Weekend Trip Part 2

Mount St. Helens

We're right at the beginning of the snowy season in the mountains here and unfortunately we got in on the first snow in the Cascades on our trip to see Mount St. Helens.  For those of you who are familiar with our fogged out 4th of July at Mt. Rushmore...we were amazed at how similar Mount St. Helens and Mt. Rushmore look in the fog/snow. :P  We decided we will probably need to warn our kids that when we try to go see something cool there's a good chance it might be covered in fog!  We decided to save Mt. Rainier for another weekend so we could actually see it.  We're not holding our breaths though, as there may be snow at those altitudes from here on out.

Of course pictures never quite do justice to sights like this.
This valley was pretty impressive and I'm pretty sure on a clear day
you'd be able to see the mountain up the valley.

In lower elevations we hit some of the fall colors just
about perfectly--(you can kind of see them in this picture.)

The mountains were beautiful in the snow!  I was very thankful for our trusty truck
and such a good driver so I could just relax and enjoy the view.

At the top at the observatory-(Mount St. Helens in the background).
This was actually our second try--the first time you couldn't see ANYTHING,
so personally, I was quite impressed with the bottom 2/3's we saw by the time
we headed back down the mountain!

The valley below the mountain.

The base of Mount St. Helens

Waiting for the movie to start at the observatory.

Highway 12

This highway would have made the trip worth it in my mind.  So fun to see the changes from one side of the mountains to the other and at the varying altitudes.  We hit snow at the top of the pass and I can't tell you how beautiful it was covering the perfectly straight, TOWERING pines that lined each side of the road.  We hit a little less dense forest on the way down and followed a creek for awhile, so we decided to stop and play.  The last part of the drive was through a more open valley with rocky mountains towering on each side.  (Obviously the dry side of the range.)  This is the way we'll take back to Mt. Rainier if we go.  I'll be happy to make the drive again, even if we don't do the hikes we want to or see quite the view we're hoping for.  I was awesome!

There wasn't a whole lot of room to hike up and down the shore,
so we did what we could and then just played in the rocks.

Jack would've stayed playing in the rocks
much longer than we did, had we let him.

Jack was thoroughly impressed with throwing sticks into the creek.
When he saw these pictures he kept saying "ticks! ticks!".