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.

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.

We had the chance to travel up to Port Townsend a week ago and visit a school friend of ours. The lure was that he was starring in a series of one-act plays put on as part of a local festival, and since neither Amanda nor I had ever seen him act, we decided that this was as good a chance as any. We called Enterprise Rent-A-Car and set up a reservation with them, then called our local office and asked them to pick us up at 7:45 Friday morning.

Then we called to confirm the day before, and the person who answered told us that they couldn’t pick us up at 7:45 Friday morning, but 8:00 was doable. Okay.

Amanda and I were up early, getting ready, when, at 7:40, we hear a knock on the door. You guessed it, they used the original time we had specified before whoever told us that it had to be 8AM stuck their nose into the whole situation. We had been anticipating an 8AM pickup, so our poor Enterprise representative had to wait outside while we finished getting ready — probably an additional 10 minutes.

Anyway, when we were ready, we stuck our head out the door, shook hands with the guy, and he showed us down to our truck.

Wait — our truck? The reservation was for a compact, but apparently Enterprise regards some trucks as compacts. This particular one was an orange Chevrolet Colorado four-door cab. Not really what I expected, but okay. I suspect that it was only a half-bed rather than a full-bed truck, which is probably what qualified it as a compact.

We made good time back to the local Enterprise office, where our representative asked us whether we wanted another car. I decided that a truck would be okay (I may never want to own one, but driving one should be interesting, right?), so we signed the paperwork and off we went. Since the truck only had an eighth of a tank of gas left, we ran to Safeway and refueled. I had forgotten that the price of gas keeps going upwards recently, so the refuel was a bit of sticker shock, but that’s okay. Plenty of gas and a good car is a good combination. We picked up our stuff at the apartment, then went off to the College for our staff meeting at 9AM.

When we left campus, we took Highway 101 north towards Port Angeles, then cut across Highway 20 to get to Port Townsend. We got there without much fanfare (though we got slightly lost in Port Townsend itself due to somewhat vague directions). We wandered around Port Townsend for a while, then went to dinner at a pizza place in town. Afterwards, we went to see the friend of ours in the plays — very good, and all quite entertaining.

Saturday, we wandered around downtown Port Townsend and peeked into a lot of little shops, then had lunch at The Public House — very good food. As a group, the three of us had the lamb burger, fish and chips, and pacific burger. We then went back to where we were staying until dinner, when our friend had to go to his Saturday night performance. That left Amanda and I once again wandering downtown looking for a place to eat. For lack of someplace cheap and/or not crowded, we ended up going back to The Public House, which had a fairly good live musician playing. Good dinner, too — Amanda and I had two plates of the chicken penne without tomatoes. Very rich cream sauce, though the portion size was a little on the low side for me. Still good.

We went back and watched Airplane! on DVD until I had to go running out the door to pick up the friend of ours at the theater, since I had offered earlier in the day. Bringing him home, Amanda and I went to bed.

We left at about 10AM the next morning. This was fairly uneventful, though the fact that I had to keep pulling over to let people pass and that I once had to speed up in order to avoid being rear ended, both times on 101, seems to me indicative of the modern driving habit. I routinely go the speed limit, but I still felt pressured to pull over on at least four different occasions.

Sad.

Anyway, we got back into town and stopped by the Blue Heron Bakery to see if they had anything that Amanda could use her gift certificate on. They didn’t, but at least we now know what selection they have. Returning the truck, we had driven about 210 miles round trip — not bad, considering that the first 501 miles of the trip were free of surcharges.

Amanda and I are headed up to Port Townsend on Friday, April 29th to visit a friend of ours and see a play. Apparently, Enterprise Rent-A-Car allows people under 25 to rent for a $30 fee. This, of course, makes the trip marginally more expensive than it otherwise would be, but it works out well, since we don’t typically have a car.

It’ll be a semi-long drive, but we should make it up with no problems.

Due to a death in the family, we had to head over to Eastern Washington for a few days. There’s not really much interesting to report from that endeavor — since we had to clean out an apartment as a result of this, I managed to get some very nice decorations for my apartment at no cost, and some of them were created by family members. Death is, of course, always a sad and harrowing affair, but I found some small enjoyment in exploring and finding things that I appreciated.

While we were there, we had dinner at one of the top (if not the top) restaurants in Walla Walla, Whitehouse-Crawford. I dare say it’s one of the best in Washington. Anyway, I ordered the following:

Salad: Warm spinach salad with smoked trout, bacon, grilled onions, and mustard vinaigrette

Entree: Grilled Thundering Hooves Farm burger with bacon, Cougar Gold cheese, mustard aioli, and fried onions

Dessert was a huckleberry mousse with some other stuff added in — very good. Unfortunately, the description isn’t on the web site, so I can’t quote the menu verbatim on that one.

