Travels

Paul Douglass

Member
Messages
4,984
Location
S E Washington State
I do not have a FW Hat so I can not put this in the "Sightings" thread, but I wanted to share my little camping trip I took last week. This was our maiden voyage with our trailer to a place with no hookups. We really roughed it. No electric power, no wifi, you know, the bare bones survival stuff.

This trip was set up with some of my wife's quilting friends. I knew only one of the other four families that went. That in itself was intimidating to me. I'm not a great social person. But it turned out to be a great time and I met some very nice people.

We went to a campground near Mount St. Helens, which was the latest volcano to erupt in the US, excluding Hawaii, of coarse. It blew in 1980 and it is seared into my memory. When the eruption occurred I was out on my property, where we live now, building a shed to store things in while I built my home. The boom from the explosion, was unbelievable, I live a little over 175 miles from the volcano and I felt as well as heard the blast and know immediately it was something awesome. I looked in the direction it came from and saw a massive cloud forming. Yep it scared me. I seriously though a bomb had been dropped on Seattle. I put my tools in my car and headed home to spend what remaining time we had with my family. I lived 11 miles from where I was at the time of the blast. By the time I reach the house we lived in, the cloud was already over us and the ash was starting to fall. I did not know yet that it was ash nor whether it was radio active dust. Being I live in the Hanford, Wa. area I was always very aware of radio activity.

Okay enough of reminiscing, back to the trip. I have to add that I visited Mt. St. Helens back in '82 or '83 and I was anxious to see how much difference there is now. The area is recovering, but it has a long ways to go.

First this is what the mountain looks like now from about 20 miles away.

small IMG_2601.jpg

This is it from as close as you can get without buying a permit to hike to the rim of it:

small IMG_2612.jpg

Spirit Lake at the foot of St. Helens. It is a large beautiful lake. The area in the right of the picture that looks like dirt up to the lake are actually logs that were blown into the lake from the blast. The lakes goes a long ways back behind the hill that is blocking the view of it and it is completely covered with these logs. These are not little logs, but old growth timber and huge logs.

small IMG_2605.jpg

This is a picture of Mt. Raineer. Another famous mountain (volcano) in the state of Washington. What is scary about it is lack of snow. This is the least amount of snow remaining on, at this time of the year, it since who knows when.

small IMG_2614.jpg

Okay, our primitive campsite. This is what roughing it is all about!

small IMG_2625.jpg

And last, this is the couple I knew before the trip. This was their maiden voyage in their new trailer. I really thought it was neat, but I show the picture, because my wife meant Jane through her little quilting club. They immediately became friends and through gabbing discovered the Ron and I had a lot in common. Ron is a wood worker, of all sorts. He had built a busker organ so we had a lot to talk about. We met during the time I was completing the building of my organ.

IMG_2627small.jpg
 
Last edited:
Sounds like a great trip, Paul. That's about as rough as we would be willing to get and it looks like fun. Amazing how some of the areas have started to re-vegetate.
 
Looks like a great place to spend a nice relaxing weekend!

I too remember when Mt. St. Helens blew, I was out fishing on a small lake with my two cousins, it sounded to us like someone was blasting not to far away.

When we went in later for lunch we heard on the radio about the eruption and figured out that is what we had heard, and we were about 290 miles away!

Great pictures.
 
Thanks for the pics, Paul. I can only imagine what those of you near Mt. St. Helens went through back then.

Looks like you found a beautiful campsite, and I like the looks of your new trailer. :thumb: I hadn't seen a pop-up quite like that before. (Although admittedly, I've not really kept up with the latest and greatest in that market.)
 
Top