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.

Horseback Riding, Train Ride and No Katie

Sunday was supposed to be a day with Katie.  We were meeting 1/2 way for horseback riding and a train ride.  We got a tearful call from Katie saying she had a flat.  The tire was off and she was on the freeway and couldn't even get out of her car.  After a couple of conversations back and forth she called road side assistance.  There was no way she could drive 80 miles on a spare and she had already missed the horseback riding.  That was very disappointing to all of us!  

The horse trails were in Elbe, WA.  I have a coffee shop there!  All we really saw of the town was about 3 blocks on the main drag.  Lots of train cars that are restaurants and places to stay.  I am sure there is more somewhere of Elbe.  There has to be.  

As we drove up to the EZtrails horseback riding we were wondering if we were in the right place.  We were.  Very rustic but very good!  Nice people! We were the only two on the ride.  That made it even nicer.  Guess not everyone wants to ride horses in the rain.

 The owner of this place.  He has been running the trail riding business for years.

 This was the one and only restroom!

 The office, again rustic but very functional!

 Yehaw.  New rain gear for us! Howdy Tex!

 This is the horse I was going to ride.

 Off we go!

The whole ride was beautiful.  The trail was narrow and we had a nice shelter from the rain as it did rain off and on.  I thought I could brighten our faces on these pictures but no luck.  Don't have that skill yet.  The backdrop is beautiful so I put the silhouette pictures in.

 Our guides and the owner!

Next stop was lunch.  I told Katie I would take her out for lunch so we didn't make one.  One place to eat.  I told Mike every time we go to these little restaurants the food is great, people are nice, and the atmosphere is friendly!  It was all of those things.

Mike spent some time getting some fishing tips from some of the locals.  They even went and got Mike a map so he could see the location exactly. Very nice!

 Our waitress, server, hostess.  All in one!

 Mike liked the food!  He isn't even using his hands.

Go Seahawks!

Train ride time.  We debated on whether to take the train ride.  We had seen so much of the area that we figured the train ride wouldn't be much different.  We were right but no refunds so we took the train.  Wasn't thrilling but good! Steam engines were pretty unique. 

Taking tickets.  Seems like they always take tickets after the train starts.  What would happen if someone didn't have one?  Would they toss them out the window of a moving train.  Put them in handcuffs?  Cover their eyes so they couldn't see anything?  Who knows.  We had ours. 

 The view!

 At half time, the turn around time on the train, we got to see a bunch of train stuff.  Steam engines etc.

 Headed back to Elbe! There is our restaurant on the left.

 A beautiful church sits right by the train station in Elbe.

We really didn't see many animals but this is one we did see. 

Now what?  Headed to the river Mike talked to the locals about.  Some fishing fun.  I did not have a license so I was a spectator.  I was OK with that!

Mike talked to these two nice guys that gave him more tips and shared their left over bait with him.  They were very nice and very informative.  They caught their limit so we really figured they were pros.  We were blessed over and over again with wonderful people.  God thing for sure!

We weren't the only ones fishing!  The bridge was full.  Turns out the fish were not biting for us.  This is the part of fishing I remember.  Over an hour and one fish!  These fish we sneaky.  Mike would set the hook and the bait would be gone and so would the fish.  Sneaky little things. We packed it up and headed back to camp which was over an hour away.  Tomorrow we are leaving.

 Beautiful river as the sun goes down.