5/19/05
We are stayed at Seaquest State Park which is at the entrance to the north highway leading to Mount Saint Helens. Again it was rainy and quite cool. We left about noon today to go to Mt. Saint Helens not knowing whether we would see much of the volcano because of the clouds. It is a 50 mile trip up and down mountains and through a heavily wooded area. About 20 miles before reaching the Johnston Viewing Center we began to see the devastation from this volcano. On May 18, 1981 it began with a 5.1 magnitude earthquake which triggered the collapse of the north side of Mt. Saint Helens. This formed the largest landslide in recorded history. In less than four minutes the blast flattened 230 square miles of forest. Trees over 10 miles north of the volcano were toppled by the 300-mile per hour blast. The plume of volcanic ash billowed 15 miles into the sky. In some areas the trees were planted back and are growing. But in the actual National Monument area no changes have been made so that geologists can observe the regrowth of the vegetation and animals. The trees in some areas are growing back. It is an awesome sight and sure shows the power of nature. When we arrived at the viewing center the mountain was nearly covered with clouds. We watched a movie about the eruption and then waited patiently for the clouds to move. The statistics we heard about this massive eruption were almost unbelievable. Finally the clouds did move so that we could get some good pictures but still not completely cloudless. It was most interesting to see the results of this horrible act of nature.