Sorry these posts are so long, but since I'm using this blog as a family history I am now going to record the second half of our September camping trip! Optional reading below! Since my Camera was broken, I'm borrowing pictures off of the Web.
September 18thOur first day at Mt St. Helen's we had perfect weather! It was sunny and got up to 85 degrees! Of course it was much cooler up closer to the volcano, but I was just SO excited to get to see the mountain with clear visibility! The last 2 times I had been there, it was gray, overcast, and drizzly. No fun! This picture below shows exactly what the mountain looked like when we were there.
After Julianna's morning nap, we drove up to the tippy top at Johnstone's ridge Observatory. We had some beautiful views! You could see right into the crater! You could even see volcanic vents in the cracks in one side venting steam. It was so awesome! We took a very very short hike since the kids were hungry and cranky. We played around at the visitor's center for a few hours and watched the movie twice. We enjoyed a nice picnic lunch. Julie and Angel both had a few temper tantrums from sheer exhaustion. On the way home, we decided to stop at their forestry center. Their exhibits were closed, but they had a wonderful park! We played there for about 2 hours until dinner time. We were too worn out to do much besides go back to camp, cook, eat & sleep. But the kids had had a terrific day learning all about the history of Mt.St. Helens and volcanoes in general. They park had a miniature Mt St Helens, and they all took turns climbing to the top and proclaiming themselves ruler of the volcano. Courtney was the first to climb to the top.
Saturday, September 20thThis was a big day. We left as early as we could after breakfast and took a long 2 1/2 hr drive to the south point of Mt. St. Helens. I had heard great things about the "Ape Caves", so named for the Boy Scout Troop who discovered it. (They called themselves the Mt. St. Helens Apes) They are one of the longest Lava Tubes in America. A Lava Tube is formed from an ancient lava flow. 3,000 years ago, Mt. St. Helens had a rare lava explosion. The lava flow cooled around the outside, but the lava still ran through the center, like milk through a staw. After several weeks (or months), the liquid lava ran out, and the tube was left hollow. We only discover lava tubes beneath the ground when a part of the roof collapses. These lava tubes at Mt. St. Helens were SO LONG. I had been under the impression it was an easy hike, but even the easiest route proved challenging or my little ones. We didn't dare touch the upper caves where you are required to scale 8 foot walls of boulders!
The only kid who really enjoyed it was Christopher. I also didn't expect that it was entirely undeveloped. No rangers go down there with you. There are no artificial lights. You are suppose to bring your own propane lantern and flashlights. It is PITCH BLACK down there, and a flashlight would never be good enough to make it through those tunnels. We ended up having to rent a propane lantern. At least we brought several flashlights! You really need both to hike safely, though, so be warned!
At first, everyone did okay. The tunnels were windy and cold, but it was sort of fun being in the dark with a great echo. But after an hour of hiking in the dark with REALLY RUGGED terrain underfoot, the kids got really weary....and bored. It's not like the Timpanogas Caves in Utah with beautiful colorful formations to examine. And it's nothing like Carlsbad Caverns. These lava tubes looked like an empty train tunnel with jagged uneven ledges all over the place. The top of the tubes looked like a subway tunnel.
Geologically speaking, it was fascinating, but it was over the heads of our little ones. We ended up making it to the very end of the tunnel where they have a small crawl space. The kid wiggled through on their bellies to get to a room at the very end that only little kids could reach. Christopher and Courtney were the only ones brave enough to make it. By this time Julianna had just had it. She was wailing non-stop. She was cold, hungry, and tired...but we were not allowed to bring food of any kind to cheer or warm her. All we could do was trudge the long hour back to the beginning. We sang lots of songs to lift the monotony, and to keep our sanity since by this point Julianna was wailing so loud we were silently praying that she wouldn't cause the lava tubes to collapse! Poor Scott had a terrible headache. Poor Julie was just sure we were torturing her. There was no point in stopping, though. The only thing we could do was endure on the way out. I had to carry Angel all the way piggyback since she just refused to walk another step. SO...I recommend this hike for kids 9 and up!
If I had been a wise woman, I would have called it a day and let my Honey just take us back to camp to relax. But no. I've inherited this mentality from my Dad, that when you go on a trip YOU PACK AS MUCH FUN INTO EVERY SPARE MINUTE THAT YOU CAN, and the more you do and see, the better. I had heard amazing things about the Lower Falls of the Lewis River. And we were only 45 miles from an amazing waterfall! I really wanted to see it, and check out the campground there to decide if we wanted to make a visit another year. So my sweet Hubby acquiesed.
