Day 21: Mount St. Helen's

Today started off with a bang!  Nike headquarters is in Beaverton, Oregon about 15 minutes from where we are staying.  They have an employee store there that is only for employees and their families.  Since Caroline and Kendall were with us and Big Sister Kaitlyn works for Nike...she got us a day pass to shop at the store!!!  We were there when it opened and there was a line to get in...

Scott and I had to show our ID's to get in and our paper work asked that we not wear any competitor brands into the store.   I was expecting it to be warehouse-ish or outlet like.  Oh NO!  It's a full legit Nike Store.

All the kids went NUTS!  Scattered in every direction.  I didn't even SEE Scott for about an hour!  While we were waiting for Scott to finish up, Caroline taught Mandy how to do lunges... (No clue.)

We spent an hour and a half shopping.  Bought 2 pairs of running shoes, 1 pair of slides, 1 pair of sandals, a backpack, a hoodie, 11 pairs of Nike elite socks, 5 packages of regular socks, 3 pairs of capri work out pants, 2 pairs of nike elite shorts, 10 assorted shirts, 2 headbands and 2 water bottles!!  Everything was half off and no sales tax.  We did some serious damage here!

From there we headed back to the state of Washington to see Mount St. Helen's.  The drive was much more fun and lively today with the addition of friends!

 It was another lush, green windy drive up to the visitor center.  The weather this morning was more traditional Pacific Northwest.  Not raining, but cloudy and overcast.  As we went up the mountain the temperature dropped to 54 degrees.  When we got out we were freezing!!

 It was all green and pretty until we got close to the blast zone...

Mount St. Helen's erupted on May 18, 1980.  A large part of the forest has been replanted by the forest service.  But, there are still huge areas where the trees are lying like toothpicks. 

Seismologists knew it was going to erupt, but what they couldn't have predicted was that instead of erupting out the top, it blew out the side of the mountain at 500 mph scattering ash for 22,000 miles.  Insane.  The sucker is still active too!  This is a picture from the visitor center taken at 9:45 a.m. in one of the nearby cities.  The ash was so think it looked like night. I actually remember this as a kid.  I remember there was ash on the hood of our car and that all the apples that year had ash in the indention by the stem.

 We hiked up Johnston's peak to get a great view....of a cloud covering up the mountain!

A couple of ladies walking by while we took this told us we had a "pretty family!"  I'm sure people look at all of us and can't figure out if they are all ours or not!

The visitor center was great, had lots of good information and the kids actually looked at it! 

 Their favorite was the seismology counter/tracker register thing.  They figured out if they all three jumped at once they could make a really big wave on the tape!

There are tons of scenic turn-outs and picnic areas around the mountain.  We pulled in this one that led to one of the several lakes.  You could walk right down to the water. It was so pretty and peaceful and you could see straight to the bottom the water was so clear.

The water was freezing..it does come from a glacier after all, but they decided they were going to wade in to this fallen log...

The water was a little too deep for wading for Mandy so she got a lift from her big brother!

It turned into an unexpected photo session. The scenery was just too pretty not to take a few pictures!

After our impromptu photo shoot, we hung out in the parking lot and played a little volleyball! Note: they are wearing their new Nike elite socks!

We ate dinner at a cute little restaurant...

Then, on our way back to Portland, we stopped at one more farm to pick berries!!

Mrs. Carol, Jane's mom, made us all these awesome Texas shirts!  Everywhere we went today people asked us about them and wanted to know where in Texas we were from.

We picked blackberries and raspberries!

After this we were all pretty much done.  We came back to the hotel and had a quick swim, then showers.  We've packed up so we can make a speedy exit in the morning and get on the road to Idaho! We are spending tomorrow night in Boise.

Blessings,

Leslie