Mt St. Helens and the circus

Saturday morning we went over to Becky's house for the trip down to Mt. St. Helens.
Brenda has been wanting to go see it for several years now.
It is a 2 1/2 hr trip down I5 to Kelso and another 50 or 60 miles east of I5. It is a long way but well worth the trip.There are three visitor centers for the mountain. The first is close to the exit off of I5.
The next is a learning center about 1/2 way to the mountain. and the 3rd is on Johnston Ridge, which is about 5 miles from the crater. Alex and his friend, Jia, met us at the 1st visitor center.The monument is run by the US Forest Service, so Brenda, Alex, Heather and I got in on my Golden Pass. That saved $32 on entrance fees. Lindsay was free because of her age. The rest, unfortunately, had to pay. I can only get in 3 other people on my Golden Pass. 90% of the fees go to maintain all of the facilities there.Mt. St. Helens was active from early 1980 until 2008 when she went dormant again.
We had a short film and a talk from one of the rangers, that explained what happened up until the eruption until it went back to sleep.The lava of Mt. St. Helens is what they call peanut butter lava. It is different from the lava on the Hawaiian Islands. That lava is called honey lava. The difference is in the way it flows. Hawaiian lava flows like honey poured from a jar, while pb lava flows like pb and looks like a cow pie when it comes into the caldera.
After the initial explosion, the volcano was very active, rebuilding a lava dome in the crater.
It erupted many times, without the devastation of the 1st one.
There is even a small glacier in the caldera and it is moving ever so slowly. It was formed initially by the snow and ice on the south side of the crater and the subsequent snow falls in the winters that followed.
There is a paved path that leads to a point that you can see on both sides of the ridge.
At the top is an observation point, with a plaque that looks like a compass and shows different areas and types of destruction. It is very interesting and so much more detailed than anything that we had heard or read about of Mt. St. Helens.
The area around the crater and down the north side is sterile and no vegetation has grown back. In the areas where there was no rock slide and the trees were either blown down or burnt and no lava, the trees have returned in the subsequent 29 years since the destruction.
This area was heavily logged before the eruption, and most of the new growth was replanted after the explosion.

We stayed until almost dark then went looking for some place to eat.
Alex found a small family owned restaurant close to the freeway. The place was kind of small but the food and service were excellent.
The only trouble is that there was too much food too late in the day and it was sooo good.

We stayed in a motel overnight as the drive back that late was just too much for us.
If we hadn't had tickets to the circus on Sunday, we would have stayed for part of the day and gone back to the mountain.
We drove back to Monroe in good time and went to meet 'the birthing class' at the Comcast Center in Everett for the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus.
We got there early enough to see the animals and spend some time on the floor of the arena with the clowns and some of the animals. The kids really enjoyed it.I have not been to a circus since I was a kid. As I remember I didn't particularly like it, so I never went back. If it weren't for Lindsay, I probably would not have gone yet.
The ringmaster was a magician, and the show was based around his magic acts, The clowns were very involved in his acts.
There is so much going on on the floor of the arena that it was very difficult to keep track of all the activity.
For instance, there were 2 dog acts going on at the same time. I tried to split my attention between the acts, but was not successful, as I missed something in both acts.
The show is very high energy. I now know what people mean when they say that the confusion in a certain place is like a 3 ring circus.
Everything is very colorful and fast moving so the kids had a great time, but, it was just too fast for my brain. Lindsay stayed wound up at least until we left to go home. That child is so full of energy.
Ta ta for now