The drive took longer than I expected...over 2 hours! I should have realized in the mountains that would happen. By the time we got there, Scott was exhausted and really put out with me. I took Christopher and Courtney on a super short hike where we gazed in wonder at a truly amazing falls for 30 + minutes. Scott, baby, Dora, and Angel all just wanted to stay in the car, but we went back and convinced them that it was worth seeing. It was only a 2 minute walk from the car. You could hear the water roaring from the parking lot, even though it was the dry season!
This one water fall looks like a minature niagra falls. It was so lovely. It had about 5 different falls on different sides of the ledges. The only scary part was: there are nearly no railings separating you from the falls. You can also walk right down to the water above the falls. There are signs everywhere warning you not to put even your foot in the water since the water looks deceptively safe...but people are swept over the falls to their deaths every year. So...as beautiful as it was, we are not going back there for many many years. I was terrified to put Julianna down for even a second. So...it was a really amazing view, but not worth the extra 3+ hours it cost us.
By the time we drove back into any kind of civilization, it was after 7 p.m. and we were all starving. We ended up going to a Chuck E Cheeses at a mall. The kids had a blast. Especially Julianna who really made up for the hours being trapped in the car by running around like crazy. She also ate about 4 pieces of pizza! The poor girl was starving! She was making up for all those dinners she had missed so far on our vacation. Embarrassing story: while running around playing, she actually walked right up to a family, took a piece of pizza off of a boy's plate, and stuffed it in her mouth! I was mortified, but all I could do was apologize for my 15 month old baby and offer to pay for the piece of pizza. The ladies (who were from India) were very gracious about it, considering Julianna stole it from THEIR baby!
Sunday, September 21st.On Sunday Scott really just wanted to stay at camp and have our own Sacrament meeting. But I felt strongly that if there was a church ward nearby, we should at least attend Sacrament. Trying to clean up while camping and STAY CLEAN in your Sunday clothes long enough to get to church is a real production!!! It took us around 2 hours to get everyone showered and dressed. But despite all the hustle, and getting lost trying to find the chapel, I am so glad we went! Castle Rock, Washington has a lovely ward! They were so kind and welcoming! They went to a lot of trouble to make us feel at home. I'm glad that my kids got the opportunity to go to a primary far from home and discover that they worship the same, and sing the same songs, etc.
Back at camp, we finally got to relax and rest. It was a lovely day. We met several nice new families, some of them homeschoolers at our Campground park. It was nice to get to share some about our religion and our homeschooling adventures. One family from Atlanta (who are Jewish) were touring the country with their 4 young children. They had been on the road for 3 months! They were hoping from National Park to National park! What an experience that must be! We were very impressed.
Monday, September 21st.This day ended up being everybody's favorite! We took at day trip to Mt. Rainier! I've always been in love with Mt. Rainier. It is "my mountain"! For the year and a half I lived in Redmond, Washington, I could see mountain right outside my window!
We thought it would be a long 3 hour drive, but it ended up being only 2 hrs. I had misinformed my children: most of my memories of Mt. Rainier were in Spring or summer when the mountain was smothered in snow! So my kids thought it would be a short hike to the glaciers. They were looking forward to throwing snowballs and sliding down glaciers like I had seen so many people do at Mt. Rainier. I hadn't taken it into consideration that the tailend of September was the END of the dry season! The mountain was still gorgeous, but it had hardly any snow on it! The mountain streams and waterfalls were nothing but a trickle compared to their usual gusty show.
When we arrived we enjoyed a short hike up to a waterfall area. We had a great view of the mountain (perfect warm clear weather!!!) and a lovely scene of all the mountain meadows. It's not as breathtaking as it is in early summer, when the fields are filled with bright wildflowers, and yet the snow is still impressive. But considering that the mountain is shrouded in mysterious clouds 300 days out of the year, we were so glad to get a good view!
One year when my sister and I went hiking there as teenagers, we saw several Marmots (mountain prairie dogs-like creatures) who would pop up out of their burrows and squeak at us. We didn't see much wildlife this time around, but the incredible presence of the mountain was enough to satisfy each of us!!! The kids loved it, and were making songs up about it. Angel was singing so endearingly, making up songs about the berries growing up along the pathways that were for the birds, she got a whole audience of adults who stopped to liesten. Our kids were so cheerful and sweet we got many kind compliments from other visitors that day. The only unhappy one was Christopher.
