DAY 18: The Best Laid Plans......Never Work Out!

Thursday, June 18, Kelso, WA

Well, today was Mt. St. Helens Day!!  We've been waiting to see her all week.  She was even more magnificant than I ever imagined. 

We loaded up the camera with batteries; extra batteries in the purse, and the camcorder charged and ready.  The SD cards were clean and ready to record.......Our first stop was the Welcome Center prior to actually getting to her.  We watched the 20 minute video on how she started getting mad a couple months prior to erupting, continued getting madder and madder and finally let loose on May 18, 1980 which ended the lives of 57 people and destroyed 175 miles of forest.  We were armed with information and ready to check her out!  So, off we headed the 50+ miles to the next observation deck; the closest we could get to her by vehicle.  You could see her looming out in the distance with low clouds hanging over the top forcing us to use our imagination on what she looked like as a whole.  She was calling our name!!  She was saying, "Come closer......take my picture......video me......put me on YouTube......"  So, we obediently  continued getting closer and closer while the road got curvier and curvier.  The landscape started looking more like the moon and less like the lush green we were used to.   It truly was a perfect motorcycle road!  

Chuck was videotaping and I was taking still pictures (ya ya ya, I know what you're thinking....and yes, I did take some photos while driving down the road.....but I put it on cruise control first!).  We were having a great time thinking how awesome this was going to look on YouTube and how proud all of you were going to be of us for getting this amazing footage.  We were even "slightly" hoping for a little earthquake or eruption or something to make the video even more interesting and maybe get a little money out of too!  Didn't happen.  Wellllll..........we got back to the RV, sat outside on the picnic table and like giddy little kids, started uploading the pictures and video to the computer.  The pictures came out great and we were just waiting on the video to upload.............nothing.  NOTHING!  There was no video on the SD card except some I had taken of Chuck that morning and a great shot of his butt.   As nice as that was, it wasn't what we wanted.  I just knew it had to be on there; Chuck swore he saw the red "record" light on while he was taping; but the video was no where to be found.  I looked everywhere....searched the entire computer....it was not on there.  Errrrrrrrr......

So folks, you will have to live with the still shots only.   I did find someone else's YouTube video of the road to Mt. St. Helens, so if you're interested, I'll point you in that direction.  Go to:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9exzFRE8h0  and it's pretty much what we saw today!

Oh ya, one more thing.  Murphy met a very cute little white Llasa Apso today and is in "L-O-V-E"......