Mount St. Helens 7/22-7/24

We left Friday morning (after packing the car the night before and doing some additional loading before leaving) and stopped to have breakfast at the McDonald’s across the street. After eating, we hitched onto highway 101, then southbound I-5. An hour or so later, we coasted into the Mount St. Helens Visitor Center, about 15 miles outside of Castle Rock, WA.

This particular visitor center is one of three along highway 504. Each visitor center presents a progressive series of stories about the mountain, from what I’ve been able to tell – Mount St. Helens, then Coldwater, then Johnson Ridge. The Mt. St. Helens Visitor Center presents the history of Mt. St. Helens – how different cultures and activities have impacted the mountain and a timeline of the 1980 eruption. In addition, it has some information on how the 1980 eruption compares to other historical eruptions, as well as information on the most recent smattering of eruptive activity that began in 2004. Amanda and I took in this exhibit, then headed to the south end of the mountain to explore the Ape Caves.

The Ape Caves are actually a lava flow formed by an eruption of Mount St. Helens several hundred years ago. I’d been there before, but wanted to revisit it and show Amanda around. We visited for a couple hours after spending just about as long driving down there, then had lunch and left for our campground by way of Forest Roads 90 and 25.

Forest roads are a pain in the ass. They’re twisty, curvy, nausea-inducing things that have to be taken at low speeds lest you careen your car off a cliff. I swear that the designers who put these roads in place had a really sick sense of humor.

We got to Iron Creek campground after a couple more hours of driving, which were not really as nice as some of the other driving I’ve done. Iron Creek sits alongside the Cispus river a half hour northeast of Mt. St. Helens and about ten or fifteen minutes south of Randle, WA. It’s a very popular RV spot (attested to by the fact that something like 90% of the claimed slots in our loop were filled by RVs, if not a higher percentage). The only downside was the existence of pit toilets, but I personally hadn’t expected anything better.

Our stay that night consisted of setting camp, making dinner, and sitting next to a campfire.

Saturday, after some snafus in figuring out whether a particular forest road was actually open (it wasn’t) and going 8 miles north when we should have been going south, we followed forest road 25 to forest road 99 towards the Windy Ridge viewpoint. We ended up going all the way to the viewpoint itself, stopping at the Edge viewpoint, the Miner’s Car, Meta Lake, Harmony viewpoint, Donnybrook viewpoint, and, finally, Windy Ridge viewpoint, where Amanda climbed a whole bunch of stairs (I didn’t go – not in the mood to deal with heights, the steep drop-off on the sides of the road on the way in freaked me out enough). After a snack, we headed homeward.

I thought the drop-offs freaked me out on the way in, but they really freaked me out on the way out. We stopped by the Cascade Peaks viewpoint, which had a store selling various merchandise.

Oh, and the power was out.

Normally, that store would accept credit cards, but since the power was out, they couldn’t — thus, the stuff I wanted to buy (particularly a shirt and a DVD) I couldn’t. That basically ensures we’ll have to go back out there. (And yes, I did find it odd that they didn’t have one of the manual card swipers that require ink and hand motions to create a receipt.)

On the way out, I was paying so much attention to the road that I didn’t hear Amanda talking about a steam eruption coming from the mountain. I was too busy worrying about the line of sports cars behind me trying to run me over and trying to make sure that my precious Prius didn’t run herself off a cliff. Thus, I was quite surprised when we pulled off at the Edge viewpoint to let the cars go by and Amanda insisted I look out the back window.

Needless to say, we whipped out cameras and took pictures (though my digital camera’s battery finally croaked at this point). We then continued up to the Bear Meadow viewpoint and took some more pictures from a different vantage point before heading to the campsite.

We took the opportunity that evening to wander around the campground and follow some trails to the nearby picnic area and along the Cispus river. A very pretty area and well worth wandering around in.

Sunday, we headed back via Randle and highway 12. Uneventful, other than catching the beginning of a large backup on north and southbound I-5 after this road rage accident. Everyone, of course, stopped to gawk, so we got to enjoy a mile or two of I-5 at extremely low speeds. I hate gawkers. I try not to be one. It slows everyone down.

