Working on the Bucket List

J and I made a list of the things we most wanted to do before leaving beautiful Washington state.  Tops on our list was Mt. St. Helens -- partly because we'd never been there and partly because J lived in Portland when it blew.  He has great memories of ash covered lawns and such, but had never seen the mountain afterwards.

It is about a three hour drive each way, so ideally we would have done this trip over two days and had more time at the mountain.  But with J having already moved to our new location (spoiler alert) we only had a few weekend days to make this happen.  He was visiting us one weekend and the weather looked good, so we decided to check it off the list.  Good thing we did, since we didn't end up with any other days it would have worked.

We had a beautiful drive down, stopping in Chehalis to get snacks at Starbucks (somehow I packed lunch and an afternoon snack, but nothing to eat in the car on the way there!)  We got off I-5 to turn towards the mountain and the day was clear and sunny.  Pretty soon we started to have sneak peeks of the mountain - we'd come around a bend and there it was, oh wait now its gone again.

We got there just before lunch.  The movie was fun, especially when the curtains open at the end and there it is!  The gift shop was busy, but everyone was pleased with their purchase.  Baby J, now known as Monkey, got a stuffed river otter which he named Thomas.  Thomas is the first of a new flock of stuffed animals he chose at various gift shops this summer, all named after trains.  We did a short little hike.  The lowlight was when we went back to the car to make our sandwiches and realized that the only knife we had to make sandwiches was a plastic Starbucks knife.  Picture me standing next to the van, spreading cold peanut butter very slowly, so the knife wouldn't break.  But once everyone finally had something to eat, it was all fine.  One other funny thing from the day:  we checked the weather and it said 80 degrees.  So we let the kids all wear shorts.  Fortunately, we packed spare pants and sweatshirts because as soon as we opened the van door in the parking lot, everyone was "freezing!"  Time for a quick change in the car.

A few pictures from the day:

S is apparently using the force to make me stop taking pictures.  We also have a few of the five of us, but for some reason, even though we are standing in front of the mountain, the tourist who took it opted to frame the picture with only one third of the mountain.  Like this:

It was cool to see the smoke coming up from the lava dome, and talk about how the mountain is still active.  We also stopped by Coldwater Lake, but only Monkey and I got out of the car, so no good pictures.  This was definitely one of those places that was worth more time than we gave it, but we enjoyed what we saw.  Someday, when we are one of those families that can leave the house at 6am, we'll have more time for these adventures, but until then...