Randle and Mt. St. Helens

All packed for the move from Seattle to San Francisco.

Since this is kind of our "honeymoon," we took five days to do the drive. On our way to Mt. St. Helens, we did a quick pit stop in Randle, where I worked in the summer of 1991 for the US Forest Service.

This is the Ranger Station out of which I was based.  It used to be called Randle, but since the Packwood station was closed an sold off, the two were merged and named Cowlitz Valley.

The TALL TIMBERS was a bar that we would hang out at....and it's still around, even remodeled and upgraded.

The bunks that Kristin, I and the other summer workers are still in use.

The forest road names are still the same.  The 23 and 25 roads!

The 25 road south out of Randle takes you to Windy Ridge from where you can take in the view of the crater of Mt. St. Helens.  Here we are on approach....

And here we are from Windy Ridge.  A small glacier is actually forming right near the bulge in the crater!

The plain that was directly in the blast zone.

Spirit Lake still has many of the dead logs floating on the surface.  Interestingly, the mudflows blocked the natural outlet of the lake into a fork of the Toutle River, so the Army Corps (or USFS) dug a tunnel that drains the lake.

Mt. Adams to the east.

The pattern of the trees blowndown....but also nature is doing its thing.  We stayed the night in Portland and on the Chinese food report front....yes, we ate Chinese food.