The hamburger was to die for. Probably the best hamburger I’ve ever had — very rich in flavors, but not overly pretentious (if that adjective can be applied to a hamburger!). Cougar Gold cheese is produced by Washington State University, and is exceedingly rare and hard to get. They only produce it about once a year. Incredibly popular and delicious. I’ve had it maybe twice in my whole life.

Enough about dinner.

On the way out of Walla Walla going west, there’s a wind farm run by Pacific Power, which I’ve had the chance to visit in the past. The windmills are huge, the blades a couple stories high, and these appear very large even from a mile or two away. They’re awesome to stand next to, with nearly constant wind blowing around us and threatening to bowl you over. The view coming west today was quite pretty, since we were leaving in the morning hours and the sun was rising low out of the east.

I did manage to finish another one of my class books today — that makes two out of 10 completed. With any luck, that’ll be closer to four by the time school starts.

We headed up to Port Townsend on Friday, leaving on the 12:05 ferry from the Edmonds dock as passengers. This took us into Kingston, where we met up with my friend and drove over to Port Townsend. When we got there, we wandered around downtown for a while — Amanda had pizza for lunch, and I had a hot dog with relish, onions, ketchup, and mustard from a little place called Dogs-A-Foot at the corner of Water and Madison. Presumably, they make authentic foot long New York hot dogs. Well, I’m not sure about authentic, but it was good. As we walked over to get some dessert, I snapped a picture of a silver Prius that I had noticed before lunch and had been watching since. Perhaps I’ll post the photo later.

We had dessert at the Elevated Ice Cream Company, which makes its ice cream fresh. All three of us had the local raspberry flavor, which was quite good. Nice follow-up to the hot dogs.

We wandered around downtown for a while, then walked along the beach and up into one of the local parks, where we played around on the swings for a while. I had forgotten how dizzy a swing can make you — what can I say, I’m a big wimp. Went back to the house and hung around a while, having dinner and watching movies until we went to bed.

Woke up on Saturday morning and had some breakfast, after which we drove down to the Jefferson County Fair. Shockingly, I was allowed to borrow a car, since I was the only one among us with an actual driver’s license. Great little Ford Contour – responsive and nice to drive. Anyway, we got to the fair and wandered around a while, looking at the usual — rabbits, chickens, art — and the not-quite-so-usual — the Port Townsend Rock Club. We had lunch, after which I just had to grab a raspberry mocha with extra raspberry — it had been too long. Wandered ar ound a little more, then went back and hung out the rest of the day. We went back down to the park and sat around for a while, talking about, of all things, modern adaptations to Shakespearean plays. We also got to talking about the reasons wars are fought. In one of the books I’m reading for next quarter, I seem to remember that George Bush is quoted as saying that the war on terror should not have been called the war on terror; rather, that it should have been called something like the war against countries and organizations that harbor terrorists. I have yet to find that quote again, which makes me think I might have dreamed it up, but I somehow find this unlikely.

We spent Sunday morning finalizing our idea of what a possible road trip next summer would look like. We decided that it would probably be a trip down the West Coast, with possible stops to see some haunted houses or places on the Lewis and Clark Trail. We’ll see — this is still an endeavor that’s in the intensely theoretical stage. We’d still need a car and one more person that’s actually licensed to drive so that I wouldn’t be doing all the work. We went back to the Jefferson County Fair at about noon to grab lunch — we had a free barbecue meal included with our meal ticket, so we decided to take that opportunity. It was quite good – roast beef with bread, coleslaw, beans, and barbecue sauce. Worth going back for, even though it wasn’t more than about ten minutes away.

We went back after lunch (and after I picked up some new buttons to put on my backpack), packed, and sat around talking until it was time to return to Kingston. The rest of the day went without problems — we got to Kingston on time, boarded the ferry, rode over, and got off. While we were waiting for my mother to pick us up on the Edmonds side, I happened to notice a black Prius being loaded onto the ferry. I had heard of them, but never seen one until now. Cool.

All in all, a very relaxing trip. Hopefully, we get the chance to go back there sometime.

create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks. I’ve seen this map in countless places, and I figured I might as well make one of my own. My family really hasn’t done much U.S. travel, though we have gone to such places as England (London and Cornwall, mostly) and Canada (Victoria, Vancouver B.C., and a little island out in the middle of nowhere called Hornby Island).