Mt. St. Helens

I'm writing this blog from our laptop in a hotel room in the teeny tiny town of Kelso, Washington (which ironically has much more to offer than Oak Harbor). We came down here for 4th of July weekend to visit Mt. St. Helens.

I have always been fascinated by Mt. St. Helens, mainly because I had a pen-pal in elementary school who lived on the Oregon/Washington border and she used to tell me stories about visiting the mountain. I also always thought that it was the only active volcano in the continental United States, which I was promptly proved wrong about the moment we moved to Washington.

So for anyone who's been living under a rock for the past 30 years, Mt. St. Helens, in southern Washington state, erupted on May 18, 1980 in a massive explosion that literally blew off the entire top and side portion of the mountain, caused severe damage to the area and towns around it, and killed 57 people.

(On a side note, I had a horrifying moment when I realized how old I was a few days ago. We were planning the trip and Mr. V told me that the National Forest Service has been celebrating the 30th anniversary of the eruption. I knew that it erupted a little less than a year before I was born in 1981, but I guess I just wasn't thinking because I said "30th anniversary? There's no possible way that it has already been 30 years. It erupted less than a year before I was born.....ohhh...." That would be the moment when I think it really hit me that I am almost 30 years old. But anyway, back to the trip...)

This is what the mountain looked like before the 1980 eruption:
A few weeks before the eruption, a bulge began to form on the north side of the mountain (following several weeks of earthquakes and some very minor eruptions). I honestly can't even imagine seeing this, knowing full well that there would inevitably be a massive explosion when this bulge broke through the surface.
And on May 18th, around 8:30 in the morning, this happened:


All that was left, when the eruption was over, was this:
I think its safe to say that Mt. St. Helens is no longer a beautiful, majestic mountain (although there is a lava dome in the center of it, formed by the mountain slowly starting to rebuild itself, so maybe it will be big and beautiful again in the future).

So yesterday, Mr. V and I set off to visit Mt. St. Helens. It was definitely a very cool thing to see. Unfortunately, it was cloudy, which is nothing new to Washington, so we actually couldn't see the whole mountain, but we were able to see the crater, and since the mountain has lost thousands of feet off the top of it, we were told that the clouds really weren't covering too much of it. If they had just lifted a tiny bit, we would have been able to see the top.

I'm just happy that we got to see anything, because based on normal weather around here, and the live webcam set up at the mountain's viewing site this morning, many people come out here and see absolutely nothing because of the fog and clouds. I wanted to see the part of the mountain that had been blown off, and I did, so I was happy :-).

(park ranger at the visitor's center - if you look at the picture he's holding you can see the lava dome that has been growing in the crater for the past few years

(me at the visitor's center - before I gave in to the cold weather and changed into warmer clothes)

(driving to Mt. St. Helens)

(This place is a small visitor's center and an A-frame house that was destroyed during the eruption. The house is half buried in the ash from the explosion.)

(This is at the A-frame house...because you can't go anywhere in the mountains of Washington without finding a giant bigfoot statue somewhere.)

(front of the A-frame house buried in the ash)

(side of the A-frame house - it was really weird/cool to me to think that I'm standing on 6 feet of ash that has now just become the normal ground.)

(back of the A-frame house - I'm looking into the second floor because you can see into the bedroom and you can see just how quickly these people's lives were destroyed. The bedroom is still set up like people are living there...only now its covered in ash and rotting away.)

(Bigfoot drinking coffee because Bigfoot and coffee go hand in hand in Washington!)

(the edge of the blast zone...This is a new bridge built in place of the old bridge that was washed away from the mudslides caused by the eruption.)

(everything within the blast zone area was destroyed or drastically affected by the eruption)

(Me with Mt. St. Helens behind me to the right!)

(Mt. St. Helens -look closely and you'll see that everything around it is nothing but fields and fields of piles of ash)

(piles and piles of ash at the bottom of the mountain)

(looking into the crater of Mt. St. Helens...apparently the top of the mountain is right where the clouds are. It was amazing to me that almost the entire mountain was just literally blown away.)

(me and Mt. St. Helens)

(another one of Mt. St. Helens and the ash)

(this is a little hard to see but this is directly across from Mt. St. Helens...there is nothing but trees that were knocked down from the blast and ash. It looked like a nuclear wasteland.)

