Day 7 Portland to Fort Stevens State Park, Oregon
Plans Meet Reality
After a hotel breakfast of simple carbohydrates and awful coffee, we headed out to the van, only to find that one tire was pretty low. Upon further inspection, there was a huge nail stuck in the tire. Thankfully there was a tire place across from our hotel. They took a look and said they'd patch the tire for $10. That seemed like a good plan. They're opinion was that we could get all the way home on that, but secretly we were thinking that this was only for getting us to a place where we could buy a new tire. Traveling 3000+ kms on a patch didn't seem wise. So we got some advice from our friends about where to go, and 1 1/2 hours later we were back on the road. What do you do for an hour and a half at a tire store? Eat of course.
We wondered if we should still see Mount St. Helen's on the way to Fort Stevens because now we'd only arrive at our campsite into the evening, but we decided that we didn't come all this way for nothing, so we took the 2 hour detour and checked it out. It was pretty incredible to see how a huge chunk of this mountain was blown away in the eruption. We then arrived at our campsite too late to go and check out the ocean, but no one complained as we all headed for bed and fell asleep in short order.
Pretty incredible. There was so much rock that slid down the mountain in the eruption that the river at the bottom was completely damned and dried up. You can see the gorge where the river once ran. They say the volcano is usually smoking and steaming, but today it wasn't.
After a hotel breakfast of simple carbohydrates and awful coffee, we headed out to the van, only to find that one tire was pretty low. Upon further inspection, there was a huge nail stuck in the tire. Thankfully there was a tire place across from our hotel. They took a look and said they'd patch the tire for $10. That seemed like a good plan. They're opinion was that we could get all the way home on that, but secretly we were thinking that this was only for getting us to a place where we could buy a new tire. Traveling 3000+ kms on a patch didn't seem wise. So we got some advice from our friends about where to go, and 1 1/2 hours later we were back on the road. What do you do for an hour and a half at a tire store? Eat of course.
Our "picnic" at Les Schwab's tire store.
We wondered if we should still see Mount St. Helen's on the way to Fort Stevens because now we'd only arrive at our campsite into the evening, but we decided that we didn't come all this way for nothing, so we took the 2 hour detour and checked it out. It was pretty incredible to see how a huge chunk of this mountain was blown away in the eruption. We then arrived at our campsite too late to go and check out the ocean, but no one complained as we all headed for bed and fell asleep in short order.
Here's the side of the mountain that didn't get blown off by the 1983 eruption, although the top did get blown off as it used to be much pointier.
And here's what it looks like on the other side.
Pretty incredible. There was so much rock that slid down the mountain in the eruption that the river at the bottom was completely damned and dried up. You can see the gorge where the river once ran. They say the volcano is usually smoking and steaming, but today it wasn't.
A huge section of forest was also destroyed. It was strangely comforting to know that the dead trees weren't a result of human activity.
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