Coming Home

I'm finally getting around to posting the end of our Portland trip...

The last day of our Portland trip was Friday. Rather than hitting another stop in Portland before leaving, we headed for home right after breakfast. Of course, I couldn't pass up the opportunity for one more field trip (making it 6 places in just 4 days) so I stopped at the St. Helen's Visitor Center to stretch our legs. There are three visitor's centers and while I really want to take my kids up to the ridge, it just wasn't going to happen this time. It was cloudy and raining which meant we wouldn't see the mountain well, if at all, anyway. So, we just stopped by the center that is just 5 miles off the freeway by Spirit Lake. It seemed like a great idea to me since we did learn a little bit about volcanoes earlier in the year.



First, we watched a 13 minute movie about the 1980 eruption. It was a full house with a visiting private school on a year-end field trip. Afterwards, we explored the exhibits available. One showed where they believe the continents used to be before they moved to their current locations. Another showed the "Ring of Fire". There were a couple of cool statues and other exhibits pertaining to volcanoes and climbing. There was this neat one in the photo. You can go down into a volcano model to see the rock layers and molton core. The kids thought it was cool.

I enjoyed this display showing St. Helens before and after the eruption side by side.

Outside we found some trails and a boardwalk through the wetlands. It was green and beautiful. However, due to the cold, rainy weather we didn't go far.
Before hitting the freeway again, we stopped at Burger King for some lunch. Josh loved being crowned king. Can't you tell?
Not too far down the freeway, I captured this photo. Josh was so tired, he passed out with his water bottle still in his lap. Meanwhile, Mika is struggling to open up a pudding container.

Sammy wasn't tired. No, not at all. Mika is still struggling with that pudding.

By the way, this is a common site of my 6 year old in the car. Does anyone else have a 6 year old that still passes out in the car like this? It needn't be a long trip, either.

Well, that was our Portland trip, beginning to end. We had a long, tiring, but fun week. By the end of it, Mika missed home and wanted to get back. Sammy, on the other hand, loved it so much he didn't want to come home.

I hope you enjoyed tagging along with us via the blog.