Mt. St. Helens

A little while ago Tyson and I were lucky enough to get to visit Mt. St. Helens.

I was so excited that I started taking pictures as soon as I could get a good shot.

Or, even a not so good one.

For example:
I swear, it's right behind those trees... My timing was clearly a little off with this one.

Here I am looking down at a lovely river of, well, ash I think. There was a little water down there too. The whole time we were driving up Tyson kept telling me how you could see moose or something from the telescopes at the visitor center.

Guess how many we saw?

None.

Tyson is all about the Mt. St. Helens

These humongous flying ants were EVERYWHERE! Every time I saw one I had a flashback to that scene in Indiana Jones. You know, the one with the nasty ants? {shudder} Since I did not want to be taken to their lair I chose to run away from every one that I saw.

Except this one.

While we were there I took a sweet helicopter ride!!!

Oh, can you tell that I'm inside?

Bummer.

Well, Tyson took a sweet helicopter ride!!!

You can still tell we're inside?

Dang.

Ah, Helen herself.

Inside the visitor center there was a seismograph machine set up to measure the vibrations where we were. I was lucky enough to witness one of the straightest and least cool lines ever recorded by a seismograph machine.

I consider myself lucky.

Here she is again.

Here is a tree that they built the visitor center around.

Not really.

But maybe.

I forget what they were trying to exhibit here but isn't Tyson cute!

We got to watch a movie about when the Mt. exploded and right after the movie was over they opened up the curtains and there she was!

We wanted to get a few more shots before we left and I'm glad we did because as we were posing for this picture we felt a rumble beneath our feet, and a plume of smoke billowed out from the remains of the mountain.

I wanted to run but Tyson wouldn't let me.

He said it was our duty to take pictures and preserve this moment for mankind (as if they didn't have 3,000 cameras pointed at the mt. at all times from the visitor center alone)

He also said if it was gonna blow we wouldn't be able to get away fast enough anyway.

So I faced what was quickly turning into an ashy hot mess and stared into the face of death.

Just kidding.