MOUNT ST. HELENS

7-2-2012

Plan: drive to Mt. St. Helens, visit couple places, hike few shorter trails and spend night in Packwood, between Mt. Helens and Mt. Rainier National Park. Second day, drive to three main settlements in park, again hike few short trails and drive home in the evening. Not enough time to see everything, but we are running out of days to play.

We were planning to leave in the morning (about 8 am). But when i checked the map and distances, I thougt it would be better to leave earlier, so we did (there was some complaining) leave at this time.
I-405 (towards Renton)
I-5 (towards Portland)
Spirit Lake Highway - 504 (towards Mt. St. Helens)
The last road ends at the monument building with the view of volcano.

The drive on freeway was boring. We were a bit early for visitors center, that opened at 9.00 am. Not very helpfull anyway. And then 50 miles of driving towards the volcano. It was really nice drive, not many cars, pretty views.

The weather was not the best, but I guess it could be worse. Around 10.20 we arrived to Johnston observatory. Huge parking lot was pretty empty.

We saw the exhibit in the center, walked around and saw the volcano. It was interesting, the weather could be nicer, but that is the life. After a while we started to drive back (quite long drive). We had to get back on I-5 and drive additional 21 miles south.

After relatively long driving we ended up at Lava Canyon trail. The weather got nicer, mostly sunny and we really enjoy 1 mile long trail.

The drive took longer then we thought, so we were heading into the evening pretty quickly. More driving, we wanted to see another major site: Windy ridge (and were hoping for some nice and full views of St. Helens). We stopped by another small visitor center and were told, that Windy ridge is still closed (due to snow). We were not very happy about that. So we figured out, we will stopped along the way few times and then head to Packwood for the night. So we kept driving. The we saw some snow (IN JULY):

We checked the closed road:

We stopped by the waterfalls (just .1 mile from the road). The view to enjoy. And then we continue going to Packwood. Road nr. 12 was going through the valley (on both side we could see mountains) and was longer then I thought. Packwood (around 7.30 pm) was small town, some restaurants, motels and hotels and not much more. Our motel was pass the town and looked wierd. It was empty (and looked like it was being sold). But it was ok.

http://mountsthelens.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_St._Helens
http://www.fs.usda.gov/mountsthelens/
http://www.mshinstitute.org/



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