(It was hard to get a picture but this is a memorial to everyone who died during the eruption, with the mountain behind it.)

(another one of me and Mt. St. Helens)

(This is the reason why I am here spending one of our vacation days writing a blog post. This is Mr. V at the start of a really hard trail that goes up to the lowest point of the crater. He is hiking this as I type. I knew he'd want to do some crazy hike so I brought along stuff to entertain me for the day while he's off hiking. The park ranger told us that people who are afraid of heights and who don't have good balance aren't recommended to take this trail because it apparently gets pretty narrow and steep. Not exactly my cup of tea.)

(the reason why I am not hiking with Mr. V right now)

(total destruction)

(more fallen trees and ash)

(me sitting on a volcanic rock at Crystal Lake. The lake was formed during the eruption and all around it are piles of rock and ash. It was amazing to me to see the rocks because I can't even fathom the idea of the earth literally spitting out rocks this big - and this was one of the smaller ones.)

(a pile of ash and rocks at Crystal Lake)

So happy 4th of July everyone! Assuming that Mr. V makes it back from his hike in one piece then we'll be checking out the fireworks in this tiny town tonight!

Reality Check

Have you ever had one of those moments where something just hits you? Kind of like "wow...I really live in Washington, its not just a vacation." Well, I already had my "I really live in Washington" moment and today I had my second reality check moment. An earthquake. Yes, thats right - an earthquake. In all fairness, I didn't know it was an earthquake at the time, but suddenly the fact that I live in a place that has several fault lines running underneath it, and is surrounded by 5 active volcanoes, seems a little scary.

Mr. V woke up this morning around 4:30 to get ready for work. Around 5:30ish, I woke up and felt the bed shaking. At the time I didn't think much about it. Whenever one of our cats stands up and stretches it makes whatever piece of furniture he/she is sitting on vibrate. In the past, whenever a cat has done that, we've joked around and said "Was that an earthquake? Nope, just a cat." Well, this morning I felt the bed shake and when I looked up to see which cat was stretching, I was a little surprised to see a bed free of cats. Again though, I didn't think much about it. I was annoyed that I had woken up and chalked it up to Mr. V making noise as he got ready for work.

It wasn't until a few hours later that I heard a news report that there was a 4.6 magnitude earthquake in Seattle at 5:30 this morning. The first shock I had was that I had no idea you could feel a 4.6 earthquake (sometimes I love the fact that I grew up in a bubble). The second shock was that not only can you feel a 4.6 magnitude earthquake, but Seattle isn't just right down the road from us. Its close, but at the same time, not really. Which means that if the epicenter was directly below Seattle, and it could be felt here on Whidbey Island, then I better learn something about earthquakes!

I have to admit that I have a mixture of shock and denial about the whole thing. Part of me thinks its pretty cool that I felt it. Mr. V claims that he didn't feel anything, but he was rushing around getting ready for work at the time and not in a still position anywhere. He originally told me that I was imagining things and there is no way I felt anything. He ate his words though when he pulled up a map of the area. The map was various different areas surrounding Seattle and it was colored in to show how much of the quake was felt by people. Whidbey Island was entirely colored in, with most of it showing that people felt mild vibrations, while a few on the south end felt moderate movement.

Soooo yeah...this was a wakeup call. I don't do well with natural disasters. I grew up in a place that rarely had any type of natural disaster. Maybe a blizzard here and there or a small hurricane, but thats all. Earthquakes are a new thing to me.

Add this to the fact that I just finished watching the news where they reported on today's earthquake and compared it to the earthquake Seattle experienced in 2001. Apparently they occured along the same fault line and they were nice enough to show me some scary pictures of the damage from 2001. They went on to talk about a volcano that's about to erupt in Alaska, and how that is not connected to today's earthquake here (at least, not that they know of). However, they did point out that this area is surrounded by 5 active volcanoes, one of which erupted 28 years ago (Mt. St. Helens) and has been recently rebuilding itself. A news reporter cheerfully pointed out that a severe earthquake in this area could possibly trigger volcanic activity. Awesome.

So that was my wakeup call. Earthquakes and volcanoes. Not exactly something I have prior experience in, and not something that I hope to gain experience in. I can handle a faint rumbling, but anything more than that is going to send me packing back to the east coast!