Russ and Rob's Travels: Mt St Helen

Mount St Helens is an active Volcano and is remembered for its catastrophic eruption in May 1980. It was the deadliest and most economically destructive volcanic event in the history of the United states. 57 people were killed , 250 homes , 15 miles of railways and 185 miles of highway was destroyed. More than 200 square miles of forest was turned into grey lifeless landscape. After 26 years the land has mended well and without walking the long trails we could see no real evidence left of this event.

Prior to the eruption Mount St Helens was 9677ft high but now sits at 8365ft.

We could only see the mountain from two advantage points as the access road where we could get up closer to the mountain was closed. We are assuming because it is snowed in. We also opted not to travel around the western side of the mountain because of the distance and time to travel there so we missed out on seeing the visitors centre.

Leaving St Helens we were on our way to Portland. After crossing the “Bridge of the Gods “ we left Washington behind and were now in Oregon, a state larger than Washington but only having half the population.

We only skimmed the outskirts of Portland but have been told that it is an alternate town having more strip clubs per head than Las Vegas or New York and more parks than any other city in the US. This area has more than half a million people. Leaving Bonneville at the base of the "bridge of the Gods" we travelled along part of the historic Oregon trail to Portland following the Columbia river. We stopped off at Wood village where we went to Camping world to see about RV maintenance. Our radiator had been running a little hot on the climbs so wanted it looked at. They did not do Radiators so we phoned and booked in at a radiator specialist in Portland. We went to an RV park for the night. The following morning was an early start as we had to be there for 7.30am. Russ and I drove the 12 mile to Portland and Geoff and Kienny collected us mid morning when we realised the repairs would take most of the day. Our time was filled in at the mall and we had a beautiful Italian lunch at a nearby restaurant.

After collecting the RV late afternoon we headed out of town towards the Pacific coast.... it appeared that that was where everyone else was headed too..... busy... busy... busy...