Day 53: Maytown to Gifford Pinchot National Forest, WA

I was up at 6:00 am today with Ali - our early riser. He and I quietly made a fancy breakfast of fried eggs on toast while we waited for the others to wake up.

We all learned a lot about the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helen this morning (once every one was up and at ’em). At the Mount St. Helen Visitor Centre we checked out the museum and watched the accompanying film. We had no idea how many times Mount St. Helen has erupted over the last 4,000 years (a lot!) compared to the rest of the volcanoes in the Cascade range. We also were shocked at how much of the mountain top disappeared as a result of the 1980 eruption and how much the accompanying landslides and flooding changed the surrounding landscape. The most recent eruption of Mount St. Helen was 2004-2008 when it slowly built a new lava cone in the crater.

After stopping for gas and ice cream sandwiches at a strange nameless station, we drove through Custer on the way to our next destination. We stopped at a weekend market for a loaf of homemade jalapeño and cheddar sourdough and some fresh local cherries from an old lady with a roadside stand. Yum!

Our afternoon was spent doing one of the activities that I remember liking best from our original road trip 15 years ago, though admittedly, after today I realized how much I had forgotten about what we actually did. We started with the Trail of Two Forests where there are huge holes in the lava field where the lava flowed around huge trees, hardened while the trunks burned and left huge tree shaped holes in the ground. Now new trees are growing out of the holes, hence the two forests - pre and post eruption (one of Mount St. Helen’s earlier eruptions about 2,000 years ago). On the trail we got to crawl through one of these tree shaped lava tubes. The boys LOVED it. It was admittedly super cool.

Next we hiked through the lower and upper parts of the Ape Cave lava tube. It was bonkers - way more intense than the wild caving tour we did in Kentucky. We climbed over MANY rock piles slippery from water dripping from the ceiling, up hardened lava falls (one was eight feet high with a rope ladder), beside small lakes in the middle of the tube, etc. - you get the picture. It was certainly wild. The boys loved it, of course. And while Ian bonked his head once, we both loved it too. What an adventure. While I didn’t remember the rock scrambling parts or how wet the cave was, I do remember thinking the first time we did this, that it is incredible to be allowed to hike this self-guided. It is a pretty crazy experience and I still feel the same way. What an amazing thing to get to do.

When the tunnel got narrow, it got really windy.

We chose a campground near the Gifford Pinchot National Forest for tonight with plans for meandering along the Columbia River tomorrow until we make it back to the coast.

The tree trunks are completely moss covered.