One of the most impressive things in this area is Mount St. Helens which erupted 29 years ago. (I know that because we were there on the exact anniversary and everything was free.)  Weyerhauser company planted a lot of trees afterward, so much of the blast zone is heavily forested. The recovery is very obvious and has amazed scientists at how quick it has happened.  Along the river, everything is still gray, though.

Something that most tourists don’t see is a little museum before you get in the actual park was called 7Wonders Museum.  It is sponsored by the Creation Institute and showed how quickly things were changed by the eruption.  Canyons were formed in a matter of hours or months, not millions of years.  We bought a book full of pictures written by 2 scientists that are Christians explaining these things. In this little museum there were 7 things that they showed as “wonders” discovered by this eruptions.  (Of course, I can’t remember them right now.)

One thing rather eerie is that a lava dome is building up inside the crater.  Soooo, it could erupt again!  Here in this picture the dome is the bulge in the middle.

After leaving this area, we decided to go up to Mount Rainier.  Unfortunately, by the time we got there clouds were covering the top.  The road wasn’t open all the way through the National Park because of snow.  When we got to as far as they let us go, I felt like we were in Norway.  There was supposed to be a beautiful valley, but the snow was piled too high. This mountain has 26 glaciers.  The only one we saw was this one:

I am a little disappointed that we couldn’t go all the way through the park.  Apparently May is really too early to tour in the north.  We have noticed that lots of things were not being done this early.  (Like boat cruises on the many rivers we have crossed.)

We thought about staying at the Inn at the top, but the cheapest rooms had no private baths.  (No good for old people to have to go down the hall in the middle of the night.)  And, too, looking at the snow built up there made us a little nervous since rain was expected in the area.  We knew that we might get stuck up at the top, and we were to meet some friends in Seattle.  We stayed at a little “lodge” at the bottom, and it did rain during the night.

We stayed in Seattle two nights, but didn’t see any of the sights.  I washed and we spent half a day with some friends of ours who are missionaries in Thailand.  We had met them 30 years ago while we lived in California, and we have kept up with one another through the years.  They were “coincidentally” home for their yearly vacation, and based out of Seattle right now.

Now we are with friends on Orcas Island.  This man and Doug worked together for several years, and he and his wife retired on Orcas Island. It is very beautiful here and peaceful.  They have a lot of land, so have no really close neighbors. They can view the Pacific Ocean from their living room. Tomorrow we are taking the ferry to Victoria, BC.  That will be another installment.