Filling in the gaps...

OK, time to catch you all up. We left Portland and went to the coast again, camped in Washington at Long Beach, and hung out in Oregon at Astoria and Sea Side. There the ocean had huge rock pinnacles called sea stacks sticking out and this is where that ocean scene from "Goonies" was shot. We played in a water cave only accessible at low tide. Then we hopped in the car, went through Portland, slept in the car at a truck stop (with a bar that we closed!), then drove along the Columbia river gorge (beautiful). The gorge had waterfalls, parasailers, paragliders, sailboats, and the Bonneville Dam: which had windows in the fish ladders to watch the Steelhead swim upstream. They also had a Sturgeon hatchery, and those fish look prehistoric! After that we drove to Mount Hood and went to the Timberline Lodge (where the Shining was filmed) and camped for free at an old airstrip in the middle of the woods. A camp fire, smores, shooting stars and a bottle of wine topped off the evening. The next day we drove to Mount Saint Helens and hiked in Ape Cave, which was a 2 mile underground lava tube. The lava from thousands of years ago flowed underground, made a tunnel, and then cooled and eroded away, leaving the hollow "tube" tunnel. Headlamps and flashlights were a must. We camped in the town of Cougar at an RV camp (and finally got showers). After "charging our batteries" up we drove to Mount Saint Helens and saw all of the devastation. Spirit lake was filled with trees from the 1980 blast, and it looked like popsicle sticks were lining the surface of the lake. Every tree was knocked over facing north from the 1980 blast and it was a powerful sight. Pardon the cliche but seeing this disaster was humbling. After we left Mount Saint Helens we went to Rainier national park and had what I would say is the BEST DAY of the entire trip! In fact it deserves its own post.

By: Jeremy Proofread, corrected, spellchecked, and revamped to make sense by SW :)