The Grand Finale!

There is excessive picture taking here but I could not help myself.  I woke up early, 6 AM, on Monday morning.  Looking from the tent out it looked like the sun wasn't shining.  Disappointing.  We ventured all the way here and Mt. Saint Helens was covered with clouds the whole time.  My plan was if it was sunny I would drive to the mountain and see it.  Mike was on the fence.  I peeked out of the tent about 6:30 and not a cloud in the sky.  I was so excited.  I told Mike I was headed out.   He couldn't go without seeing this and maybe he could see some elk.  He popped out of bed and joined me. As we were driving up and could see the mountain the camera was snapping away.  

We pulled over to one of the elk viewing spots so Mike could check it out.  I took a picture of my car by the road so you could see how massive the rock formation was.  See my little white car? I was so anxious and Mike told me the elk will move, the mountain will not.  Good point Mr. Gleason

The Toutle River is flowing in the muddy area.  We had to get binoculars to see the water but it was there.

 Life everywhere!

 This is wall to wall trees.  Amazing.  The tall trees on top could be old growth.

Another stop for elk viewing with success!  The mountain won't move Jackie, I kept saying to myself.   Cannot really describe how wound up I was.  Mike might be able to.

We made it and I did not faint.  There was some mention of me fainting and wanting Mike to stand behind me when I actually got to see this beauty! The crater and the dome reforming.

I took this picture from a distance to show how small the people look and how big the mountain is.  It is very wide!  Happy, happy!  This is one of those things where the pictures don't do it justice.

The two people in the picture above worked at the mountain.  They helped Mike find some elk in the green area! They spotted them without binoculars.

 This is Spirit Lake. It looks pretty normal.

We stopped at the place where you could take helicopter rides around the mountain on day.  One of the workers had taken pictures on the helicopter ride she took.  Of course I asked her to share them with me.  You cannot see this in the pictures I took.  It is the log pad.  I am not sure if that is what they call it but they did not take the logs out of Spirit Lake.  Here they are from a distance. 

That is a lot of logs! They didn't take the logs out here because they wanted this area to recover naturally.

This, again, was our view of Spirit Lake. 

We headed back down to the camp and seeing Mt. Saint Helens was the completion of a beautiful vacation together.  We celebrated life and love, the miracle of life given to me and our 14th wedding anniversary. We saw God's hand and His blessing all throughout this vacation.  Neither one of us were really ready to go home but we had to.  It made us both anxious for our next adventure.  

This is when I really wanted the genie to come do this for us.  When you are putting the tent up there is more excitement and anticipation.  Not so much when you are tearing it all down.  We just took our time and got it done.  

 That stove had to go!  It is heavy.  Just ask Mike!

 The almost empty tent.

 We had a lot of stuff.  I cannot believe it fit in my car (with a rooftop carrier)!

 Gotta get the chimney down and the area around it on the tent cleaned off.

 Lunch break time!

We thank God for safe travels and happy times!  This vacation was right up on the top of the list of vacations with Alaska!  It was very special.  We need to start planning next year's vacation now.