Camping in Gifford Pinchot National Forest

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Robert as "Firestarter". He has the patience of a saint...you can't see the 3 stacks of nice DRY wood he was using this time, as the first night he spent maybe 2-3 hours trying to make some other wood burn. In the end it never really did quite work & we ended up switching over to the coleman stove! But Saturday we had a perfect fire! (I think I'm supposed to mention something about perfect coals as well...) Being a Nanfei Ren (South African), Robert had somehow missed out on all the glory of smores! I was certain he must have been kidding me, but no, it's true...the Roasted Marshmallows were old hat, but he'd never heard of smores! I was only too excited to share this special camping treat! This was just before the first bite:
It was a success...he had 3!
On Sunday we went to Mt St Helens. I've been in Oregon 10 years & still had NEVER BEEN. I know, I know, bad northwesterner! But truthfully, the volcano erupted in 1980! I was in the first grade! that's 26 years ago...I mean...it's not like I would have seen anything, right? it's not going to be oh so much different from Mt Hood or Mt Adams, right?

Yes, those really are dead trees, and they really are leftover from the eruption! I was blown away. I've never in my life seen a place of such destruction. It was beyond words to describe it, even 26 years later.

Unfortunately this is all you can see if Mt St Helens on that day, it was a bit too cloudy!

You can see this wide riverbed flowing in front of the Mountain. The amazing part is, before the eruption, this was a lush green heavily forested valley, with a BIG river flowing through it. When the volcano erupted, the ash went down the mountain but so did all of the snow that was on top of it, bringing down trees & mud and filling the river with mud. You can see a tiny stream running through the middle of what was once a great river. The water, as I understood it, was abosrbed into all the mud or forced out with the great rush of debris and sand and mud and formed lakes elsewhere.

Amazingly, one of the largest logging companies owning land in this area agreed not to log until 2010. To forgoe logging for 30 years in one area is pretty amazing. The unfortunate part is when you see this, you kind of get the feeling that the area could really use another 30 years.