Saturday, September 28, 2019
We returned to Ginkgo Petrified Forest today in the sunlight. It is a cold, windy and at times, rainy day.
We stopped at the museum first but it was closed so we headed over to the hills. Saw some goats in the parking lot. Their color helps them blend into the surroundings.
We hiked up the trails again to see the rest of the petrified logs.
The only flowers we saw on the hills…they looked like dried baby’s breath.
There is a lot of lava rock showing that this was once an active volcano area.
Come walk with me…
We headed back to the museum after getting rained on and blown about by the strong winds.
How a tree becomes petrified (minus the millions of years!).
Interesting how most of the petrified forests are in the Northwest of the USA.
Live Ginkgo tree at the visitor center.
View from the back porch of the visitor center.
Interesting that they are playing a video stating that there was a actually a mega flood at one point in history. We didn’t watch the video as it was an hour long. Might have to check it out.
Here’s the view coming back to the campground…the campground is off to the bottom right of the photo in the little green patch of land.
At about noontime, we headed out for Mt. Saint Helens. Several hours later we arrived at the campground and quickly dropped the van off the trailer and drove to the first visitor center right across from the campground (but is 30 miles from Mt. Saint Helens).
This center was closed so we then drove an hour to the Johnson Ridge Visitor center. Views as we approached.
It was closed but we could still see the volcano from the viewing deck. We got there a little before sunset.
This is the ridge that the volcano blew towards when it erupted. It was not a vertical blast but a lateral one, so the people that were on this ridge observing and recording what was happening with the active volcano were directly in the blast path and didn’t survive. It provides the best view for the crater.
It had just snowed that morning.
Jeremiah literally climbing the walls.
We plan to be back tomorrow.