The outdoor adventures of Bend in our minds, we went camping with our friends, stayed with them for a night in Portland, and then crossed back into Washington at long last.
In the seven years that we lived in Seattle together, we never once made the trip to Mt. St. Helens, so we decided that this would be the time. There’s one, long road to the visitor’s center and all the campsites are right by I-5, so we spent the night in a typically forested and gorgeous NW campsite, where Fin had another bath.
Mt. St. Helens
Though there is some hiking, a lot of the St. Helens visitor experience is the overlook and the drive up. The drive itself takes you through lots of the land where the lava flowed from this mighty eruption, brining you over hills and through valleys until you are brought to the scenic view of the mountain itself.
It was cool and beautiful, but not as impactful as I remember from when I went there as a kid. Maybe we’d become a little jaded from all the mountains nature we’d seen over this trip, maybe we were just ready to do laundry and sleep in a bed, but we weren’t all that impressed.
I’m fully ready to admit that we rushed it or didn’t do the trip right, though. Either way, we were ready to keep going.
