Portland, OR to Aberdeen, WA

Day 24: Thu 14 Aug: More beauty.

I woke up late, and hung out with Michael and Eric. Michael was getting packed to fly to Arcata for the weekend (where he used to live, and from whence I had just driven), while I did some route planning. Michael and Eric had recently gotten back from a two week visit to the northern Rockies, including Glacier National Park and Banff and Vancouver (all of which are on my itinerary), and Michael gave me some good tips on places to go in Glacier. Right around noon, I headed off.

Thank you guys! It was great seeing you again.

My plan was to get to Olympic National Park, or nearby, today. That plan got waylaid when I decided that I really shouldn't miss Mount St. Helens. I'm glad I went. It's a bit of an out-of-the-way drive, but the scenery is intense. It also ties together a lot of the stuff I've already seen in other parks: the Painted Desert and petrified logs in Petrified Forest National Park, the volcanic terrain in northern Arizona, etc. Here it all was, in one place, and it happened less than thirty years ago.

I went to the Johnston Ridge Observatory, on the north side of the mountain, which is the side that blew up (and out). The geology of the region is a result of the independent series of events that happened when the volcano erupted: the north side of the mountain collapsed in the largest landslide in recorded history; the release of the pressure of the mountain caused the underlying high-gas-content magma to explode, vertically, and laterally in a pyroclastic flow; the heat of the magmas melted all the snow and glaciers which then flooded downslope; finally there was the ashfall. At least, that's what I remember. And afterwards, the heat from the rock would sometimes boil the river or lake water it had buried, which would cause mini-explosions and craters up to a quarter-mile across.

I should point out that when you look at these pictures of the caldera, that before the eruption, Mount St. Helens had a pointy peak, like Mt. Hood. It's really dramatic in the before and ftare pictures, but from these pictures here, just imagine the cone of the mountain continuing up to a point. It's all gone, distributed across the surrounding landscape.

The Observatory has a great movie, and really informative exhibits. It was hard not to tear up when reading the first-person accounts of the people who lived through it, and hearing the last words of people who didn't live through it.

Thirty years later, parts of it still look like the moon. The blast knocked down trees, or, further away, seared them standing. That is in evidence all around the area. The colors were much like the Painted Desert, and for much the same reason, I imagine.

I didn't leave the park until about 6pm. There was no way I was going to make it to an Olympic National Park campground before they closed, so I decided to stop in the biggest town on the way there, which, on the map, looked like Aberdeen. So here I am. Aberdeen is a lumber town. Driving in to town, there's a lumber yard on the river that just goes on forever, with huge stacks of dimensional lumber.

I went online looking for cheap places to stay, was scared by some reviews, and ended up staying at "America's Best Value Inn". Sheesh, what a name. Since the mom and pop Mexican/Salvadorean restaurant across the street was already closed, I got dinner at Mazatlan, a more chain-y Mexican restaurant. I had the Tacos Al Carbon, which were really good.