Today was our first moving day of the trip and we were all up, breakfasted, showered, packed and in the car for 9am. The Seattle townhouse had been nice but we found the three floors a bit annoying and certainly the fact that our bathroom was two floors below our bedroom a blooming nuisance.
We had enjoyed our brief stay in Seattle but were pleased to be heading out into more rural parts.
Our destination was a small place called Morton which was to be our base to visit Mount Rainier and the area around it. I decided for our route there we would aim for a place called Mary’s Corner and then take the last part of the journey on the White Pass Scenic Byway.
The traffic as we left Seattle was quite heavy and didn’t really thin out for almost an hour. Mary’s Corner turned out to be just that and not a bustling metropolis where we could stop for a coffee break. There was a garage on the corner but not much else. Even Mary was had given up and left as she was nowhere to be seen. The scenery was beautiful, very alpine like. We looked in vain for any wildlife as we drove along.
We pressed on until we reached the Mayfield Lake created by the Mayfield Dam on the Cowlitz River. We parked in the small lakefront park and took our snacks to eat on the benches by the Lake. It was lovely. The air had that fresh mountain quality whilst the temperature from the sun was perfect. We stayed a while lapping up the beautiful surroundings.
Eventually we pressed onto Morton where our pleasant motel for the next two nights allowed us to check in early. The rooms were perfectly adequate for our needs.
After a quick cuppa we headed off out with a hastily put together plan to visit Mount St Helen, viewing it from the Windy Ridge viewpoint. It didn’t look far on the map. It turned out to be 52 miles up some very steep windy roads that were badly potholed in parts on both sides of the narrow highway. On top of that it seemed one of the roads there had been washed away and so we were not certain that the full route to the viewpoint was actually doable.
It was a long 2-hour drive but we eventually made it. When we got there, I felt initially it was just about OK. Mount St Helen last erupted in 1980 making worldwide headline news that I can recall. Basically, one half of the mountain collapsed away from the other causing the largest landslide in recorded history. All the debris that fell caused the nearby lake to rise by 200ft. Ash was spread over a 22000 square mile radius. It was preceded by a huge explosion.
None of this was clear and obvious from the viewpoint. It wasn’t until I read the information boards and listened into a nearby guide explaining it all that it, I made sense from what I was seeing.
Worryingly although there had been no evidence of any new volcanic activity since 2008 until last week, which was ominous.
The drive back was much easier and we interspersed it with stops at other viewpoints.
Now I don’t like to mention toilets too much in this blog. But at one of the stops we used the facililites. I thought I had the longest wee in my life. Not in terms of how long or how much, but the one that went the furthest down. The toilet bowl emptied into a very long drop down what it seemed the side of the mountain. I reckon I must have been back in the car before it hit the ground.
We saw several small animals on the side of the road as we wound our way back down the mountain. At the time we thought they were chipmunks but now believe they were American Pika’s.
We stopped at a Country Market Shop almost opposite our motel to get some more snacks and milk to for the next day. The store was surprisingly better on the inside than it looked from the outside.
Then we had a short drive around the small town before making our way to Milltown Smokehouse which turned out to be part of the town’s bowling alley. The food was alright, the prices were high but the service was good. The area we ate in also acted as a creche for the waitress who’s little 18-month baby girl inside her pen was very cute. Bowling has never really done much for me especially as Karen used to sometimes beat me.
After a long day that had included over 6 hours hard driving for me, we headed back to our rooms for the night. We both caught up with the news from home, had a cuppa and were soon asleep in bed.
