Before I go any further I have to tell you yesterday was a red letter day, the first day since we retired we made money!! Judy won $16.50 playing card bingo. This was significant!!
It was beautiful today, lots of sun and hi 70s. We drove to Mt St Helen, about 120 miles although we are probably about 50 miles, at most, from it. We passed a tulip nursery on the way, checkout the flower I picked for myself. The local short cut passes are still closed due to snow. The local paper said the average snowfall is about 550 inches, they got 890 this winter, that's about 72 FEET of snow. I have seen pictures of the mountain before but really never grasped the significance of the eruption until we saw it ourselves. The top of the crater is 1 1/2 miles across. There is now a glacier that's 500 feet thick inside the crater. Mt Rainier was nothing compared to seeing St Helen today. Today was the 28th anniversary of the eruption so there was a special presentation at the Johnson Ridge Observation across from St Helen where you can look right into the crater. My pictures do not do justice to the mountain and what happened here.