He was so sure he could make it to a glacier if we just let him hike on by himself! He had no clue that the mountain which looked SO close was very very very far away, and there was no way he could reach those glaciers without some serious mountaineering gear! (and a week of long 20 mile days) I'll just have to take my kids to Mt. Hood one of these days in the winter to do some sledding!
One of the neatest parts of our stay was the brand new visitors center! It was beautiful. The sides of the walls were made entirely out of glass so it felt as if the mountain just encompassed you. There were lots of cute kid exhibits and hands on stations. And of course, they had a well-done movie. My kids are now very knowledgable about the life cycle of destructive volcanoes. Every once in a while, they would need assurance from Scott or I that the mountain wasn't about to erupt THAT VERY MOMENT.
Truthfully, Mt. Rainier is the most dangerous volcanoe in all of the Cascade range, even if it's not frequently as active as Mt. St. Helens'. It is 300 years overdue for a major eruption. When Mt. Rainier finally goes it will cause cataclysmic destruction. With all the snow on top, the mudflows could actually reach Puget Sound. Because of this, and some nightmares I had frequently a few years ago, it was quite amazing that I got Scott to let us go to Mt. Rainier at all! A while ago I kept on having dreams that when I had finally taken my family to visit Mt. Rainier, it erupted, and we had to be evacuated by emergency rescue helicopters. I admit it was really freaky when I stepped into that new visitors center, and it looked exactly like the one in my dream! Thankfully, I am not a prophetess, and our visit was a joyful one uninterrupted by earthquakes and lava flows.
I had to put a picture of a rescue helicopter just for fun...
just because we didn't need to ride in one! :)
Tuesday, September 22nd
This was our last day of vacation. It went so quickly! But as much fun as we all had, we were ready for it to end! We wanted to go back to sleeping in our own beds! I wanted to go back to being clean and having clean kids! I couldn't wait to get back to all the work and homestuff that had been on the back burner for weeks, but I was totally dreading it at the same time.
On the last day of our trip, we were woken up by Julianna at 6 a.m. I heard her say her very first sentence!
"No, I don't want to!" she said it as clear as day...several times in a row! I thought at first it was Angel talking in her sleep, but no, it was the baby imitating what she had heard Angel say through the whole trip! She then proceeded to go through her entire vocabulary for our benefit: "Ball! Bo-Bo! Up, Down! Hot...hot hot. (we'd been trying to teach her this because of our campfire) HI! Bye bye." It was so funny to hear her testing all her new words. She's said them a few times since, but not regularly. Now that's she's home, she's back to pointing and grunting to get what she wants. *sigh* I need to take away her bo-bo so she'll talk. I need to get back to teaching her baby signs. The only word she says consistently EVERYDAY is "Ball!"
That morning at 7 a.m., I woke up all the kids and we walked down across the highway to Silver Lake. (We let Daddy sleep in) We took a nice leisurely 2 hr walk around the shores of silver lake through a wilderland of marshes and wetlands. It was a nice boardwalk over the marshes, with lots of signs labeling different plants and animals. I wish that we had brought our nature notebooks from our homeschool so we could do some sketches. But as it was, the kids had a terrific time spotting birds, ducks, fish, spider webs , and other plant and animal life.
When we came back to camp, we packed everything up and took one more fun trip. We went across the street from Seaquest State Park, and we visited the official Mt St. Helens visitors center. Out of the different museums we checked out, this was the kids favorite, because it has a model volcano to crawl through! The have a clever display that makes it look like you are looking into a magma chamber miles below the earth's surface. My kids were so impressed! At first Courtney was entirely freaked out, so sure that the lava down there was REAL.
Our drive home only took 2.5 hours, and it was so great to be back! It was not so great to deal with the overwhelming piles of laundry, however. I was only home 30 minutes before I drove Courtney to her first Gymnastics lessosns. Back to homeschool and the old grindstone!
This was a wonderful family camping trip, and it was really neat to visit some places with our kids for the first time! I really loved exploring more of the wondrous sites to see so close to home!!!
You better watch out
Naughty Dorathy: Fighting and crying when she doesn't get her way. Complaining about food she doesn't like. Eating her boogers. Pinching Courtney...really...really HARD! Stealing Courtney's blanket and then hiding it from her. Trying to punish her younger sisters for minor infractions when I'm not looking. Staying up late till 10 O'clock reading books when she's suppose to have lights out at 8 p.m.
