Fire On The Mountain

Today we took a self guided tour of Washington state's active volcanoes.

First stop: Mount Rainier. From any distance to the untrained eye, Rainier would just appear to be your run-of-the-mill mountain. But it has its own amazing distinctive features. First, it holds the largest glacier in the lower 48 states. It is called the Emmonds Glacier and the ice reflects blue in most spots.
Secondly, it is an active volcano. If you'll notice at the summit of the mountain there are spots where you can see dark rock in lieu of glacial ice. That is because the top is too warm for ice to stay. Volcano!








Indigenous to the area are a type of cherry called Rainier cherry. Here is a picture of Kate eating a Rainier cherry at Mt. Rainier.




Second stop (and most famously): Mt. St. Helens. MSH blew her top on May 18, 1980. We were two. Where were you?

Well, technically it wasn't her top, it was her side. Most volcanologists had predicted that she would explode right out the top like most volcanoes. However, there was one volcanologist by the name of Johnston who, on the contrary, had predicted a lateral explosion. For whatever reason he was in the blast zone that morning and made a radio transmission to a base up north announcing the events. "Vancouver, this is it! This is it!" were the last words he spoke just before the eruption. Three seconds later he was swept away by the blast. Kind of chilling, isn't it?
We viewed Mt. St. Helens from an area called Johnston Ridge, named for the famed volcanologist.
There is also a story about a man who lived in a cabin at the base of the mountain. Geologists had warned him about the impending doom but he refused to leave. He's now a permanent fixture.
It may also be interesting to note that when she exploded, a cubic mile of ash and mountain bits spewed into the air. That's a lot.

We arrived at the ridge concerned about the clouds that were blocking our view of the crater. It turns out that they weren't clouds, but actual smoke and steam rising from the volcano's lava domes.
She could still go at any point. Inside the visitor center they had an actual seismograph calculating earthquake activity on the mountain. It was moving. Quite a bit, too. A bit unnerving as it was a 5.2 earthquake that started the chain reaction of the explosion in the first place.

Nevertheless, we made it out of there safely.

So now we sit here blogging at a KOA in Astoria, Oregon. It is a lovely port city where the Columbia River meets the Pacific Ocean. John Astor founded this town as a fur trading post for the northwest. A few years prior to that Lewis & Clark spent the winter of 1805-1806 making moccasins, writing in their journals and waiting for a ship to take them back east (which never came). I find that the WiFi signal at this KOA to be particularly stronger than WiFi signals of KOAs past. I wonder if Lewis & Clark had the same signal when they were blogging....

It also turns out that this town is where Goonies was based on and also filmed.