This weekend we hosted our first visitors since moving here. My friend of 27 years, Sam, and her husband Kenny live just north of Seattle and they came through on the weekend. Spent the night with us Friday, and we all went to visit Mt St Helens on Saturday. It was quite fascinating to learn about the May 18, 1980 eruption and its results. If you want to learn about it, though, you will just have to come visit us!
We took a 2.5 mile hike around many of the hummocks that were created when the volcano erupted. Hummocks are basically the mounds of debris that used to be the mountain, that got deposited all around the area. They are pretty obvious in some of the photos. St Helens is a pretty fascinating mountain and we hope to hike to the crater sometime, but I'm not sure it will happen with babe-in-belly. I used to be tough like that, but Trey has worn me down! Later, for sure, though.
You can see that the riverbed is much wider and higher than the river itself. This was due to snowpack and glacial ice melting within seconds of the blast and flowing down that course, carrying with it many of the trees and other matter on the mountainside.
These flowers were all along the trail; I don't know what they are, but they were beautiful. My photography skills don't do them justice.
Most of what you see above the mountain is just low clouds, but there is a newer mound in the middle of the crater that is continually emitting steam. Hard to tell in the picture, but it's basically the "clouds" you see sitting in the middle of the crater. Don't worry, Mom--it's not about to blast again!
All of this mountainside and surrounding area used to be thickly forested with evergreen trees. All felled in about ten seconds. In the surrounding area, there are still hundreds and thousands of logs just laying around that once were trees. But there is new life emerging, too.
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