It was a fun trip, and we got the chance to break in some new gear, including a new propane camp stove and air mattress. I love Mount St. Helens – both its history and the beauty of the area – and you can bet I’ll be back there again.

Promising Deadlines Isn’t Promising

Why do we bother to promise that we’ll make deadlines instead of just doing it? The promise wastes time that could be better spent. Thus, the recent promise from the Iraqi government regarding a constitution is useless – promise all you want. I want results.

If you’re wasting your time promising me you’ll meet a deadline, you better sit down and think a little bit about your process…

Camping

Amanda and I are headed off to the Mount St. Helens area to do some camping next weekend in honor of our second anniversary. We’ll be staying at the Iron Creek Campground Friday through Sunday.

I’m thinking about, at minimum, taking her to the Ape Cave, and, of course, taking the opportunity to explore the area more. It’s been a long time since I’ve been down there, so I’m thinking about the Johnson Ridge Visitor Center and Meta Lake, just to get into the area. I’d think about hiking, but I don’t want to do too much since we’re only down there for a couple days.

We’ll see.

Not So Scratched!

After removing all the paint transfer last weekend and cleaning the car this afternoon, the damage isn’t really all that bad – nothing some good buffing and Toyota paint can’t fix.

On the plus side, I now have 1,000 miles on the car. She started at 16,972 miles and reached 17,977 miles this afternoon. So far, my driving average is 59.12 miles per day, which is much higher than it actually is on a week-by-week basis. I’m driving about 20 miles per day in Olympia – everything else is long-distance trips to Bellingham and Snohomish.

Either way, this car is working out quite well.

Scratched!

When I pulled in last night, I pulled in such that my rearview mirror was between two support beams on the right-hand side of the car, so that if I had backed out without correcting the problem, I would’ve lost the rearview mirror on that side of the car. After adjusting for this and starting to back out properly, I started turning the wheel a little too soon and heard a nice, sickening pop. I swiped one of the poles pulling out. Needless to say, I immediately stopped, pulled forward, hit park, and checked to see how bad the damage was. There’s quite a bit of paint transfer and a couple nice scratches on the bumper which looks worse than it probably is in terms of the bumper itself.

On a Prius, you can’t see the front of the car, so judging distance from an object is nearly impossible (the same is true, I’m told, of Volkswagen New Beetles). Thus, the scratches.

After coming back from work, Amanda and I took a closer look — it looks like the bumper on the right side of the car might’ve actually shifted down a tiny fraction from its original position, since comparing the left side of the car with the right side of the car shows a slightly larger gap on the right side between the headlight and the bumper.

(Note: when I say “right” here, I mean the right-hand side as if I were sitting in the driver’s seat.)

I’ve been pissed at myself all day for hurting my precious baby. Grr. And this after about a week and a half of ownership…

First Week Prius Summary

After driving my new 2004 Millenium Silver Prius for a week, I do have some impressions and notes. I do want to note before I begin, however, that I’ve decided to name her “Cassie”, after Cassandra in Greek mythology. Wikipedia has a very complete entry on Cassandra here.

I had the opportunity to take Cassie on a round trip between Bellingham and here last Thursday and Friday, for a total of 342 miles round-trip. This gave me a chance to test her on long-distance driving, along with her cruise control and some other minor creature comforts. She handles very well on the highway and can compete with pretty much any other car on the road in terms of acceleration and keeping pace. I was, however, being a bit of a slowpoke most of the way up by sticking between 60 and 70 miles an hour (and almost never topping 70). The first leg of my trip took me between the apartment and my parent’s house in Snohomish, which entailed going up I-5, then connecting to 405, then 522. I was doing a very large amount of right-hand lane driving, which essentially meant that I had to slow down or stop depending on how close to a major exit I was getting. This was alright, since it meant that I was getting pretty good MPG out of it. The trip went quite well getting out there, though I had music on the whole time to keep my nerves from getting too worked up.

