Friday, October 9, 2015

Mt. St. Helens fieldtrip!

Got up super early (for us) at 5:20, got everyone up, packed breakfast and lunch and headed out..Started at the Johnston Ridge observatory which was great! The kids watched their short movie on the eruption, learned about different rocks and how they are produced by the volcano. It was so cloudy however that we couldn't really look into the crater from the blast. But it was a lot of fun anyway! Had a ranger talk, picked up some materials for their geology unit for spring and then had lunch and headed out..with a few stops!

We made a couple of stops along the road to point out places you could still see the fallen trees from the eruption, where you could see the buildup of silt, logs, debris, etc. in the river beds, where you could see the end of the blast zone and the beginning of what would have been the "ghost forest" (those tree's that remained upright but were burned by the heat from the blast), and then stopped at the Forest learning center about 12 miles from the blast. They are normally closed by mid Sept. but had opened today for a tour bus that was scheduled to come thru. They decided to remain open for others and I'm SO glad they did! What a cool facility! The kids got another idea of the blast from a short 2 minute film then went in to discover the rest of the exhibits!




We will have to visit again next year in summer! What a totally cool place!


No comments:

Post a Comment