Friday, on the way to Staters, we turned up into the Cascades to visit Mt. St. Helens. Again, our time was limited by our schedule, so we chose just two of the four or five visitor centers. We stopped at the first one you encounter and the one sponsored by Weyerhauser Lumber company. Both were excellent choices. The first had an excellent display area and a moving informational film about the eruption. The second, inside the original blast zone, was a good observation point for Mt. St. Helens and the valley below, including our first glimpse of Roosevelt elk through the telescope and showed the impact on the forest. It also helped one understand the area logging industry which is everywhere in evidence. The valley below, 30 years later, still very much bears the marks of the devastating gray ash water and log flood that rushed down it in 1980.
