Mt St Helens & Pt Defiance

Lest our readers are lead to believe that the Chronicle only trolls Twitter and plays poker, let us get on with another short travel post.

The past two weeks have found us with an occasional day off combined with nice weather (meaning no rain, few clouds). Rather than donk off good weather doing something productive, we opted to get out of doors and enjoy what Western WA has to offer: outstanding sights and hiking.

Our first day trip was to Mount St Helens. The drive, once off the interstate, is quite relaxing ~ small towns, trees, farmland. The park itself has excellent hiking trails, an excellent observatory at Johnson Ridge, and one or two cheezy tourist stops just outside the monument boundaries.

The National Monument area itself is fairly undeveloped. There are some cool bridges to get to Johnson Ridge, one or two other visitor centers, and lots of trees. Of course, trees in WA are no big thing, except the last time we visited here they were dead, laying flat like pick-up-sticks, and gray. The forestry community has done a fabulous job replanting and tending this natural resource. There are numerous view-point turnouts for photo ops for which F&O hammed it up.

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Once we arrived at the Johnson Observatory, we said hi to Smokey, and listened to a talk by the ranger about MSH history. To counteract the long drive, we decided to head off down the trail for a mile or so. Literally down. All good and fine until, of course, we had to come back up the trail. Ugh. Okay for the normal, in shape person, but we are zero foot altitude residents, and not exactly in Olympics shape. The trail was great, and slow and steady did get us there. There was a monument with the names of those who had perished, lots of benches, and gorgeous views. Bigfokkerdog took some awesome pix with his new super-cool camera.

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After having gotten some cardio, sun and education, we headed for home. End of day.. and on to the next week:

The following week, again having found ourselves with a day off that was not wet nor gray, we headed off to Point Defiance Park after a stop at the Gyro Zone (yum). Getting to Point Defiance is a shorter drive, and is a fabulous place to take a walk-hike to get some out-of-door time. Not only are there well marked trails, but there are various gardens, a beach, boats, a fort, some trains, and a zoo. This is a large, municipal property, and it is well maintained. We have frequently done the 5 mile trail, but this time opted for the shorter, ridge trail. (2.5 miles, up and down and up and down). It starts at the Rhododendron Garden (which was looking sad as it is not bloom time), and goes to the water.

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At the water end, F&O availed themselves of the picnic facility, viewed the sights, and wished they had some lunch to go along with their bottle of water. Ollie was a little disappointed that he was not permitted to fall off a cliff into the water (isn’t that what otters do?), and Flynn tried to spray paint the no alcohol sign.

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All mischievousness finally complete, we headed back up and down and up and down the trail. We stopped to pet dogs out for walks, and moved out of the way for the overachievers who were actually running the trail. Back at the car, we opted to take the 5 mile drive around the park, which took us past the fort and the trains, as well as past the 30 or so raccoons on the side of the road. This a common sight despite the signs that tell people not to feed the wildlife. The raccoons come to the side of the road and simply wait for humans to serve them: mommies and babies, bachelor raccoons, raccoons on their first dates ~ all take up about a mile of the road shoulder. Cute as heck, but if you stop those buggers will head straight for you car and try to climb in. Someone should shame them into getting into the garbage like a respectable scavenger.

We got back into civilization, and called it another fabulous day in the PNW.

Fin

F & O