Sunday was my first trip ever to Mt. St. Helens. It is something I've been looking forward to seeing since I moved here. I remember hearing about the volcano blast as a child - seeing the photos in my father's National Geographics. It turned out to be well worth the wait. It is quite a spectacular sight. The various visitor centers are fabulously educational as well. Seeing how much has stayed the same since the blast, as well as what has managed to grow in is very interesting stuff indeed. For anyone coming to western WA, this is a must stop.



There is a "Boundary Trail" that you can take from the crater's observatory center that heads north and allows you great views of Mt. Adams (obviously I was lucky enough to have a clear day) as well as Spirit Lake, where there are a LOT of dead trees. Apparently a lot of trees got dumped here by the blast's avalanche.





At the end of the hike - but not the end of the trail (snow has wrecked havoc on the many trails in the monument, much has been eroded away), there is a great vantage of one of the "holes" in the crater - if you look closely, you can see a waterfall that is gray from all the soot still covering the mountain.