What a day!

Thursday was jam packed with fun, a sad good-bye, and lots of work. We met Jillian, McKenna and Zane for breakfast at IHOP. What a unique group! They all have a quick wit and a wacky sense of humor. They played one last game of Heads Up which I am sure entertained our side of the restaurant.

Then it was time to say good-by to McKenna and Zane. It's sad to leave good friends.

Rose and I made a quick trip to Frank's to drop off the pups and headed to Mt. St. Helen's.  That was an awesome trip. We grabbed two caches shortly after getting off the Interstate. The travel bug Hotel was very well done. For our caching friends, it was GC1G3TR. We also picked up GC1T0R5 before visiting the Mt. St. Helen's Visitor's Center.  After a quick tour of the center, we hurried toward the Mountain which was about 60 miles away. It was very cloudy and cool.  There were tantalizing views of the snow covered mountain top. The devastation created when the mountain blew in 1980 was evident in a large part of the area we saw. The areas replanted in 1983 are green and thriving. Along some of the ridges in the distance you can seen green ground cover with some small trees and many white stumps that indicate it was part of the blast area. Rose commented the stumps looked like small white crosses and I had to agree. 

A couple we lunched with the next day talked about witnessing the blast from as far away as Olympia and Yelm. Tam said everyone spent the day outside watching the sky. She talked about how scary it was to witness. Sans was in Yakina the next day. He talked about the ash being three feet high. He did say that the next year the size of the apples almost doubled because of the nutrients in the ash. 

The drive up the mountain was beautiful ( and yes I did keep rolling done the window to snap another picture- thank goodness for heated seats!) We were really excited to reach the Loowit viewpoint but as we walked up to the edge the clouds rolled in.

The area of the blast zone is slowly renewing it self. I wish we had come prepared to do a little hiking in the area but at the same time this southerner found the wind cold and wished for a coat. The gray sky's kept getting grayer. As we were getting in the car to leave the wind changed and the clouds moved away to give us a wonderful view of the mountain top. The crater created by the blast was evident. What a sight! We had to stay a while longer.

As we pulled out to leave, the rain started so we decided not to travel up to the observatory. Neither of us felt the views could have been any better.

Of course, by then we were starving. Going down the mountain we stopped at a place called Patti's Place @ 19 Mile House. The chicken and dumplings were tasty but very different from what we do in the South. The dumplings looked like little biscuits sitting on top of the stew. It really was good.  The elk burger was actually a preformed frozen patty that did not live up to expectations. However, the apple blueberry cobbler topped with vanilla ice cream made up for everything! We almost ordered a second. 

The rest of afternoon was rather mundane. We packed and cleaned and wished Rose's car was at least twice as big.