It was a blast!

We've lived in White Salmon for 6 1/2 years now. During that whole time, some college friends of ours--Sterling & Julie--have lived four hours away in Seattle.  Until May, we've never gotten together. We kept talking about it, but just never made it happen until we found out Sterling was accepting a job transfer and they were moving back to Massachusetts!

Julie, Sterling, and their 2 sons

So in mid-May we met Sterling and Julie and their two boys at a hotel in Kelso, Washington on a Friday night. We had adjoining rooms and the kids played while the adults caught up. Everyone went to bed pretty late, but we made it up in time for breakfast and a dip in the hotel pool before heading up the highway to Mt. St. Helens.

We had been wanting to visit Mt. St. Helens and Julie had never been either. (Sterling grew up in Washington, so I think he'd been there before.)  Squeezing in a volcano visit with the McMillans before their departure seemed a great way for Sterling & Julie to combine two must-do activities before they left the Northwest.
We regularly drive I-84, the east-west freeway that connects Portland and the Columbia Gorge. I-84 is south of Mt. St. Helens, and from it, on a clear day you can make out the mountain's sloping sides and flat top in the distance.  I had never, however, seen the Mt. St. Helens from the north, and was amazed at what I saw as we drove up the mountainside towards Johnston Ridge Visitors Center, where I was keen to go and learn all about the May 18, 1980 eruption.

Look at that! It's as though the whole side of the mountain was just scooped out! I was in awe.

This photograph gives a little bit better perspective of where Johnston Ridge is and of the path of the debris rushing down from the mountain. 

As one of the rangers at the Visitors Center said of the mountain, "She didn't so much blow her top as lose her head." The whole side of the mountain had been bulging outwards, increasing by about 5 feet per day, in the weeks preceding the blast.  Then the pressure was just so great that the mountain basically just gave way and slid down, burying the forest for miles and miles and sending ash more than a hundred miles away. 

This view is to the northeast of Mt. St. Helens.

When you see the tall trees and green forest of the surrounding mountainsides, or even lower down on  Mt. St. Helens outside of the blast zone, it really helps you understand the magnitude of the dirt and rock that came rushing down/out of the volcano.  It has been more than twenty years and it is still pretty much a barren wasteland. 

Trees were sheared off, completely uprooted, and thrown downhill.  We could still see stumps and logs lying beside the paths.  The devastation wrought by the volcano was still so evident, and that was so amazing to me since it erupted two decades ago.  It was powerful.

 

The kids and adults alike really enjoyed the exhibits and activities at the Johnston Ridge Visitors Center and hiking up for more views of the surrounding valleys.  It's a bit of a drive to get there, since you have to go for about an hour east of the freeway (and for us, that's after coming west--it's the only way to get there), but it's definitely worth it.

 

The kids all got along with each other and the adults sure enjoyed catching up.  Damon and Sterling were freshmen at MIT together and have known each other since Damon joined the Church. I met Sterling after his mission, a year before I met Damon. The four of us were all in a ward together as undergrads and continued to socialize after we were married (about 6 months apart). Sterling and Julie even surprised us by showing up at our wedding reception in Salt Lake City! Even though they were living in Massachusetts at the time, they happened to be in Utah to see family a few days before our reception and arranged their plans to stay and see us.  The last time we'd seen them was at a going-away party ten years ago when they left Massachusetts for Washington.  Still, we'd always kept in touch and it was so great to see them and wish them well again before their next move.  With any luck, it won't take us another decade to see them again.