How I Spent Christmas Day

For my immediate family, Christmas is just another day on the calendar. However, it was a rare occurance of my sister and I having a day off at the same time.

Sissy decided she wanted to run away on a mini-road trip to the beach. Unfortunately, we could not get our collective poop in a group so we decided to take a random road trip - something Sis and I love to do, and Les pretty much just tagged along to get out of the house.

We thought we would head for Layton's Prairie, a local area where Les has old family buried in a local private cemetary somewhere. We thought we would try to find the cemetary and take a few pictures for geneology research. On our way, we saw our old friend, Mt. St. Helens. It was a spectacularly crystal clear day, so we thought we'd head that direction since we would drive right through Layton's Prairie on the way.

Mt. St. Helens as seen from a small local airport on Jackson Hwy.



A lovely view of Mt. Rainier as well





A few miles closer, and a cloud has formed over the top

A small waterfall across the highway from a pullout spot

The "new" bridge built on Hwy 504 on the way to Johnston's Ridge

Some information about the blast zone at the bridge viewpoint

A blow-up of the blast zone map; we were where the black dot in the white circle is - far left side of the map. The black squiggly line is Hwy 504

Getting closer; a view from Elk Rock Overlook

Mt. St. Helens, in all her magnificent glory

Les and Sissy pose for a picture with Mt. St. Helens in the background

Looking down into the valley; just a trickle of a river where a huge lake used to be

Looking closer at the crater

The majestic lady at rest

If you want to learn more about Mt. St. Helens and her eruption, just give it a Google and there is lots of information about it online. I was able to read the actual US Geological department's report of the eruption and all the interesting information about everything that happened before, during, and after the eruption. It is in our library in the Environmental Department at work. Very, very interesting.

We never found Layton's Prairie, but we think we did find the cemetary. Les says it's not the right one, but when I looked the cemetary up online and printed out the list of everyone that is buried there, we think it is the correct one. We'll have to take another day and drive back out there to check it out.

I hope you enjoyed the pictures!

TTFN.