Mt. St. Helens

We had a perfectly gorgeous few days last week to go camping and spend a day at Mt. St. Helens. It is an incredible spot...the various visitors centers, learning center and interpretive center are so well done, with extremely knowledgeable park rangers as well. (On this trip to the northwest, we have been highly impressed with the park rangers from the various branches of our national government who work at these sites.) We live in the tornado part of the country, I know...but I think I prefer that to living in the path of a volcano. The destruction that MSH brought on the countryside is unbelievable...rather than erupting out of the top of the volcano, as was originally expected, professionals watched as a great big bulge began to grow out of the side of MSH...and when it erupted, it literally blew out the side of the volcano, levelling trees like matchsticks for miles, many of which can still be seen lying on the ground, burying Spirit Lake and giving birth to a new Spirit Lake at a higher level, above the debris that the volcano deposited on the old lake bed. School children who live in the valley of MSH and Mt. Ranier do not have tornado drills, but rather volcano drills - involving seeing how fast you can run and vacate the area, so I was told by a retired school teacher in our church.

Thanks for staying with us on our journeys...we feel we have really had the opportunity to see this part of the country, and have enjoyed all of it. In our family, Jo & Scott have celebrated their 14th wedding anniversary, and Carla is back at work at her church following a most successful sabbatical journey all around the US. You can read about her journey on her blog at

http://cjtacky.blogspot.com/ We'll be talking to you later!!

Mother-Daughter road trip - fabulous!

It was my privilege to ride with Carla on the next leg of her sabbatical journey - and we headed for the coast and took off on Highway 101, traversing all of the Oregon coast and into northern California. And we made memories--crossing the Megler-Astoria bridge, the last link in Highway 101 connecting Canada to Mexico; staying in Astoria, the oldest settlement west of the Rockies; seeing Lewis & Clark sites, like the "end of the trail" statue in Seaside, and Ft. Clatsop, where they spent their last winter.l On the coast of Oregon, we saw the remains of the Peter Iredale ship which crashed in 1906; and we drove a portion of the beach as a highway--what a thrill! We climbed to the top of the Yaquina Lighthouse and feasted on clam chowder at Mo's in Newport. In California, we hiked in to Stout Grove in the Jedediah Smith Redwoods, drove the Avenue of the Giants to view those magnificent redwoods up close and personal...driving through one, standing inside another. We picnicked on the beach, walked on the beach, found sand dollars, learned how to dig for clams, saw the water spout of a whale, stayed in the most magnificent B&B in Waldport OR with a view I'll never forget, and made new friends along the way. Thank you, Carla, for including me in your sabbatical journey.

Our final day we knew our drive would take us through Healdsburg CA on our way to Stockton CA for our last night...and we also knew that some of our good friends were vacationing there over the holiday weekend...so, thanks to cell phone communication, we caught up with each other and were able to meet for coffee. The Garretts (Monett MO) and the Griffins (Geneva IL) have been friends of ours for many years, and it was so good for our hearts to have a little bit of time with them.