Day 16 - Mt. St. Helens

Some wise acre sent me an email asking me when I would be home. He then went on to say, "No, take your time, you might find a mushroom farm tour or something."
Funny!! You might think I make detours and do things other than the things I had already planned! Well, as a matter of fact, I guess I do! *grin*

Today for instance, as we were driving along I saw signs for Mt. St. Helens. Do you think I would be a good homeschooling mother if I let a field trip like that go by???? Not!!! So off we went. We had a choice of going to the centre that was just 5 miles off the I-5 or going 53 miles off. I knew that I had plans for the afternoon and time was getting short, so we just did the first centre. It was well worth it and in a year or so we will go back and see the actual site of Mt. St. Helens. That site takes you within 7 miles of the site and you can see the lava flows.

We watched a video that showed us the "Fire Below". It was from the view point of three people that had lived through it. One man had been a logger when the mudflows came over the mountain!! He was in hospital for 30 days with burns over his whole body. It took him 10 years to go back to the site and plant crosses to his three friends that did not survive. The other two people were a man and woman who were fishing when all of a sudden a log dam burst and all the logs came rushing down the river and knocked them in and they were battered by the logs and nearly drowned.

The movie was mind boggling. I can't wait to actually see the volcano.

A Model of Mt. St. Helens

Volcano and Lava Model

They have a model of a volcano that you can walk inside of. It gives you a cross section of the earth, so you can see the layers in the ground. It also has a glass covered floor that shows you *way* down into the earth, where you can see the lava glowing in the centre of the earth. It gives a good idea of what it is like. You can then see a line of the lava flow up to the surface of the earth, where the large bulge on the side of Mt. St. Helen's was. It was this bulge that broke through when there was a large earthquake hit it.

Ash Dispersion Model

This model shows the height of ash in areas of volcanoes. Mt. St. Helen's was the highest, by far! It was 8 inches on this model compared to .2 - 2" tall!

Viewing Mt. St. Helens

Mt. St. Helens