After stopping at home and picking up some things, I continued on to Bellingham by taking highway 9 to highway 2, then rejoining Interstate 5 at Everett. Once again, I was doing a lot of right-hand lane driving, though this time I did occasionally go as fast as the 70 mile an hour speed limit in some stretches. Basically, the trip up let me confirm several things:

  1. Driving over 60MPH is a definite damper on the overall MPG for a particular trip. The closer you get to 70, the more your efficiency drops off, though I found that going 63-65MPH didn’t cause that big of a hit.
  2. The cruise control doesn’t manage MPG as well as my foot can. Being able to “feather” the gas pedal at certain points can greatly improve an MPG rating within a specified time frame and puts less wear on the system overall. The cruise control isn’t capable of simply allowing the car to coast and take a slight speed hit for increased efficiency; it’s aim is to keep you at one exact speed. Sometimes, being able to coast so that you lose speed from 65 to 58MPH within a particular area can not only increase MPG, but increase the life of other mechanical parts (as well as my own safety as a driver).

    Others have tossed around numbers for how much of an efficiency hit you take by using the cruise control, but for me, it seems to be in the 3-5MPG range. This is a wild guess based on what I saw the consumption graphing doing over time.

  3. This car has a lot more cargo room than it looks. This was especially confirmed on my return trip.

Getting there took me about four and a half hours total due to the detour to my parent’s house, but when I got there, I was immediately able to show off the car to several people, including Amanda’s dad, who’s an auto parts person and was very interested in seeing a hybrid.

The next morning, with the assistance of Amanda’s dad, I increased the tire pressure to the owner recommended 42/40 front/back PSI measurements. I haven’t really noticed a difference since making this change, but it will definitely improve the life of the tires. As a side note, the car still has their original manufacturer-installed tires: Goodyear Integrity. These are not the greatest tires on the market, but they get you from place to place.

I also took the chance to refill for the first time on Friday morning, though I didn’t really need to – the tank was still only half full. I didn’t want to let it fall below half full immediately, so I pulled off at the local Chevron and filled it with about 4 gallons worth of gas. I probably should have let it go a little longer, since by the time we got back to Olympia, the gas meter was only one bar below full. That tank of gas had a displayed tank MPG of 53.9, but I calculated it out to a total MPG of 59.79. Those two numbers likely would have been closer together had I waited longer to refill.

Going back down, we had the cargo area filled to the top of the pull-out cover, which was a fairly good demonstration of how much cargo the car can actually hold. People who think it won’t carry much cargo at all would be very pleasantly surprised at how much it actually does carry.

There’s not really all that much more to report at this point. I’ll add more notes and thoughts as they come up.

Various Updates on Life

I’m headed up to Bellingham tomorrow afternoon, stopping by my parent’s house in Snohomish on the way to pick up some stuff. This’ll be the first long-distance drive with this car, so it should be an interesting experience. I will likely write about it. To date, I’ve put 59 miles on the car, not including the miles for today. I still have to go to class and come back, so I’m not quite done yet. The trip up will probably be about four hours. I’m going to have Amanda’s dad do some stuff with the tire pressure and have him show me some basic maintenance so that at least I know how to check some of it. Friday, I’ll be taking Amanda down to Seattle for her orthodontist appointment, then we’ll both hightail it back down here to good old Olympia. Depending on how long Amanda intends to stay down here, I’m debating a drive down to Mt. St. Helens sometime this weekend. I haven’t yet decided.

The class I’m taking, Computers and Human Reason, is going very well. The faculty is awesome, as are the people I’m taking it with. So far, much of it is review, but we’re beginning to cover the topics that I’m not as intricately familiar with, starting with database design. I’m probably going to leave the apartment a little early today so I can sit down with Microsoft Access and do part of the assignment that I haven’t been able to do here at home, since I don’t have Access here at home.

If I find out that Amanda has Access, I’m basically going to kick myself. I don’t think she does, but if she’s reading this and she does, my reaction is as follows: oh.

We also just re-signed the lease on our Olympia apartment. We now have it through June 30, 2006. Go us.