Scott was In South Korea serving his LDS mission in spring 1980 when Mt. St. Helens erupted and as a student of geology, he has always wanted to see it. So we added it to the itinerary of this trip to the Northwest and made it on Day 13. It’s a fairly long drive up Highway 504 to the top of the volcano and Johnston Ridge Observatory. The road runs through this valley that was filled with ash, rocks, and water from the rapidly melting glaciers on the mountain.
Along the way there are several visitor centers run by different agencies. We stopped at Washington State Park’s Seacrest State Park which had exhibits and a pretty cool model of the mountain plus lots of interesting narratives. We also stopped farther up at the Cowlitz County Visitor Center for a quick run-in to check it out. They had helicopter rides but at $200/head it was too pricey. They weren’t flying anyway because of the dense cloud cover, which turned out to be the story of the day. As we were driving up we couldn’t even find the mountain and sometimes the clouds were so thick they obscured the road. Scott was getting very discouraged on the drive up.
We hung around Johnston Ridge a long time hoping for a clear view. The clouds thinned and ran by the face over and over so we got pictures of various portions but never got a complete shot and Scott was quite disappointed. She was just shy and didn’t want to show her face.
Even so, the view was spectacular and there were many interesting features like hummocks, which are pieces of the volcano carried away during one of the avalanches. 
The area of the pressure wave caused the trees to all fall in the same direction and some of that was still visible. 
The thick ash deposits were laid down as part of the eruption and now have been eroded away by various new streams. There were new lakes e formed, and perhaps most amazing of all was the magnitude of the avalanches. They actually came down, then up and over the ridge the observatory is on and continued down the valleys. It was humbling to see the massive power of the volcano.
We were hungry from walking around up top so we stopped at the Cowlitz Co. VC on the way down for a late lunch-early dinner at the Fire Mountain Grill and I had a bison burger on a gluten-free bun. Yum!
On the way to the hotel, we drove through Astoria and up to the Astoria Column which has historical events carved on it and good views of the Columbia River from the top of the hill. 
Then we went to the hotel to do our laundry for the last leg of the trip. I waited in the laundry room and Scott kept coming down to check on me. We had two batches to do and only one washer and dryer and it turned out the dryer was really slow. Scott had us grab the half-dry batch and the wet batch and we slammed off to find the closest laundromat in Warrenton which turned out to be closed, so we drove to Astoria and it was also closed. Back to the hotel where we threw stuff back in the dryer. By this time we were going to be up until 1:00 in the morning doing wash. Scott mentioned to the front desk that the dryer was slow and the head housekeeper heard him and offered to dry our clothes in the hotel dryers! So we were all done in 30 minutes. She pulled out the dryer to vacuum the vent and found it full of lint so maybe the next people to come along got their stuff dry faster. All in all, it was quite the laundry adventure. Thanks to the Warrenton Shiloh Inn Suites for good customer service. We gave them a good note on TripAdvisor.
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