Be Careful What You Wish For

Randle, Washington          High 75 Low 48

The rain quit late last night. Today we woke up to cloudy skies, which slowly gave way to sunshine.

We went for a ride, which I will talk about further on, and when we got back to the trailer, it was 75 degrees outside and over 80 inside. We had to turn the air conditioning on! The forecast for next week is up into the 80s. Better than being cold all the time.

From yesterday’s post, I was asked if our site was as unlevel as it looked and if I still liked the Level-ups. I had to answer Jan that I had no idea if the site is level or not and that the Level-ups are the best thing since sliced bread. They make it so easy to get level that is doesn’t matter too much what you start with. This Park has some peacocks walking aroung, including one white one. I couldn't get a better picture of it.

Just before noon we left to drive to see Mt. Saint Helens. The road to the view point at the top isn’t too good part of the way and it twists and turns so much that it takes a while to get the 32 miles we drove. It is quite scenic however. There are many places to stop and look at the scenery with pictures of what you are looking at.

At one of them there were a set of pictures a photographer took as the volcano erupted. One of the pictures told that he got 22 pictures in 30 seconds. Now days that probably would not be a problem, but in 1980 all they had was film, which would have had to be wound for every picture. It’s sure a lot easier now with digital cameras.

The pictures also said he had to race down the canyon to Randle to keep from being covered with the ash from the eruption.

There are several lakes along the way and I walked to one of them. It was a nice alpine lake. One of the stops had a view of Spirit Lake, which I thought was covered with ice, but found out at the next stop that we were looking at floating rubble from the eruption. It looked like about half the lake was covered with floating logs and debris.

This looked like dirty snow, but is actually debris.

The last stop is what is called Windy Ridge. There is a stairway to go to the top of a hill to get a better view, but I didn’t go up because Cindy still isn’t walking too well. This is the stop that lets you see Spirit Lake and where a lot of the slides went down the hill.

Another stop had a view of Mt. Adams, Mt. Hood in Oregon, and Mt Saint Helens.

Mt. Adams covered with clouds.

Mt. Hood in Oregon.

Mt. Saint Helens.

It made an interesting day.

Thanks for visiting.