Mt. St. Helens

I went there last Saturday. St. Helens had one of the most recent eruptions in history, in 1980. It is one of the 6 active volcanos in the West Coast, and keeps coughing out smoke and lava at times. Susceptible to cold, I guess! [Find more about St. Helens at Wikipedia]

Well, as far as the trip goes, it was definitely memorable. Don't remember anything about the jouney to and from, thanks to my knack of falling asleep whenever I am travelling. Perhaps it makes me feel I am in a swinging crib!

Well, one of the more interesting incidents during the trip happened at Johnston Ridge Observatory, which is the closest you can get to the fire-mountain. We had an hour and a half at the observatory, and after having spent some time watching a movie on the eruption and then creating artificial earthquakes at a machine there [and actually having recorded it on a Seismograph! Sadly even with my mass, I could not reach very high on the Reichter Scale :-( ], we ambled along a trail from the Observatory which was going higher still. It was cold and windy, probably some 2-3 degrees centigrade, and I would not have known if my nose had decided to take a peek over the valley and even fallen off! I was that numb!

Getting to the point, we were on this trail, and suddenly were overcome with a need to digress off the marked path for some adventure! Deal! We get off the trail walk a few steps, spot a huge tree trunk and decide to clisk some pics using it as a prop! So, after having done "Titanic" over it and a sleeping sweeping view of the volcano, as we decided we already were exposed to cold quite a bit, and should be heading back to the cozy comfines of the Obeservatory, there comes a "Mami" [no not the maternal aunt! we three roommates have made it a sobriquet for the law-enforcers: so policemen are "mama" and women "mami"]. Ah well, there was a sign just at the exact place we had chosen to hike off the trail that said "Plants grow by the inch and die by the *foot*" [obviously referring to the human limb], and if we indeed decided to disregard the warning, a hundred dollars would be conveniently siphoned off our wallets into the soil!

It goes without saying, we have a habit of not-reading warning and fine signs on the roads in India and it does take a while to get used to new habitats! And thus, very conveniently, as soon a we had seen the warning sign, we had turned our heads away, more out of habit. Reading law-enforcement warnings is tantamount to worshipping Satan, isn't it? Now, who would have known that in the USA, things work a little differently!

Thankfully for us [and our wallets! Wait I don't think we had 200 dollars on us anyway!], the "mami" left us with a stren warning, along with an accompanying remark, "You can do it in your country", which we did not feel was in very good taste. No harm done, we did follow it up with a good number of our own Hindi specialities, which I am sure she didn't follow. Must have thought we are saying sorry :D.

And, thus, the trip ended. On the way back, we also had some very very delicious Strawberry Rhubbards and Cobblers, yummm !

We followed the trip up with a Govinda movie, Khullam Khulla Pyaar Karenge, a laugh riot, and perhaps the best way to end the day!

[For the Mt. St. Helens trip, we took the Gray Line Of Seattle tour. It's pretty good, though I feel a mite expensive]