Lava Dogs

The youngest person on the volcano. Notice the lava dog being served on the left -

It's not every day that dad stands above the clouds -

Rim of the volcano -

The moon? No, just Mt. St. Helens -

Wes' first camping experience! -

We did it! We climbed up Mt. St. Helens! It was wonderful and scary and I felt very brave! If we didn't have an awesome group of people (some friends and microsoft people that we met up here) guiding us, I probably wouldn't have made it!

Some of the people in our group did it as a night hike and left at midnight. They got to the top at 5am. They carried 2 tents, 84 hotdogs, buns, mustard, ketchup, icecream bars, white aprons and hats, and cooking gloves up with them! It was top secret and when all the hikers of the day got to the top there was a delicious gourmet hotdog or 2 waiting for them!

As we slide back down, it was fun to encourage the people still hiking up by telling them that there were hotdogs up top...I may have also told them that there was a Starbucks :)

I'm not much for writing a whole lot on a blog...but I have so many stories I could share about the hike! One point in particular was really difficult. We were about halfway up, climbing on boulders and inside of a cloud so we could only see about 2 yards in front of us. I was really bummed because I knew we were so high up and the view would be beautiful, but all we could see was the person in front and huge gray/black boulders. Cold rain was blowing us over...I was definitely thinking that this would be the one and only time that you find me on this mountain...but we kept climbing and made our way above the cloud to the blue sky. The clouds cleared away a bit as we hiked down so our view was so much prettier.

The volcano seemed so dead...piles of big rocks and little rocks and little little little rocks, not really my favorite. But the neat thing was that pretty much as soon as I started to feel really scared climbing up, I saw little tiny signs that there is life on it! I saw 3 bird poops on rocks, a little chipmunk, and a bee on the very top! There were 3 different types of small beautiful flowers peeking out of boulders. There weren't many, just a few scattered here and there. I think that it is so amazing that a simple little flower can squeeze through such a powerful and gigantic mountain of rock. It made me realize that if we are made in God's image and he created such beauty on this earth, we must be even more strong and beautiful in him than we can ever imagine. If he values the birds in the sky, how much more does he value us?

Job updates: Leslie still pending...Wes must be busy since he has blogged for a very long time!