We arrived safe and sound at our campground near Black Diamond, a small town just out of Seattle. Full services, finally, and no freezing temperatures. We even put the slide out for the first time since leaving home.
The next day, we went for a walk around the campground and found it's on a lovely lake. This is a nice spot to stay for a few days, so I think we will.
With all our free time, we decided to take a run into Seattle and check it out. The Seattle Space Needle is in the lower left corner; doesn't look that big along side the sky scrapers.
We went to the downtown area alongside the harbour. Lots of parks and walking routes made for a nice day downtown. It was a bit cold near the harbour though.
The most famous downtown market is Pikes Market and we spent a few hours looking for bargains. Didn't find any. Huge fish markets and farmers markets carried all kinds of fresh items. Just pricey.
Seattles harbour is on Puget Sound and has dozens of docks to handle a huge amount of shipping. We must have been there on an off day; only one small tug boat chugging about. Didn't even see any hay.
Next day we decided to get a better look at Mount Rainier so we took a 2 hour drive to M.R. National Park. I haven't seen so many trees since we lived in northern B.C.
As we climbed higher towards the mountain, snow started to be visible. When we saw the tunnels, we were glad we weren't in the motor home. It would be hard to turn around on the side of a mountain.
The higher we climbed, the snowier it got, but a little snow won't stop a rugged Canadian now would it.
We were up there in the snow somewhere but, honestly, we couldn't get a good picture because the trees were so thick. A little white here or there didn't cut it. So we took this picture as we drove down the other side. Pretty impressive huh!
We were only another hour or two away from Mount St. Helens and figured we may not be here again so we went for it. We did notice that the road was marked winter road, not maintained, but there wasn't too much snow in the valley below. After an hours drive, the snow got deeper and then we were faced with a steep hill and black ice so we gave up and turned back. Darn it.
After turning around we stopped and had our picnic lunch along the site of a recent landslide on the road back down. Heavy rains caused a mud and rock landslide which took out the bridge. A temporary one lane bridge allowed us to get back down.
We did manage to get a picture of the crater from about 23 miles away. We had gotten about 10 miles away before having to go back. 1300 feet of the top blew off in May 1980 with a force greater than 200 atomic bombs. We were living in Winnipeg at the time and were told to stay indoors because of the toxic ash. That was over half a continent away. People as far away as we are standing were killed by the blast.
This was once a large lake which is now filled with ash and dead trees. Behind me is a park campground with a boat launch ramp and signs warning about swimming, fishing and boating rules for when there was still a lake here. No one stays there anymore. The lake is gone, caused by the Mount St. Helens eruption.
Mud slides went through here and wiped out the forest and the river. Huge areas around the eruption look like this or worse.
We finally got back to the campground just before dark after a long day of driving. Standing on the dock, we took this picture of Mount Rainier. Could have saved a lot of driving but of course we saw a lot of country which was absolutely beautiful. It is a dominant feature of the state and can be seen almost wherever you go.
We tried to see as much as possible the first 2 days and save the last day for getting ready to leave for our next adventure. Woke up to rain and wind. I'm glad we went out and saw what we wanted but now I need to get ready to go in the rain.We knew rain was in the cards going to the west coast this time of year but, darn it, it could have held off another day. No problem, I bought a new rain jacket and I'm dying to try it. Not!
No comments:
Post a Comment