.  Luckily, someone picked them up and turned them in at the restaurant, where we found them the next day.  Whew!  Replacing those electronic keys for the cars is an expensive thing, and going to work without the office keys can be a little awkward, too.  At least I had copies of the car and house keys, but I don't have copies of his work keys.

We returned to the hotel to find they had cleaned up the beds and took the wet towels, but only left us three towels again.  I took an evening shower to cool off, so that left two towels for four people.  The next morning, I called down to get more towels, and they brought us one.  I told her I needed two more, so she went to the room next door and took one (presumably it was unoccupied), and said she'd have to go get another one for us.  We never saw her again.  As I was opening the door for her, the swing arm security latch had caught on itself, and I struggled to free it for a second, but didn't look at it too closely at the time.  After she left, I took a look at it and the knob part of the security latch was hanging there by a metallic thread...I popped it off easily.  Totally useless.  I set the broken piece on the table next to the coffee maker.  Hopefully they won't bill us for that since we didn't break it.

Arrangements were made to have breakfast with Mike and mama-to-be Laura (who is due February 2nd), but the restaurant on site closed at 10 a.m.  It wasn't clear, but lunch may have only been available in the lounge, which is 21 and over only.  Lame.  We went to their favorite place, Wild Abandon, where the owner knows them by name.  They have amazing breakfast potatoes!  After breakfast, we said our goodbyes and we headed North...just a bit.

We only went as far as Heide's, where we stayed the night visiting, did some of our laundry and watched the closing ceremonies for the Olympics.  We spent a lot of time trying to figure out the purpose and focus of the closing show...we agreed that the ceremony was just weird, like a walk through British music from the 80s, but it must have been a great a private concert & 360-degree show for the Olympic competitors.  Madness singer, Suggs, sounded really awful...too bad, really...but Pet Shop Boys, Annie Lennox and several others did really well.  The costumes and props were just...weird.

The next morning, we got loaded up in the car, grabbed a quick lunch, and got home by the middle of the afternoon to find my new dishes on the front porch!!  I was a little concerned because the box it arrived in was not in the best condition, but I was glad to see that they were wrapped pretty well inside and there were no broken bits.  A few flaws in the paint, but given the price, I'm not sure I care.  The plates were originally marked at $17, but they were selling them for $9.34, plus free shipping.  The last set of dishes I bought (Gibson stoneware) have been breaking and chipping rather regularly over the last year, so I decided to invest in some dishes that many restaurants use.  If they can withstand the beating at a busy cafe, it can better withstand the abuse our dishes endure at our hands.  I wanted a variety of colors, so I got two of each in a rainbow of colors, plus two white plates (which were back ordered, but should be arriving in the next day or so).  Oddly, I hadn't intended to get every color in the rainbow...it just worked out that way.  The colors include scarlet, paprika, marigold, shamrock, turquoise, cobalt and plum.  I figured that at Christmas, we can use the green, red and white; at 4th of July & Flag Day, we can use red, white and blue; on St. Paddy's day, we can use green, orange and white...so many combinations!  I opted to get only plates at this time and I can get salad plates and bowls at a later time.  I have a few smaller cereal bowls in sunflower and turquoise already, and a couple serving bowls in plum and...something else...turquoise, maybe?  I forget.  Anyway, I can add to this collection as time goes on.  I like the idea of buying only what I'm going to use, rather than full place settings--I never use all those little coffee cups that come in the sets, and ended up donating the mugs that came with the last sets I got...they were just taking up space in the cupboard, and I really only use the 20 oz cups for tea.  I may just donate the rest of the dinner plates I've got, and keep the pasta bowls, smaller plates and mismatched chipped platters until I can afford to replace those as well.  The pasta bowls are $17 each and the platters run $35 each....yeah, that's gonna have to wait.

Back to the grind tomorrow, although I'm going to be finishing up the Midhaven Ithra and a big quilt show in the next couple of weeks.  After that, I'm not going to volunteer to do anything for the quilt guild again...at least not for a while.  School is getting close to starting again, so there is still some prep with getting supplies and clothes, which we'll have to take care of in the next couple of days.  Oh, and Girl Scouts should be starting up again soon.  Gack.