Mt. Saint Helens and the Ape Caves

What started out as a great idea to show Keiko (our Japanese exchange student) a new part of the region, turned into a great idea with a few unexpected "kinks" in the schedule...

We convinced our wonderful friends to join us on our adventure and they were really gung ho! I called and reserved 2 sites the booking agent recommended as being close to the Ape Caves, figured out a fun itinerary for the day, and we packed up and headed out.

We drove up to the first visitor's center on the road to St. Helens, and this is what we saw:

We played at the first place for while, 

but when the secretary assured us that that Johnston Ridge had a view straight into the crater, we went on up. We loved the view from up here!

The wildflowers were gorgeous.

The feeling of being high above the clouds was really fun.

And the view was gorgeous! (It's too bad I can't do a panoramic.)

Cliff, Jason and the kids went in to check out the movie while Molly, Elliot and I stayed out to enjoy the view. To our surprise one of the rangers gave a very fun, entertaining, and informational presentation right out at the base of the mountain. He talked about and showed pictures of the days leading up to and the day of the eruption and included pictures of before and after. 

He used a measuring tape and then said the days leading up to the eruption there was bulge that developed and grew out 5 feet a day. Then the day before the eruption it bulged exponentially more (I don't remember how much... but it was enough that they knew to warn everyone to get off the mountain and that it would erupt soon). He ran all the way past those people to show how much change they measured.)

This is what the bulge looked like:

And the day of the eruption:

He explained that it was mostly out, not up. 

He used a shaken up soda can to talk about the pressure that was built up. People started moving their children... 

He used a whoopie cushion to talk about gas release. Nice.

And he used this Sumo Wrestler to demonstrate what happened to Spirit Lake when the first major landslide hit :) It made the lake's surface area double or triple in size.

When the cloud of ash and rocks came barreling down the mountain and into the surrounding valleys, it carried with it everything it passed over. It disintegrated the forests around it and picked up all the trees into it's cloud. Once it got too heavy to carry all of that it dropped the really heavy stuff, before continuing down the mountain and into the rivers. There were boulders the size of loaves of bread and bigger scattered all around us. And he said on nearby Mount Adams it started dropping some of the splintered trees that survived the burning in the blast.

Then once it dropped some of the heavy stuff, the gas that was left over rose into the air and looked like this mushroom cloud:

Keiko seemed pretty interested in the info and even got to listen to the inside movie in Japanese! Here's the whole family + Keiko:

After the visitor centers, we finally asked where our campsite and the Ape Caves were... because that's how we roll... by the seat of our pants. No planning whatsoever. Just figuring stuff out as we go.

It turns out that's not good.

There was no road straight around the mountain. The only way to get to the Ape Caves was 3 hours away. 3 HOURS!! Ugh. So we headed out. At least it coincided with the kids nap times. On the way we decided to try to figure out where the campsite was as well. Once we were turning back off of I-5 again, we figured out the campground (26 miles away from the Ape Caves) that I reserved with the agent was actually way back up north of the visitors centers... Soooo we determined that the agent gave us the closest campsite to the Ape Caves as the crow flies. Needless to say I wasn't very happy, but kicking myself all the while for not checking on everything myself... and even worse dragging Keiko and our (very patient) friends along on this mistake. Stay tuned to see if we get our money back.

So since we didn't have a campsite, we drove to the Ape Caves while the kiddos slept.

Thankfully, even when they were awake, they were in a pretty good mood.

We hit the Ape Caves around 4 pm when most of the people were leaving, which ended up being kind of nice! When Keiko saw that we were descending into the cave for our activity she smiled and said, "Ohhh!"



I'm glad she wasn't claustrophobic or anything. She had a great time and the kids did too. Jason, however, took a big spill and got really bloody,

and lets just say it's a good thing all the kids had helmets on! 









But despite the geographical hiccups and faulty itinerary planner, everyone seemed to have a good time...



and we got home by 10 pm. Unfortunately, Cliff got some food poisoning on the way home and got really sick a few hours after eating. Poor guy!

As a default to camping and while Cliff lay in bed sick from vomiting all night, I made a fire in the pit in the morning and we ate breakfast and had hot chocolate with marshmallows and swung in the hammock. :)