Explore WA: Mount St Helens

On our way back from Portland we stopped at Mount St Helens National Park. It is about an hour to the visitor center from Portland or 2 hours from Seattle. I love visitor centers! You can learn so much there. I learned so much about this volcanic eruption from 1980 that I recommend everyone going to visit. 

Here is a before and after picture. The top picture was taking 1 day before eruption. They knew for over a month before it was going to blow just didn't know exactly when. Sometime in April, 1980 an earthquake occurred an the volcano started smoking. The center "bulge" started rising at ~5 feet per day. The area around the park was evacuated. The morning of the explosion another earthquake occurred and then within 5-10 minutes it blew. The crazy thing to me is that Mt Adams is about 30 miles from Mt St Helens and hikers were at Mt Adams summit that morning when the volcano erupted. They said the temperature where they were rose about 40 degrees! The ash from the volcano seemed to cause the most problems for people. Nine people were killed from volcano that day. They predicted more flooding than occurred. Of course the landscape, forrest, and animals were destroyed. 35 years later it still looks like a fire went off and scorch the land around the volcano. Some areas appear to have life coming back and resemble a dessert on the verge of a forrest. 

We had to drive an hour into the park from visitor center to get to Johnston Ridge Observatory. I did get a little panicky here as we drove into the middle of nowhere (it felt). In the pictures below we are about 5 miles from the crater. The pictures do not do justice for how big the volcano was/is and the hole blasted out the side. 

If you are looking at the picture above of Wes and I, look to the left of Wes in the picture and you will see what looks like a small hill… that is side of the mountain that got pushed down. 

After we left the observatory we relaxed a state park in our hammocks before heading back to Seattle. Wes decided to have some coffee out of his commemorative mug. 

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