Mt. St. Helens and onwards to the coast

Garrett and I made our first camping breakfast the next morning. Again, we were a little unskilled, but figured it out eventually. The main problem we had was that the propane bottle we were using turned out to be almost empty, and we didn't realize it until we had tried to cook for about 20 minutes. After replacing it with a new bottle, our cooking speed improved and we polished off our breakfast of eggs, bacon and hashbrowns.

By 10am, we were packed up and on the road again, on our way to Mt. St. Helens. The Mt. St. Helens National Volcano Monument is found within the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. The road towards the mountain is long and winding, but quite scenic. We took our first pictures while still quite a distance away from the volcano, but you can clearly see the swath of mud that flowed down from the explosion 28 years ago. This stretch used to be the Toutle River, but it was basically completely buried.Mt. St. Helens was shook by a magnitude 4.5 earthquake on March 20th 1980. This event destabilized the volcano, and steam started pouring out of the mountain. In addition, the north side of the mountain started to bulge over the course of the next month. Almost 2 months after the initial earthquake, on May 18th, a second, magnitude 5.1 earthquake again rocked the volcano, causing a massive collapse of the north face of the mountain. The below pictures shows me to the northwest of the volcano.The collapse of the north side created a huge landslide down the side of the mountain, and was immediately followed by a huge explosion out the side of the volcano. This lateral explosion was a unique event in volcanology, since a lateral explosion had never been documented before. The data and evidence from the Mt. St. Helens' explosion helped explain some bizarre geology around other volcano structures around the world. This explosion caused pyroclastic flows, which consisted of hot gas and rock traveling along at speeds of 80km/hr.The lateral explosion instantly vaporized the glacier that was on the top of Mt. St. Helens, creating millions of tons of water that mixed with the landslide and swept down the mountain and away. This mudflow ran down the Toutle river for miles, as seen in the first picture above.Subsequently, the volcano began pumping millions of tons of rock and gas into the air, creating a plume 20 to 27 km high. The devastation from the explosion was widespread, and 57 people in the proximity of the mountain were killed. As well, it is estimated that 7000 big game and 12 million fish from a hatchery were also killed. Lastly, 200 homes were destroyed or extensively damaged.The landscape was devastated for over 630 square kilometers, and much of it remains barren nowadays.There is a large area of the devastation zone that was repopulated with fir trees, however it is quite unnatural looking because all of the trees are identical in size and type.Before the explosion, Mt. St. Helens was the fifth largest mountain in Washington, at a height of 1525m. After the explosion, it lost 400m of peak and was left with a crated 3.2km wide and 800m deep. This is what the mountain looked like before when it was called "Mount Fuji of America":And here it is after the explosion:It looks like half the mountain was blown away! The crater has even filled in over the years from continual magma spewing. Plus, a whole new glacier has formed within the crater, creating the newest glacier on earth.Garrett and I drove out to the Johnston Ridge Observatory to learn all about the explosion and take in the view. The day was sunny and clear, if a little hazy, but since the volcano creates much of the haze from the steam is pumps out, there wasn't much to be done about it.Within the observatory, we got to see the seismographs that record any seismic activity in the crater:We saw the damage caused by the explosion on trees:We learned that when the volcano is more active than usual, they send in little spider probes to check out what's going on, rather than humans. This is a good idea, since this little guy (below) got exploded during his trip:After touring the observatory, we sat through a brief movie about the explosion and then read some of the survivor's stories. These in themselves were so interesting - some people had truly amazing stories about surviving the explosion. After taking a few more pictures, we ate some lunch in the parking lot before heading back out of the park.The next phase of our trip involved driving through into Portland, Oregon, and then heading towards the western coast. We arrived at Lincoln City on the coast around 6pm, finding a nice campsite at the Devil's Head State Park. We made a hearty dinner of Kraft Diner and hotdogs, as well as some hot chocolate. Pretty good day, after all.

A long day of driving

In the morning, Bill and Deanna made us an excellent blueberrry pancake breakfast before we hit the road. We had planned our first two days of vacation to have a fair amount of driving, so we set out fairly early from Bill and Deanna's place. We crossed the border just before noon and headed across Washington.Prior to this trip, I had only been on the west coast of Washington, near Seattle, and had assumed all of Washington was green, lush and mountainy. However, we learned that most of Washington is a DESERT!! It was pretty boring.Eventually we made it Yakima, where we stopped in at a Super Walmart to pick up food and supplies. Then we continued on towards the Mt. St. Helen's area, passing by Mt. Rainier on the way.Garrett took a picture of me in front of Mt. Rainier, but you ended up being able to see only me.There was also this rock formation at that viewpoint, called "palisades".Here's a typical picture of Garrett from our trip:I would just hang out while he took all the pictures he liked. I didn't mind, since it meant he got some really great shots that I can use on my blog!

After stopping to see Mt. Rainier, we went on a big of a wild goose chase, trying to find a camp site. Eventually we found one around 8pm in a town called Mossyrock. The campsite was mainly RV based, but had tenting sites in a sloped field. We didn't get a great site - pretty tilted, however we had other problems our first night of camping. First, once we stopped and went to get our jackets to stay warm in the cool evening air, we noticed that they were SOAKED! Smart kids that we are, when we put the ice in the cooler earlier that day, we didn't make sure the plug in the cooler was closed. As the ice melted, the water ran out of the plug opening and onto our jackets. Luckily the seats in the car didn't get wet at least...

