Mount St. Helens and Mount Rainier

Why putting these two together? Well, we went to see Mount St. Helens but didn’t see much because of the cloud cover, so I don’t have any photos to show you. We also went to Mount Rainier and I do have photos of that.

Mount Rainier

The drive from Yakima to Mount Rainier held such diverse landscape from barren looking hills to lush ferns and trees covered in moss.

Then we arrived in Mount Rainier Park

Driving towards the mt	Entrance to the park
Runoff path	Close up of run off path from spring snow melt. Can you imagine it full of raging water?
There she is!	Opposing mt range has it own beauty
Love this shot through the window	Here we are enjoying the view

Mount St. Helens

Our trip from Kelso, WA to Mount St. Helens was different. We drove through clouds and misting rain. The signs of devastation was extraordinary. May 18, 1980 brought a lot of pain.

As we arrived at the Johnston Observatory the most amazing thing happened. As we were going in a friend named Carolyn Wilkerson was going out. What’s the chances? Carolyn is a “classmate” as she and her late husband, Keith, went fulltime RVing in 2007, the same as Jim and I. Carolyn also came up from New Mexico this summer and visited us in South Fork.

The film presentation was every bit as good as everyone us it would be!  Unfortunately, at the end of the film and they open the curtains this is all we saw.

Although we didn’t see much of the mountain, it was a great experience and I’m glad we came to see her.

Remember, you are loved.

Columbia River Gorge

We are staying at the LePage COE (Corp of Engineers) Park in Rufus, Oregon, near John Day Dam on the Columbia River Gorge.  We took a drive yesterday that had us going west on Highway 14 on the Washington side from the John Day Dam to Portland.  Then we crossed over to the Oregon side and drove back on the Historic Highway 30.

I can’t come up with sufficient words to describe this drive.  Neither Jim nor I have spent any time in the Washington/Oregon area, so the foliage and types of trees are unfamiliar to us.  There is definitely some invisible line of demarcation where you go from barren, brown soft mountains to dense, green, and wet foliage and tall, tall trees.

		Columbia River Gorge VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Driving east back on the Oregon side we saw so many beautiful waterfalls. There are like 77 waterfalls, but we only stopped at a few of them.

 

 

  Latourell Falls 

 

 

 

 

 

       

 

       Wahkeena Falls

 

 

 

 

 

Then, of course, you have Multnomah Falls. Absolutely spectacular!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The west end of the Columbia River Gorge is so lush and green….and, yes, it is always misting if not raining. It was such a stark difference from anything Jim and I have ever experienced!  We really enjoyed it.

Remember, you are loved.