Our last morning aboard the Pearl was a little bittersweet. We were excited for the things we still had left to do, but sad to be leaving the ship (and the food!) Here we are hauling all of our stuff off the ship.
We left Jody and Sarah to make their way to Seaside on their own since they didn't want to make the trip up to Mt. St. Helens.
We first stopped at the Forest Learning Center which is run by the Weyerhaeuser lumber company. It was a pretty cool stop and they had lots of exhibits with interesting stuff to see. We took a 1 mile hike down a trail to an overlook. We saw several giant slugs along the way.
Unfortunately when we got to the end of the trail, there was no overlook. Apparently the trees have grown quite a bit since that trail was first made.
Back inside the center, the kids had fun with the various hands-on displays.
One of the coolest exhibits was to see how much difference there was between the reforested areas (planted by Weyerhaeuser) and the Forest Service areas that were allowed to grow naturally. It was also cool to learn how the sound waves from the eruption bounced off the atmosphere and reflected back to earth in a big wave, and that many people who were very close to the mountain didn't even hear the explosion because of the way the sound traveled.
On our way up to the Johnston Ridge Observatory we stopped at an overlook to take a few photos. It would be the best view of the mountain that we got due to a lingering layer of clouds.
By the time we got to the Johnston Ridge Observatory, the top of the mountain was almost entirely hidden in the clouds.
The observatory was pretty cool, too, with many interesting things to look at. We had to get to the coast before it got too late, so we left before the clouds could clear (not that it looked like they were going to anytime soon).
We headed for the coast and hoped to get our Washington State sign photo just before crossing over into Oregon, but as we left Longview, Washington, we never saw a sign except for a tiny little sign above the roadway right in the middle of the bridge crossing over the Columbia River. No good. We decided to give it one more try when we got to Astoria. We took the Astoria-Megler bridge across the river again, and again, no sign when we got off the bridge. Luckily we drove a 1/2 mile up the road to a little rest stop and we finally got our Washington State sign!
Headed back across the Astoria-Megler Bridge into Oregon.
We made our way to Seaside and got checked into the hotel which was right on the beach. We stopped in at Jody and Sarah's room (they had arrived before us) and they were too tired to go beach combing. Even though it was very brisk and getting dark, the kids were excited to head out to look for sand dollars. After searching the beach for about 40 minutes, the kids were happy to have found a few good ones.
After the beach, the kids took a short dip in the hotel pool to finish off the night before they kicked us out to close the pool.
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