Darren

One of my oldest friends, Darren, lives in New York but was in California this month. He wanted to do a few days of my road trip with me so he changed his flight home to leave from Seattle instead of Los Angeles and then flew to meet me in Portland.

I asked him to help look into things for us to do. It is actually nice to have a break from planning for a couple of days. It turns out it's a fair amount of work to organize my various notes I have made over the past several weeks in preparation, and then research all the possible places to go. I threw him some high level options, but during the time I would have been helping him research, I was looking for a VW shop in Eugene to listen to my weird engine noise.

By the time I left Eugene with my fresh repairs, Darren was already about to board his flight to Portland. I rolled into PDX airport just as he called to tell me he was out of baggage claim.

He had made some calls and thought it would be fun for us to camp outside Mount St. Helens which is only an hour north of Portland. We could spend the next day exploring the volcano, then head up to Seattle to spend a couple of days there. Neither of us had ever been.

I seconded his plan, so we headed toward the campground. Unfortunately though, since we took our sweet time eating dinner in Portland, we didn't arrive to the Seaquest State Campground until after eleven at night. Darren said the ranger told him there would be room, but we should try to arrive before ten.

We rolled up to a closed gate at the park entrance. That wasn't a welcoming site, but if people were camping in there, I knew they weren't imprisoned, so we gritted our teeth and opened the gate, closed it behind us and rolled into the pitch dark parking lot.

It turned out fine. We found a spot, slipped some money into the self registration box, and popped Rusty's top. This was the first night of my road trip I had been comfortable enough to pop the top, potentially drawing attention. It makes it a little more comfortable in back because you don't have to hunch. You can stand straight up. But it's especially key to get the extra loft bed for a second person. Without that it would be cramped.

In the morning we headed up Mount St. Helens.

I was in the sixth grade when the volcano blew up. I remember seeing the news reports with the dust and the mud flows, but you definitely get a better perspective when you see it up close.

Twenty miles from the blast, trees were blown straight over, snapped off their bases, or incinerated entirely. Most of that area is still an eerie gray ash color. Rivers in the area were filled completely in, and brand new rivers were cut a year later by snow melt.

Most of the highway and bridges in the area had to be completely rebuilt. The national park system built an entirely new set of buildings for education and viewing.

It's cool to see how the region has recovered over the past thirty years. It is slow, but noticeable. We hiked among the hummocks (that's what the guides called them) along part of a new river next to the also new Clearwater Lake. Trees and wildlife have returned. It doesn't feel like a forest yet.

But it will again.