Mt. St Helens

July 20, 2016

Today we are headed up to Mt. St. Helens, but we thought we would make a quick little detour in Castle Rock to see the Minion posts.

There were three of them there and I was quite excited about them all.

Granpy helped us get on top.  How fun is that!  I am sitting on a Minion.

It was sure a fun pit stop to see the Minions.

We got to the Mt. St. Helens visitor center at lunch time.  We thought we would have a picnic there, but there weren't any picnic tables, so, we sat down on the curb by the car and had our lunch.

The view from the parking lot.

I sure enjoyed my lunch!

We headed inside the visitor center and found this Smoky the Bear statue!

A mush stop at any national park visitor center is to get our passport books stamped!  

We headed in to watch the really cool video they had about the Mt. St. Helens explosion, which Makayla asked questions throughout the whole thing.  When the video was over they raised the screen to see this great view of what Mt. St. Helen looks like now.

Stamps are a must, but if they have a smash penny machine that is icing on the cake!  Granpy helped me to make my smashed penny of Mt. St. Helen's.

This was a huge hit and when we talk about going to Mt. St. Helens this is usually what we talk about.  It is an earthquake recorder.  By jumping up and down you create an earthquake and can watch the machine record it.

We headed outside to see Mt. St. Helens up close and personal!

There were clouds covering the mountain all day long, so, we never got a clear picture of it.  At least it was a sunny day and not raining!

We headed down the trail to see different views of the mountain.

The wildflowers were out in abundance!  We saw some beautiful patches of indian paintbrush.

I had fun running down the hill singing about being a pink hooded girl.

Granpy read the signs to me and showed me how the lava flowed down.

The land drastically changed when the mountain erupted.

We headed up the trail to see the view from the top.  We found this bench to sit on and rest while we hiked up.

You could see all ways from the top of the trail.

The wall was the perfect place to sit and rest.

I found a different place to rest on the wall.

It was great to see those wild flowers blooming.

We had a great time on our short hike!

Our view on the way back down.

We stopped to take a little stroll around Coldwater Lake.

The foxglove were in full bloom and oh so pretty!

Here is a view of Coldwater lake.

As we walked around the lake there were docks that you could go walk on and get a better view.  

We loved going on and looking at the water from the docks.  We tried to find fish!

Makayla was very impressed that this log looked like a banana.

Nothing like sitting on a dock and relaxing!

A picture with Grammy and Granpy from a different dock.  They were great tour guides today on our first trip to Mt. St. Helens

I had fun looking at the water bugs skimming across the water.  It was sure a fun day visiting Mt. St. Helens.  We had a great time, got some fresh air, and even learned something.  I call that a success!