Washington - The Mountain

Ok - back again with another Washington post! I ended the post abruptly Sunday night after I got the tired stretchies and had to stop. After I said I was going to talk about Kasper's trip, I totally failed to mention the awesome things he did! I was so exhausted I guess I only wanted to talk about how we didn't sleep for 5 nights. So while K was in Washington, he learned how to wave and high five and also started crawling on his hands and knees! Those are some milestones there! The waving was so cute. He still has to be in just the right mood to wave back but when he does it's adorbs. Besides maturing a bit, he also saw his first big mountains and stuck his toes into the ocean for the first time. I haven't given the little dude the credit he deserves for travelling as well as he did for being a squirrely 9 month old.

So where were we? We got into town Tuesday afternoon and hung out at Phyllis and Gill's where I spent a lot of time making the squash Kasper would get totally sick of after 1 meal.

For most of the time we were out there, it was just the 3 of us tooling around. Sandra and her sisters had estate things to sort out and we had our own car and car seat which gave us quite a bit of independence. We had a nice balance of our family time and extended family time.

We headed out Wednesday morning to see Mt. St. Helens. I'll also mention right now that the minute Kasper got into the car he slept. We never went more than 2 hours away from Longview but he was such a great little car passenger. If he did wake up, he would chat quietly to himself in the back seat until we got to where we were going. I was thankful for his easy-going attitude on our daytrips. So we headed to Mt. St. Helens, which I had never seen before thanks to fog.


What luck - I'm looking at the mountain at one of the rest stops and all of a sudden there's a parrot to hold! Totally random.


There she is!


Kasper peeping his very first mountain


It was such a beautiful, clear day we could even see Mt. Adams in the distance! (It's over there towards the left)

We went up to Johnston's Ridge to get a "closer" look at the mountain. The crazy thing is that we were still 5 miles from it. 5 miles!! I can't imagine what the mountain looked like before half of it blew off. It must have been beautiful.

There was a lake at the base of the mountain - Spirit Lake - that was a popular camping spot. In fact, it was once Rob's Dad Steve's most favorite place in the world. The lake is mostly gone now, covered with pieces of the mountain and ash. Even after 30 years there isn't much growing around here.

We stopped for lunch at a place we had visited before. It's downstream on the Toutle River from Mt. St. Helens. When the volcano erupted it sent ash and debris down this river. This was the view from their deck - you can see the ash along the banks.


This was a common sight. A screechy baby and an exasperated Mama.

Love my boy


There you have it - Kasper sees Mt St Helens for the first time. Actually, I saw it for the first time as well! Lots more to come. I'm going to have to stretch out the Washington posts - lots to talk about from there as well as other things to post about. I have to pace myself!