I'm on a road trip with my 17 year old granddaughter to Mt. St. Helens. We're having a blast! The only disappointment is that a major landslide has blocked the road so we can't get up to the main Science and visitor Center or the Johnson Ridge Observatory, but 3 lower visitor centers are open and there are numerous viewpoints. Tonight we are going to do some planet gazing with my Questar Telescope and also do some Milky Way time exposures.
Much of the devastation from the May 18, 1980 is no longer visible below the mountain itself due to reforestation. The new forest is obviously not natural because the trees are all the same height and much closer together than you see in natural old growth forests. The mountain itself still has the uniform ash gray color.
One of the most interesting (to me) things we learned was that the May 18 blast was silent to people in the immediate vicinity because the sound wave traveled upward rather than laterally and bounced off the stratosphere so people hundreds of miles away could hear it. I was out collecting dragonfly nymphs the morning of May 18 and heard the blast, like distant thunder, but of course I didn't know what it was until I got home and saw what my wife was watching on TV!
My granddaughter's road trip playlist is remarkably similar to my own music tastes with a heavy sprinkling in music from bands I don't remember hearing before, but that I will be listening to in the future. Mt. St. Helens was also her idea of where to go and it was a good one, since I hadn't visited here since 1994.
Stop Tzar Vladimir the Condemned!
What if Eleanor Roosevelt had wings? -- Monty Python
One important characteristic of a theory is that it has survived repeated attempts to falsify it. Contrary to your understanding, all available evidence confirms it. --Subbie
If evolution is shown to be false, it will be at the hands of things that are true, not made up. --Percy
The reason that we have the scientific method is because common sense isn't reliable. -- Taq