I was up bright and early at 6:00 to beat the rush from my campsite in Glacier National Park to Sunrise Peak, which is a prime location for viewing Mt. Rainier. I didn't want to arrive late and not find a place to park . It was a 23 mile drive over curvy roads but I still arrived in plenty of time for an almost private viewing. I suppose most of the campers were still in bed waiting for the weather to get a little warmer. There were clouds around the mountain but not enough to obscure a good view of the peak (6,400 ft.) all covered with snow. It was definitely a sight worth getting up early for.
From there I drove back down the mountain the way I had come and headed for Mt. St. Helens, where the volcano exploded in 1982. I made a couple of stops along the way, the first one to get a cup of coffee, a delicious blueberry muffin, and time to do one more blog. I'm often surprised when out-of-the way places turn out to have access to WIFI, but now I always ask, because just as often as not, they do.
A little further along I stopped at a ski shop/sporting goods store to buy a new poncho. I believe my old poncho is with my red jacket, and I wouldn't have needed a new poncho if I knew what has become of my red jacket but I don't so I did. In any event, for $3.95 I got a new poncho and an interesting conversation with the store owner. He was a man of about 45 who used to work in Portland. He was a mechanical engineer and had hoped to retire in about six years, but he said his wife talked him into doing it early. He liked to ski and hike and do outdoor activities, so they decided to settle in this area. When this store came up for sale last winter, they decided to buy it and he would run it. That way he could work at a much less high pressure job and still have time to do all the things he liked to do. His wife worked from home for a firm that had its headquarters in Atlanta and a subsidiary or a branch in Portland. Now if that isn't a sign of the times, I don't know what is! The man seemed very content with his new lifestyle. Although it was none of my business, I asked him anyway how he managed to retire so young. He said that he and his wife had worked hard, skipped vacations, and decided not to have any children. He said that he came from a three-child family and had seen how difficult it was for his parents financially to provide for all of the children the way they wanted to. I mentioned that my wife and I (well, really my wife) had also decided to have just one child and it's doubtful if I could have retired as early as I did or been able to take this trip if we had had more. Given the cost of raising children , I wonder how many other couples out there are making or at least considering similar decisions. Incidentally, there was an article in one of the July issues of Time magazine about "only" children. It said that the research generally shows that they are as well adjusted as other children and often more successful in life (like first-born children) than children from larger families. The writer of the article attributed this to the extra attention that single children receive from their parents.
I reached St. Helens National Monument and took the road through the Gifford Pinchot National Forest all the way up to Windy Point for the best view of the mountain. It was still all brown from the explosion and all around the mountain for more than eight miles there were still fallen trees that had been blown over by the explosion, which actually blew out the side of the mountain and sent a blast of heat and stones across the forest at a speed of 400 miles an hour. Along the way to Windy Point there were a number of scenic lookouts. At one of them there was a lake now half covered with fallen logs. The blast had deepened the lake to the extent that it threatened to flood the region and the Corps of Engineers had had to build a tunnel that could be opened to let out excess water when necessary.
I came back down the mountain to a great campground with large private campsites and everywhere huge redwood trees at least 120 feet tall and with trunks so large that it would take three or even four of me to hold hands in a circle around one of these trees.
No comments:
Post a Comment