Toutle River Valley toward Mt. St. Helens

As we left the Visitors Center we drove on toward Mt. St Helens and finally stopped at an overlook and restaurant by the Toutle River Valley. This picture was shot down the valley looking East. Georgeous view.

Mt. St. Helens and Mt Ranier WA

Wednesday June 5 and Thursday June 6th: We had moved up to the Thousand Trails Preserve near Chehalis, WA on Tuesday and settled in. As we moved into Washington the weather became rainey and cooler as a front moved in to the area. It had been in the 80's up here last week while we were in the 50's on the Oregon coast. Now as we come to Washington the temperature has dropped into the 50's for us. I surely didn't expect to be wearing coats this far into the summer.

Wednesday we traveled down I-5 to the Mt. St. Helens Visitor Center. The had a good movie about the eruption in 1980 and a model of the volcano that you could walk down into to see the various layers and magma chambers. They also had a very nice nature walk out through the marshy land, about a mile around that we enjoyed.

The picture above shows the overcast very well. If you count the third peak to the left of the big center peak, that will be Mt. St. Helens.

Pacific City Thousand Trails Preserve

Friday June 1st. Arrived at the Pacific City Thousand Trails today. The beach is just across the road and down through the woods. Very pretty walk. We have been taking the dogs and walking the beach each day. One day we drove up to Tillamook, OR to visit the Tillamook Cheese factory and have lunch. Just a beautiful relaxing weekend. We will leave Monday for Chahalis, Washington. Here is a picture of a bit of the Oregon coast.

South Jetty/Florence Oregon

Still Thursday, 31st of May: From old town Florence we drove out to a park where we could walk on the beach and on out a stone jetty the helps herd the river as it meets the Pacific Ocean. Walking out the jetty into the ocean was beautiful, but cold and windy. We didn't stay on the jetty long, but went back toward the campground and then out "South Jetty" road into the NP area in the dunes. Some four wheelers were having a go at one of the dunes and we got a picture of it.

South Jetty Preserve Near Florence, OR

Thursday, May 31: This area is the northern part of the Oregon Dunes National Monument, an series of sand dunes along the beach stretching some 50 miles long with some of the dunes reaching 500 feet high. We drove about eleven miles north to Sea Lion Cave, a large cave with access to view the sea lions in nature, in the morning then down into Florence for Lunch at Moe's and a little store hiking in the old town harbor area. This is a picture of the old draw bridge crossing the river in Florence.

Traveling up the Coast

Wednesday May 30th: Moving on up toward Florence, Oregon to the Thousand Trails Preserve at "South Jetty". As lunch time came we pulled off at a viewing area on the beach and took the dogs and us for a walk on the beach. Strangely the sand here was rather black. Carolyn took a picture of Danny, Cymy, and I with a piece of driftwood.

North on the Redwood Scenic Highway

Tuesday May 30th: We left the beautiul Russian River area and began driving north on US-101, also called the Redwood Scenic Highway toward Oregon. We plan to drive on up to an RPI campground, Redwood Trails Resort, to spend the night. As we travel north we slowly began seeing the roadside grass and the grass in the fields turn from solid dry brown to a sprinkling of green to solid green the further we travel. The drought conditions in Southern and Central California are really severe and they need a nice long turn to rain for several years to recover.

The Redwood Trails campground was small, but beautifully situated. An old origional red schoolhouse and an old caboose are out front with a large horse corral behind us. A wood carver had set up business next to the campground and had his works throughout the campground and store. Wonderfully done works, but we had nowhere to carry them. As we were setting down to dinner we looked out the window and five big Elk were drifting their way across the campground. Tried to get a picture of them, but it didn't turn out too well, but will put it on here anyway. If you look hard you can see two of them in the center of the picture. One faceing us and the other facing away. The old caboose is just to the left of the Elk and the old schoolhouse is further left, but out of the picture. We saw more Wednesday morning and a gentleman camped near us said that a herd of about forty wandered the area. Shortly after leaving Wednesday morning we saw a large number of them laying in a field a short way from the road.