Washington

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Our first glimpse of Mt. Ranier, 14,411 ft.		Flight Museum
Cessna CG-2 Primary Glider	Harbor cruise
Space Needle	Guided Missile Cruiser	Only a few days are clear enough to see Mt. Ranier
	Seattle Skyline	Container Ship (Note)
	Container Ship	Coast Guard Ice Breaker (Note)
Sleeping Seal on front of ship	Short 76 story building (Note)
Jelly Fish	Strange fish (Note)	Pot Bellied Seahorse
Mt. Ranier	25 Named Glaciers on Mt. Ranier
Some friends!
Cranes - babies still have down	Red Panda
Jaguar	Humboldt Penguin
Sumatra Tiger		(Notes)
	Steam vents	New growth everywhere
Trees blasted by the winds	Trees blown from right to left
Glaciers around the lava dome now.	Lava Dome just before the eruption	Hummocks
Barren valley below St. Helen	Hills stripped by the winds - tree stumps	Sprit Lake today.
Trees leveled by the blast	Spider destroyed in 2005 by explosion	Seismic 'spider'

The container ships shown in these pictures are used for most overseas transport now days. The idea of creating a standard size container that could easily be moved on and off the ships actually came from a truck driver. These ships were loaded with 17 containers across the ship and 18 containers from front to back. The 6 levels of containers you can see only represent a third of the total load; the rest are below the decks. The crane operators are highly skilled to be able to load the containers very fast; most of them earn over $100,000 per year. (Return to pictures)

The Coast Guard Ice Breaker shown here is a regular, non-nuclear ship. The thickness of the hull at the top of the sides is 3 in. thick and gets thicker as it goes down the side of the ship. This is to let it ram up onto a layer of ice and just break through with its weight. (Return to pictures)

This building is a 'short' 76 story building. The reason for the 'short' label is that the architect wanted to build the tallest skyscraper in Seattle and he wanted it to be 76 stories tall. When the design was finished, he found out that it would be too tall and would interfere with the departures from Sea-Tac Airport. So, to keep his 76 story building, he took 6 inches off each floor to have a 76 story building that would meet the requirements of the FAA. (Return to pictures)

These strange little fish were actually dipping their mouths into the sand and scooping up the sand. Then they flushed the non-food items out through their gill plates. They just left little mounds of sand pebbles behind them as they ate their meal. (Return to pictures)

Visiting Mt. Saint Helens National Volcano Monument is visiting a geological event that is still in action. Everywhere we visit has geological events going on slowly like erosion and weathering. But, at Mt. Saint Helens, it is going on while you are watching. This mountain had been a focus of interest for geologists for years, there was evidence of eruptions back in the 1800's and they could tell that there was ongoing seismic activity so it made them really interested in the mountain/volcano. On May 18,1980, they got an up close view of a volcano erupting. For weeks there had been a huge dome of lava forming on the side of the mountain, proof that the internal pressures of the mountain were building. By the end of April, 1980, the dome was growing outward at the rate of 5-7 meters per day. On May 8, there was a 5.0 earthquake under the mountain. On the morning of May18, there was a 5.1 earthquake that initiated the eruption. The whole northwest side of the mountain was blown away. In 10 minutes, the eruption leveled 230 square miles of timber and the mountain lost 1300 ft of height. Initially the mountian blowing away created a massive landslide that buried 14 miles of river valley to an average depth of 150 ft. This same landslide trapped some of the magma and gases, that minutes later produced a sideways explosion of hot rock and ash that killed trees as far away as 17 miles. This explosion also melted much of the glacier on the mountain and that slurry created another flood of matter that flowed into the valleys. Spirit Lake, 4 miles NE of the volcano, was hit by this flood of melted glacier and mud that pushed the water of the lake up the hillside for 800 ft. and when the water receded, it washed all the dead trees into the lake. When it was over, the lake was completely covered by timber killed by the initial hot winds. As the eruption continued, an ash eruption rose to a height of 15 miles above the crater. Evidence of the ash eruption was detected completely around the world.

The volcano is not through putting on a show. In 1986 another dome of lava formed in the middle of crater left by the 1980 eruption and as recently as 2004 another set of lava domes have begun to form. This formation has slowed its growth, but is still growing. Currently you can see several points where steam is escaping from the inside of the volcano. (Return to pictures)

There were 56 people killed by the eruption, some geologists, some loggers and some campers. There are some amazing pictures of people hiking other close-by mountains that witnessed the eruption.

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