Secondly, we arrived at the campsite in the near dark and pulled out our lantern, only to find there were no batteries in it. Apparently Garrett used to keep a box of batteries in the campsite bin, however when I was storing the bin and packing it for our trip, I took the batteries out of the bin. I didn't know why they were there! I found them under my sink when I got home from holidays.

Lastly, when Garrett and I unpacked the tent, we remembered that we hadn't dried it out from our trip up to Floe Lake. When we pulled it out, it smelled sort of fishy, like mold or bacterial growth. It remained smelling like that until we dried it in Amanda and Ray's backyard for a few days.

So, our first night car camping was a little rough. We did decide that backpacking is actually easier than car camping, because you need less stuff when backpacking! However, we had picked up a fire log from Walmart, so we weren't without fire completely. After the first night, we definitely fared better while camping.

The vacation starts! Kim and Garrett drive to Penticton.

Garrett and I started our holidays by driving down to Penticton, where my friends Bill and Deanna live. I've been friends with Deanna since highschool, and have known Bill nearly as long, since they started dating while we were all still in Gibsons. Now, they're all married up and recently upgraded their condo-style house to this three-bedroom deal:
Don't judge it from its outward appearance - it's a very nice house on the inside. It just needs some updating on the outside. Bill and Deanna have already done a ton of yard work, so it looks better than it did.We arrived in Penticton around 6:00pm on Friday evening and after a brief visit at their house, we walked over to Earl's for dinner. After dinner, we returned to their house and cracked open some beers and some wine. We chit-chatted and played some card games, including the game called Guillotine (borrowed from Garrett's sister). If you haven't tried this card game, you should - it's really fun.In addition to visiting, we were hugely entertained by Bill and Dee's kitties: Keeko and Luna.

This is Luna. She's the newest member of the household and is about 6 months old. She is super playful and quite snuggly, which is part of the reason they got her.Keeko, however, is not so impressed with the new cat.Keeko is a nice cat, although not totally a "people-cat", so Bill and Deanna adopted Luna to fulfill their needs for a snuggly kitty. Here's Luna snuggling:Luna snuggling Garrett:Luna, sleeping in Garrett's suitcase:Here's Keeko, not snuggling:Anyway, we had a delightful time (do I sound British?) visiting with my old pals, and it's really convinced Garrett and I to visit them more often if we can. Not only do we enjoy their company, but Penticton has awesome weather! It's so warm there and everything is still growing - not like old Edmonton out here.

Stay tuned!

Up and coming new blog entries soon to be revealed!

Garrett and I recently returned from our trip down to the U.S., where we stayed with my sister for a few days and traveled around for a few other days. I am currently uploading all the pictures and video, and will soon start to fill in the stories in all their glory. So stay patient, try not to be too bored with the lack of change here the past week or two. Excitement to come!

Calgary Zoo - babies galore

Garrett and I went to the Calgary Zoo last weekend and had a great time. Here is a whirlwind pictography of that trip and all the animals we saw. Truly, the Calgary Zoo is a great zoo.

First we entered the "Canadian Wilds", where we saw several moose!
North American porcupines (aka bad picture of porcupines)Bighorn sheep.Mountain goats.Woods bison.Baby woods bison.Muskox.Burrowing owls.Whooping cranes.Wolf (he didn't seem happy and was pacing in his pen).Bald eagle.Grizzly bear.Grizzly bear again.Wild snake on the path.African Blue Bellied Roller with rock hyrax creeping in the background.Tortoise.Tortoise eating.
African porcupines.HIPPOS!!Hippo eating.Giraffes with baby giraffe in the front.Momma and baby giraffe.Momma giraffe licking baby giraffe.Baby giraffe tries to reach the ground.
Eurasion wild boar (had to look that name up again from the Calgary Zoo website).
Zebras and ostriches in the background.
Lionesses sleeping.Lioness and lion in the grass.At first, we thought the lions just loved each other, but we quickly realized they were sharing some food (meat!) together.Shortly after we walked away, the lion started roaring. It was unlike the typical tv/Disney lion's roar you usually hear, so I tried to record it. However as I looked away from the camera during filming, the camera drifted. Don't try to see anything from this video, just listen to the lion.Crazy, hey?
Fun-headed birds.Crocodiles.Daddy gorilla! He wasn't very friendly-like.I didn't actually take any pictures of the mommy gorilla, but I got some good ones of the 3 month old baby gorilla that she carried around. She put him down and he rolled into the hay.
Some other kind of monkey.Wild dogs.Emu.Parrot.Kangaroo.Flamingos.Monkeys!!!Camels.Snow leopard.Red panda.Snowy owl.Tigers!And now for the finale - the BABY ELEPHANT!!Some of you might know how much I love elephants, so poor Garrett had to run after me once I saw the baby elephant in the distance. We spent a fair amount of time watching the elephants, and even sat through the informative show.I plan to expand on these pictures with a whole separate blog entry about elephants themselves, so I only showed a few of the many pictures I actually took.This big guy is the one male elephant at the zoo. He actually has tusks, although he broke one awhile ago and the zookeepers stuck a synthetic tooth cap on the end for him.