The morning Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980 I was in Wichita, Kansas, helping plan my grandmother’s funeral. I don’t remember much about the day it erupted, but I do remember seeing the photos of a vast gray ocean of ash with tree trunks stripped of their branches and greens strewn about. It looked like someone dropped a box of wood matches and dumped ash from a fire pit on top. The mountain, shaken by 5.1 earthquake, erupted on May 18, 1980, collapsing the north face of Mount St. Helens into a massive avalanche, releasing pressurized gases within the volcano.…

The Trail of Ten Falls. Just seeing the intriguing name in a blip on the internet put the trail on my “Want-to-See” list. Do you have one of those lists? A part of me is pulled, like a magnet to metal, with the desire to experience and see everything, so when I run across something interesting, it goes on my list. And boy is my list long! Though I have checked off lots of places, the list keeps growing! My journey into Oregon took me to Silver Falls State Park and the Trail of Ten Falls. The 7.2-mile loop trail…

Seeing the world under our feet has always been intriguing to me! Venturing into caves, mostly through tours, is something I have done since before my children were born. In fact, I went into premature labor with my third child after slinking down a hole my large pregnant belly barely fit through into a huge round cathedral of a cave with a waterfall at one end! The caves at Oregon Caves National Monument, located in the Siskyou Mountains in Oregon, are different than any caves I have seen before! Oh, the stalactites, stalagmites, drapery formations, pillars, and flowstone are there,…

Though fossil records show these giants once grew naturally in many areas of the Northern Hemisphere, through climate and environmental changes they now only grow naturally in a 40-mile-wide-by-450-mile-long swath from southern Oregon to southern Monterey County, California. They are so immense, they live in three climatic zones – the base in one set of conditions, the stem in another, and the crown in another. It can be cool and moist at the base near the ground, and, in complete contrast, dry and windy at the crown. These giants, the coastal Redwoods, are the tallest known trees in the world,…

Did you know there is a Highway 1 that follows the Pacific coastline all the way from Southern California to Northern California? And you can continue driving the coast all the way to the Olympic Peninsula in northern Washington by transitioning onto 101? And that there is a Highway 1 that follows the Atlantic coast from the tip of Key West, Florida, to the Canadian border in Maine? I’ve been fascinated by these particular highways since I can remember, and the wander lust part of me had been intrigued at the idea of traveling all the way up the coast,…

The rolling landscape leading to cliffs and sharp inclines reaching down to the ocean reminded me of the Irish landscape I often saw in movies when I was growing up, or the English coastline in movies depicting Robin Hood’s return to England. That being said, there is a much wider range of habitats than just ocean coastlines in Point Reyes National Seashore. It includes estuarine areas where the fresh water from streams and rivers mixes with ocean water. This brackish water has a high biodiversity and is a productive ecosystem in and of itself. Point Reyes also encompasses grassland and…