Alan and Sandra's RV Travels: Mount St. Helens

We took a day trip to Mount St. Helens. We hated to be this close and not visit it. It has been 34 years since the eruption. The forests around the blast area have grown back, but you can still see some of the old fallen logs and the area around the Toutle River (at the foot of the mountain) is still acidic from the ash that nothing will grown near the river.
After the blast, Weyerhaeuser Company logged out all of their fallen timber. They hauled out 600 trucks of logs a day for 2 years and salvaged 850 million board feet of timber, then replanted their land.
Since it has been 34 years you don't see the real effect of the blast to the area. When looking at pictures in the visitor center, watching the movie, and seeing the interviews with people that survived the blast, you can see what a disaster this event was.
It was cloudy the day we were there and you couldn't see all of the mountain. Below are a few of the pictures we took while in the area and at the Observatory.

This picture was taken around 1:00 pm. The clouds finally started to dissipate, but would never get completely clear.

Some of the downed trees are still laying around in the National Park Areas.

The light colored area in the picture above is the land surrounding the Toutle River. This is the land that is still acidic from the ash and nothing will grow in this area. The river looks like a small ribbon running through this vast grey area.

This little Ground Squirrel was running all around the viewing center. He received a lot of attention. People (including me) were taking pictures of him. Some were feeding him. I'm sure that's why he hung around.

We came around a curve and saw these trees. It was so blurry looking that I thought my eyes were going bad. It's just the way the branches grow.