The plan for today was to drive to Seattle, and on the way, take a detour to Mt. Rainer Nation Park. Unfortunately, it was overcast and the ceiling was very low, so any attempt to see a mountain that is over 14,000 ft. would have been fruitless. We decided   instead to head to Seattle and let the day tell us what we should do. And it did. We left the hotel in Portland at 9:00 AM, 57 degrees and pointed the Highlander north. And less than five minutes later, we were in Washington State.

Washington reminds me of Maine. The grass is green and trees are plentiful…tall spiny pine trees of all kinds, interesting species of oak and birch, and my very favorite, full and shady maple trees. I-5 showed them all to us, in all of their splendor, all living together and providing a tapestry of many shades of green. And it soon became clear that one prime industry in Washington is harvesting trees, because we saw log haulers everywhere loaded high and heavy with long straight debarked logs going to sawmills to be turned into lumber and paper.    

A short way up the road we stopped in Castle Rock for gas and it became apparent that this was the exit to Mount St. Helens, the volcano that erupted so violently in 1980 and send a cloud of gray ash into the atmosphere, traces of which were found all over the world. We discovered that the Visitor's Center was only 5 miles up the road, so we decided to go and check it out. We were told that the road up to the mountain was 60 miles long and the elevation of the peak was 8,000 feet. We though there might be an opportunity to see it if the ceiling lifted. So we diverted our path and took a chance.

The road up to the mountain took us through the State Park, into "Big Foot Country", winding through the mountain passes, up then down and up again, to about 6,000 feet. And everywhere we stopped, we strained our eyes to try and identify the big one, but there were many peaks out there and most of them were shrouded by the clouds. Eventually we got to the observation center which looks right across the lava field to Mount St. Helens, but alas, what we saw were pools and trails of snow filling the gaps and ridges of this immense gray rock, with a halo of thick gray and white billowy clouds hovering all around it, protecting it from view. The sun made a valiant effort to burn through, but it never did.

I have to say a few words about the photos. In the valley, you can see what looks like a dried up river bed, but it is actually the lava flow with a river running through it and areas of green where the park service has planted grass. The photos of Mount St. Helens show the devastation that the eruption caused…there are large areas of mountain sides with bare ground littered with broken gray wood that used to be trees and many tree stumps where they cut the tree ruminants away. And you can tell that something disastrous happened there. Other hillsides were planted with millions of trees over the years. There are several photos where you can see these trees all growing in unison, all the same species, all the same size and age…the photos are not blurry as they appear. This is an illusion produced by the trees.

After turning the car around and heading back down through the mountain range, we were in stop-and-go traffic most of the way to Seattle. As in Portland, it seems that the north west is having difficulty managing traffic issues. I don’t know how these people do it.