Our drive south began today with a trip to Mount St. Helens 
.
Mount St. Helens is probably the most famous active volcano in North America, mainly because of it’s large eruption in 1980 . The eruption was caused by an earthquake and the ensuing blast was big enough to blow the whole north side of the mountain off and flatten 230 square miles of trees.
We visited the main visitor centre at Johnston Ridge, named after David Johnston , a geologist killed while manning an outpost 5 miles from the mountain during the 1980 blast. The area had been evacuated but he insisted on staying and his last words on the radio was “Vancouver, Vancouver, this is it!” He was never found.
The visitor centre was really interesting with some really cool exhibits, including a real life earthquake sensor which you could set off by jumping up and down on a plate (most people were able to cause the equivalent of about a 0.001 on the richter scale), a great talk by one of the park rangers and a theatre showing movies about the volcano. This led to the biggest “wow” moment we’ve had so far at the end of the movie, when the screen and curtain raised to reveal a huge window and an amazing panoramic view of the north side of the volcano right in-front of us. There was a chorus of ooh’s and aah’s from the audience, none of whom were expecting it.
We’re now in Portland and we’re driving to the coast tomorrow where we should get our first view of the Pacific.